Background to the “Lehramt.International” programme

Preparing young people for social participation (e.g. in the international labour market) and responsible action in global contexts should begin at school. Teachers must be able to categorise global developments and their impact on society against the backdrop of their own experiences and communicate them authentically.
It is therefore important to ensure that teacher training programmes have an international and intercultural focus. This includes both curriculum-based content and formats as part of Internationalisation@home as well as subject-related and practical stays abroad. Increased international components can also help to make the teacher training programme itself more attractive to prospective students.
To date, however, teacher training programmes have only had an international focus in isolated cases. In addition, the mobility rates of student teachers vary greatly depending on the subject area and the type of school they wish to study at. 

In the first funding phase (2019 - 2024):

• 36 pilot projects were funded, which cooperated with 220 partner universities in 55 countries,
• more than 3,000 student teachers and teacher graduates have been awarded scholarships for a school internship abroad, 
• a great deal of knowledge about the internationalisation of teacher training has been gained in the form of surveys and studies and passed on in over 50 events.

Objectives of the programme initiative

In the second funding phase (2025-2029), the DAAD would also like to further increase the international mobility of student teachers, enable practical experience at school institutions abroad and enter into an intensive dialogue with federal and state politicians and universities in order to create awareness of the necessary changes and for international teacher training.
The focus here is on the sustainability of the measures in the three programme modules. Furthermore, the programme will focus more strongly on groups of student teachers who have been less mobile to date (including prospective teachers at vocational schools). The programme measures should also have an impact beyond the pilot projects in the German-wide community of universities with teacher training courses. 

The following objectives guide the measures and activities in this funding phase: 

• Prospective teachers are enabled to deal with international diversity and cultural diversity at German schools.
• Participating universities institutionalise and expand international cooperation and offer internationalised teacher training courses.
• Expertise on internationalisation in teacher training will be developed and made available to the relevant stakeholders. 
• The exchange between relevant stakeholders on hurdles and improvements to the (higher education) policy framework conditions for the internationalisation of teacher training is being consolidated. 
• The programme contributes to the visibility of the internationalisation of teacher training.

• Presentation on the programme Lehramt.International [pdf-file]
• Executive summary of DAAD working paper (2025) Mobility in teacher training: motivations, barriers, alternatives - Evaluation of data from the BintHo project specifically relating to trainee teachers
• DAAD Publication (2025) ‘Innovation, Cooperation, Impact. Lehramt.International - A Program Takes Stock’
• DAAD working paper (2023) Evaluation of data on trainee teachers form the BintHo project [pdf-file]
• DAAD working paper (2021) Internationalisation of teacher education: priorities, strategies, and areas for development [pdf-file]