Teacher Training Programme: Intensified Cooperation with Namibia
09/23/2025The University of Namibia was the destination of a trip by two members of the Professional School of Education. A new research collaboration is one result of this trip - and a yucca palm in the tree avenue there.
To support prospective teachers in acquiring intercultural, linguistic and subject-specific skills and to offer lecturers the opportunity to spend some time at a partner university, to teach and to advance joint research projects: These are the main aims of the "Global Teacher Education plus" (GoTEd+) project, which is based at the Professional School of Education (PSE) at the University of Würzburg and is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Two members of the university have now been guests at the University of Namibia (UNAM) as part of this project: Matthias Erhardt, programme manager at the PSE, and Katja Weirauch, Professor of Chemistry Didactics, wanted to lay the foundations for further collaboration. With success: Faustina Kashinauua Neshila, Head of the Department of Intermediate and Vocational Education at UNAM, and Katja Weirauch agreed on a research collaboration on Context-Based Science Education.
A Packed Programme
The programme that Katja Weirauch and Matthias Erhardt completed in Namibia was packed with lectures, presentations and workshops, and the range of topics covered was extremely broad. They ranged from an overview of the school structure and teacher training in Bavaria to reading strategies and questions on reading socialisation to examinations in the age of AI and key skills for the 21st century.
"At UNAM, a teacher training programme for primary, secondary or vocational schools is offered at six out of twelve locations in the state," says Matthias Erhardt. In order to enable as many students and lecturers as possible from the campuses spread across the country to take part, the lectures were therefore mostly held in hybrid form.
Katja Weirauch reports that the cross-university and interdisciplinary dialogue was extremely lively. It centred around questions such as: How does the availability of AI influence the analogue and digital examinations practised at UNAM? How will students in Namibia and Germany be trained to use AI competently in the future? And what special challenges are there in Namibia compared to Germany when dealing with the previous experiences of pupils?
Visit to the Waldorf School and a Tree Planting Campaign
A visit to the Waldorf School in Windhoek also encouraged all lecturers to reflect together on pedagogical and didactic principles. "The mutual understanding of each other's university, school and resulting research-related situation proved to be a very enriching experience for everyone involved," summarised the guests from Würzburg.
Incidentally, a highly visible symbol of the links between UNAM, PSE and JMU can now also be found in Windhoek - in the form of a local version of a yucca palm. It represents the University of Würzburg in the faculty's tree avenue partnership - a project that was established as part of Education for Sustainable Development.
The next steps in this cooperation have already been decided: Richardine Poulton-Busler, Head of the Early Childhood Education & Care Department at UNAM, will take part in the PSE's autumn conference on 30 September 2025. She and four other colleagues from the partner universities of the GoTEd+ project from the University of Perandeniya in Kandy (Sri Lanka), the University of Zaporizhia (Ukraine), Tel Aviv University (Israel) and the University of Cadiz (Spain) will provide insights into the results of their research and teaching in workshops.
More information about the autumn conference
The "Global Teacher Education" Project
Since November 2022, the Professional School of Education, as part of the University of Würzburg, has been formally linked to the University of Namibia via a Memorandum of Understanding. Since then, three lecturers from UNAM have been guests in Würzburg. They have taken part in summer schools organised by the PSE as part of its Global Teacher Education (GoTEd) project. In addition, students from JMU and a student from Namibia experienced teacher training and teaching in the other country in an exchange lasting several months.
The project has now been extended and is therefore called "Global Teacher Education plus" (GoTEd+). "As the example of Namibia shows, GoTEd+ creates strong impetus and opens up extensive new perspectives for international exchange in the field of teacher training," says Matthias Erhardt. These exchange formats are made possible by DAAD funding.
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