Professional development in teacher education should enhance the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Accordingly, there is an increased interest in research that identifies features of effective professional learning of teacher trainees. The key question in this contribution is: how can we design and implement a teacher training program - that is fully appropriate to the needs and realities of today’s classroom training - where students generate profession related knowledge and skills on a meta-level of communication and interaction. The following paper deals with the development of professionalized action in the context of teacher education at the University of Vienna and describes processes of collaborative research that has been arranged within a “Modellcurriculum”, where students cultivate knowledge and competences in face-to-face and virtual community settings (Schrittesser et al 2006). In this course program the students can reflect themes, processes and experiences in a professional community, which supports them to dissociate from their roles and allows them to view their actions from a distanced situations theoretically in order to analyze and justify their actions (Wenninger 2006). Furthermore, this field for reflection offers opportunities in an appropriate learning environment for processes of professionalization in teacher education. Collegiality and collaboration are needed to ensure that teachers benefit from their experiences and continue to grow in their careers (Shulman 1987). The students analyze their habitus, reflect on their personal processes and development throughout their educational training in orders to support professionalized action. Donald Schön (1987) coined the expression of the “reflective practitioner” to characterize these specific aspects of professionalized action. According to Schrittesser (2009) the development of professional capability within the “Modellcurriculum” allows the development of a habitual behavior within two modalities. Firstly, finding efficient solutions to oncoming problems and relate these solutions to theory. Secondly, the task to use an underlying methodology on the basis of scientific thought when relating practice to theory to join the academic discourse. The boundary that runs through these opposing spheres of action has to be kept open to both sides in order to provide for the necessary mobility of feeling, thinking and acting as a precondition of what is considered as the genuine asset of professionals (Oevermann, 1996). Teacher education must not only provide sound basic training in subject-matter knowledge, pedagogy related to subjects, and general pedagogical knowledge; it also needs to develop the skills for reflective practice (OECD 2005).

The theoretical framework of the “Modellcurriculum” in teacher education is sustained in a process of collaborative research and focuses on the professional development of teacher trainees. A range of data collection instruments have been used in the research including surveys, interviews, journals, group discussions and case studies. The results of the studies contribute to the empirical knowledge base on strategies for teacher education, as well as to the practical methodologies that can be used in school development.

The expected outcome is that the study will contribute to professionalism and scholarly training of future professionals in higher education in Austria while continually expanding theory and improving current practice. And the importance of providing a framework within which knowledge can be constructed as a collaborative process, which fosters reflective dialogue within pedagogical terminology, can be shown. Recommendations for policy and structural revision of the current course program of the “Modellcurriculum” are proposed. The research results and experiences are meant not only to improve the program of teacher training at the University of Vienna, but also to enforce teacher professionalization throughout the university.