What does it mean to be a good teacher? Student teachers work out the answers to this question in a very practical way in the university's eleven teaching-learning rooms. Here they can test themselves for their future academic appointment.

At first glance, the scene looks like a snapshot of a child's bedroom: five different Lego figures are lined up on a grass-green Lego board, with a tree-like structure towering next to it. But instead of a child's bedroom, we are at university - in the ethics workshop of the Institute of Philosophy. The figures and the tree are a child's Lego-like answer to a weighty question: "What is justice?"

Dr Sarah Huck says that Lego is a good way to find out what ideas children have about central philosophical concepts. The philosopher coordinates the programmes offered by the Ethics Workshop - one of eleven Oldenburg Teaching and Learning Spaces (OLELA), which are places of didactic research, practical laboratories for students and extracurricular learning spaces for pupils in the region. Building with Lego, for example, encourages reflection in a simple way, explains Huck. At the same time, student teachers, who guide the children and young people in the ethics workshop, gain an insight into the young people's world of thought.

An ideal setting for dialogue

This is one of the main aims of OLELA: to enable prospective teachers to gain practical experience early on in their studies in addition to their school internships and to provide opportunities for research-based learning. Bachelor's and Master's students try out their own teaching concepts here - without having to teach an entire class. The pupils come from cooperating primary schools, secondary schools, integrated comprehensive schools or grammar schools. The students learn how to talk to pupils and analyse their own teaching behaviour. In doing so, they learn what young people focus their attention on and what perceptions they have of their environment. Huck says that the students learn to orientate themselves towards the pupils right from the start.

"In conversations with children, you can find out a lot about how they think and how they learn new things," emphasises Jonas Tischer. From his work in the school laboratory physiXS, the doctoral candidate in the Didactics of Physics and Science Communication working group knows which scientific experiments not only inspire amazement, but also make people think and talk about the laws of nature. The teaching-learning labs provide an ideal setting for such discussions, says Tischer. The groups are small, the typical classroom situation is eliminated and the students receive direct feedback that helps them with their research-based learning.

Master's student Lena-Sophie Kayser has had exactly this experience. "The cool thing is that you can immediately visualise the experiences of the students and see their enthusiasm," says the 22-year-old. She developed and independently implemented a teaching unit for the Computing Science learning lab. Among other things, she guided the students in programming an automatic door. "When the door finally worked, I could really see a sparkle in the children's eyes," she reports enthusiastically. She summarises that there is a big difference between planning something in theory and putting it into practice.

Developing an attitude towards her future academic appointment

The prospective maths and computer science teacher was also able to learn about herself while working with the pupils - for example, how it feels to work with a school class or how difficult it is to manage your time properly. But this didn't put her off - on the contrary. "It was great for me to experience what it's like to teach," she says. The work showed her that she was on the right path: "I now know that I really want to be a teacher."

For philosophy didactics expert Huck, this opportunity to reflect on herself and develop an attitude towards her future academic appointment is an important aspect that speaks in favour of the integration of teaching-learning spaces in teacher training. Students could find out whether the academic appointment is right for them and what it means to be a good teacher.

This also includes dealing flexibly with surprises, for example when students have answers ready and develop ideas that you wouldn't expect. Like the Lego master builder. Unlike other children, the boy did not build scales or steps to represent justice, but had a different idea in mind: the five figures stood for different people, while the tree symbolised nature. According to the eleven-year-old, it is just if we protect nature for the benefit of all people. Huck summarises that OLELA provides an excellent framework for reflecting on and exploring such situations.