Social transformations and the corresponding changing demands on educational institutions make a stringent internationalisation of higher education institutions indispensable (see Massen et al. 2023), which, in addition to physical mobility, also addresses the internationalisation of curricula or the establishment of an international campus culture.

In view of the below-average mobility rates among the cohort of teacher training students, this internationalisation is apparently largely bypassing them (cf. HRK, 2015; Kercher & Schifferings 2019, pp. 239-249; Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft 2015, pp. 54-55).

Possible causes:

• unreliable credit transfer practices
• lack of curricular integration
• few or no mobility windows
• characteristics of the teaching labour market

In particular, teacher training could make use of internationalisation to impart the professional skills and global action competence that teachers need in the 21st century. International experiences in the context of teacher professionalisation not only presuppose that students already perceive the teaching profession as an academic profession, but also offer explicit opportunities for initiating pedagogical professionalisation – for example, with regard to the development of ‘transformative competence’ (Mezirow, 1997) and the spaces for reflection (further information on this: Profigrafiemodell nach Hansen 2017) required for this.

The diversity-sensitive, inclusive opening of precisely these spaces for reflection is at the core of the internationalisation strategy of teacher education at the University of Passau. In doing so, we address the desiderata mentioned above and make use of the available mobility windows and curricular opportunities, particularly for closely supervised group offers and for the implementation of a wide range of international experiences on the Passau campus. For information and advice, we rely heavily on peer-to-peer exchange between graduates and prospective students.

At the University of Passau, student teachers have the opportunity to internationalise their academic career, particularly through the following formats: