TEIFUN
Technology-supported innovations in subject-specific teaching settings
Education and AI in the 21st century
POSTDOC COLLEGE
What is TEIFUN?
PostdocTEIFUN is an interdisciplinary postdoctoral college in the field of education and AI. Research is conducted into technology-supported innovations in subject-specific teaching settings and their practical application.
What does TEIFUN focus on?
Extended reality (XR) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications permeate almost all areas of social life. How education and teaching relate to this is the subject of intense debate. The dynamics that can currently be observed are correspondingly high: research work on the relationship between school education and the new XR and AI technologies is already available or is currently being developed. However, there is still not enough research to be able to make conclusive statements about how technology-supported innovations can best contribute to an actual and sustainable improvement in subject-specific teaching. The cooperative postdoctoral college TEIFUN, which is being run jointly by the Professional School of Education Stuttgart-Ludwigsburg (PSE) and the Tübingen School of Education (TüSE) from 2024 to 2029, is dedicated to precisely this question.
At TEIFUN, which stands for technology-supported innovations in subject-specific teaching settings, interdisciplinary research and practical relevance to schools go hand in hand.
The program of the postdoctoral college therefore aims to initiate pioneering AI and XR applications to improve the quality of educational and learning processes in schools. In order to achieve this goal, the postdoctoral researchers of the research training group conduct research on subject-specific didactic concepts that focus on integrating innovative educational technologies in schools in such a way that the quality of teaching can be improved. In this way, the research group attempts to build a bridge between basic and subject-specific teaching research in order to productively counter the desideratum of the prevailing laboratory orientation with its limited subject-specific orientation.
What is special about TEIFUN?
The first-time cross-location cooperation between the two Schools of Education means that the expertise available at both locations in the field of teacher training can be brought together in an ambitious digitalization project. The interdisciplinary focus on education and AI is a novelty in the teacher training-related research landscape. The college also enables the Cyber Valley partnership between the universities and Max Planck Institutes in Stuttgart and Tübingen, which has been successfully implemented since 2016, to be bridged. It brings together the researchers involved in teacher training from various subjects and subject didactics, educational science and computer science at both locations. The integration into Cyber Valley, Europe's largest AI research cluster, not only benefits the postdoctoral researchers involved in the college. It also provides teacher training with numerous opportunities to connect to excellent cutting-edge research worldwide, which is dedicated to contemporary topics such as machine learning, artificial intelligence or virtual and augmented reality. In addition to research and the promotion of young talent, the postdoc college inspires teaching and degree programs at the participating locations.