Although the roots of a practice-based teacher education can be traced back to earlier educational and philosophical movements (e.g., John Dewey), the so-called "practical turn " began gaining significant traction in the 1990s and early 2000s. The terms practice-based, practice-oriented, practice-focused, or practice-centred teacher education are often used interchangeably and are regarded as amorphous terms (Forzani, 2014). This reflects the variety of practice-based concepts in teacher education, including the core practices approach (Grossman & Fraefel, 2024).

The core practices approach, originating in U.S. teacher training discourses, explores perspectives for initial and continuing teacher education. Both practice-based teacher education in general and the core practices approach specifically address criticism that novice teachers are insufficiently prepared for professional work at schools due to a disconnect between the theoretical knowledge acquired at university and the practical requirements of the teaching profession (Grossman et al., 2009). This criticism is supported by the findings of coherence research as well as discourses in educational policy which highlight discontinuities at various points in the professionalisation process (Cramer, 2020; Hellmann, 2019). The transition between theoretical-university and practice-oriented phases of professionalization represents such a discontinuity at various levels. Incoherence affects both subject disciplines and educational sciences equally, making the establishment of coherence a desideratum and a cross-cutting issue in teacher education.

Research considers the concept of core practices (Grossman, Hammerness, et al., 2009) to have great potential for creating coherence (Schellenbach-Zell et al., 2024). Currently, the core practices approach is increasingly discussed internationally, including European nations like Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany. The approach emphasises addressing central challenges in teachers' classroom actions, using these challenges as the foundation for the professionalization process. Unlike other practice-based teacher education concepts, it prioritizes the targeted acquisition of skills and specific practices over observation and classroom visits (Forzani, 2014). The underlying premise is that while teaching challenges are inherently complex, they are also characterized by recurring practices that can be systematically analysed using scientific knowledge. Core practices are regarded as boundary objects as they provide opportunities to link learning across institutions involved in teacher education, connecting university coursework with school-based practice on an interinstitutional level (Schellenbach-Zell & Hartmann, 2022). The primary focus is to promote the professional competence of prospective teachers and to enhance coherence within teacher education programs. According to Grossman et al. (2009), core practices can be defined as following:

• Practices that occur with high frequency in teaching;
• Practices that novices can enact in classrooms across different curricula or instructional approaches;
• Practices that novices can actually begin to master;
• Practices that allow novices to learn more about students and about teaching;
• Practices that preserve the integrity and complexity of teaching; and
• Practices that are research-based and have the potential to improve student achievement.

To align teacher education programmatically with the concept of core practices, sets of core practices must be identified and specified first. Various methods such as surveys (e.g., Delphi studies; Schellenbach-Zell et al., 2024) or literature reviews can be used for this purpose.

In our presentation we are going to present a set of core practices for the school subject Educational Science. This focus is motivated by the German research context, where there is a lack of subject-specific frameworks of core practices. Furthermore, numerous empirical desiderata exist in the didactics of Educational Science, particularly in the area of teacher professionalization (Martin & Förster, 2022). Addressing these gaps, our proposed set of core practices seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse by providing a structured and subject-specific foundation for both research and practice in this field.

To identify a set of core practices for subject-specific teacher education, we conducted a three-round (group) Delphi study. This method, a structured group communication process, is well-established in social sciences (Clayton, 1997). In educational research, it is not only applied to analyse programs, to support curriculum development, or to evaluate teaching practice, but also to determine core practices (Fogo, 2014). Although Delphi studies vary in design, they can be characterised by common features: Several experts usually work anonymously on a specific issue in several rounds with feedback loops—often with the aim of building consensus (Häder, 2014). It is assumed that expert groups provide more accurate assessments than individuals (Moore, 1987). At the same time, Clayton (1997), citing Moore (1987), points out that Delphi results are more widely accepted in the field when the involved experts are part of the field themselves. Therefore, experts from various institutions involved in German teacher education were recruited via different channels (e.g., conference, newsletter, Facebook). In the first Delphi round, a total of 23 participants engaged in two independent online discussions to identify core practices. The participant group consisted of educational science teachers (n = 10), educational science teacher educators (n = 8), and educational science researchers (n = 5). These experts play key roles in different phases of German teacher education and thus, serve as both multipliers and practitioners of a practice-based teacher education. Using qualitative content analysis, we identified 13 core practices for Educational Science, elaborated their descriptions, and subjected them to evaluation in an online survey. In this second round, 17 of the original 23 participants (74% response rate) rated the relevance of each core practice on a six-point Likert scale, suggested revisions to the descriptions, and proposed additional practices. The analysis of the mean values indicates that the 13 evaluated activities (e.g., discussing and reflecting on teaching processes) are considered central to teaching educational science. In the third Delphi round, the adjusted descriptions and newly added core practice(s) are evaluated in another online survey. All in all, the identified set of core practices shows a high level of participant acceptance. Moreover, it is striking that it was a concern of the participants to raise questions of generic and subject-specific core practices.

Our study contributes to the small but growing strand of research investigating alternative perspectives and pathways in teacher education, with a stronger emphasis on practice. An attempt to focus teacher students learning not only on traditional academic topics but also on the requirements of the classroom, is inherent in the core practices approach. The identification and specification of a set of core practices can serve as a starting point for continued collaborative work at the institutional level. It is conceivable that embedding a work with core practices into the structure of the teacher education system could result in changes to the organization of content and its delivery, as well as the alignment of training-related activities (Levine, Mitoma, Anagnostopoulos & Roselle, 2023). As a next step, pedagogies for working with core practices need to be developed and systematically evaluated. Given that teacher training in Germany spans two phases and involves diverse institutional actors, we employed a three-round (group) Delphi study as our research design. While we engaged all actors active in German teacher education, an interesting addition to future research might involve including the perspectives of student teachers, novices, with practical experience. Their insights might shed light on the challenges they encounter, offering valuable comparisons to the perspectives of established teacher educators. Another noteworthy aspect raised by participants in our Delphi study concerns the relationship between generic and subject-specific practices. For instance, participants expressed difficulties integrating subject-specific nuances into a core practice like Assess and evaluate learning progress. We will also address this issue in our presentation by referencing to a (national) generic set of core practices (Schellenbach-Zell et al., 2024).

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