The Oldenburg teaching-learning labs are places where teacher training students meet pupils and experience them thinking, acting and learning. The teaching-learning labs supplement the school internships to be completed as part of the degree programme with a further form of linking subject-specific and didactic theory with practical learning and teaching experience. In the Oldenburg teaching-learning labs, students can focus their attention on the actions, ideas and cognitions of pupils; they can develop their ability to diagnose and try out their own teaching methods. In contrast to school placements, classroom management is not required in the teaching-learning laboratory. Teaching-learning labs are therefore "complexity-reduced" and free capacities are created. Students can use this to concentrate on diagnosing and promoting the thinking and learning of their pupils. OLELA is also an excellent opportunity for students to reflect on their own teaching behaviour and their own role as a teacher.

Teaching-learning labs in Oldenburg began in 2002 with the founding of ChemOL. Since then, teaching-learning labs have also been established in the subjects of Biology, Physics, Computing Science and Technology and have been firmly anchored in the Oldenburg teacher training curricula. In this brochure we present the laboratories that are part of OLELA. As OLELA is an open system that is not limited to the STEM subjects, OLELA has been reinforced by the Oldenburg Experimental Laboratory for Economics Education (OX-Lab) since 2018.

OLELA in the network

The activities at OLELA have been able to fertilise the Oldenburg project OLE+ of the nationwide quality offensive for teacher training through years of previous experience. In return, OLELA was able to benefit from general considerations at OLE+ regarding the interlinking of theory and practice in teacher training.

OLELA was temporarily funded by the German Telekom Foundation in the project network "Student laboratories as teaching-learning laboratories" with five other universities. This has significantly increased the exchange of formats and methods and contributed to the quality of the OLELA programmes. By dovetailing with the GINT - Learning in Informal Spaces programme, experience with teaching-learning labs in Denmark and Greece, for example, is now also being shared. This emphasises the international integration of teacher training in Oldenburg.

OLELA as an instrument for didactic research and development

The teaching-learning laboratories offer a wide range of opportunities to develop and evaluate new concepts and learning materials as part of Bachelor's, Master's and doctoral theses, as well as to investigate empirical questions about learning, experimentation and diagnostics. A particular focus is on process research.

OLELA thus not only supports the much demanded research-based learning in teacher training programmes, but also the further development of didactic research in complex settings. The knowledge gained flows back into the teacher training modules as well as into the teacher training that OLELA offers in the region.