Teaching mission statement

Viadrina regards the diversity of its members as a wealth; it therefore promotes an academic and working culture that respects individuality, gives everyone equal opportunities and supports them in developing their talents and potential. Acceptance of all its members and a commitment against discrimination and racism and in favour of equality are inextricably linked.

The Viadrina is based on the potential of its students and creates favourable conditions for personal development. In doing so, it takes different needs into account. To this end, specialist and didactic support and guidance for individualised learning processes at suitable locations and in suitable courses as well as the promotion of students' self-learning skills and collaborative work play an important role. The Viadrina supports students in particular in their academic socialisation at the start of their studies and in the introductory phase, with particular consideration of the heterogeneous starting conditions of students who come from academic or non-academic family contexts and have further education admissions certificates from different school systems.

Digitalisation is changing people's information and communication behaviour - but also professions, activities and the boundaries between different areas of life. This does not remain without effects on learning and teaching.
For university teaching at the Viadrina, this brings challenges in two directions: On the one hand, it is necessary to examine for each degree programme which knowledge and skills can and should be taught in the area of digital literacy. On the other hand, there is a need to reflect on how information and communication in university teaching, i.e. how the social experience of learning can be successfully organised in the digital age. In particular, digitalisation offers the opportunity to make learning processes in heterogeneous student groups more individualised and inclusive (for more details, see „University teaching in the digital age“).

The right combination of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity poses a particular challenge for the degree programme. It is also important to realise the balance between disciplinary knowledge and methods, interdisciplinary communication skills and cross-disciplinary knowledge, skills and abilities.

Teaching and research are not only linked in one unit in that teaching reflects the current state of research. The subject and medium of teaching are also the scientific questions, methods, forms of work and practices. University teaching at the Viadrina therefore aims to introduce students to the (different) academic strategies, thinking styles and forms of work in the social sciences, Law, Business / Business and Law, to familiarise them with these and thus to enable a community of researching teachers and learners. In turn, subject-specific teaching draws on social and personal skills in understanding and communicating findings and processes, which can also be developed as key competences independently of the subject (more specifically, disciplines, methods, scientific working techniques and key competences).

The Viadrina's interdisciplinary degree programmes offer particular challenges and opportunities to learn from each other within the disciplines. They promote exchange between the disciplines and make it possible to acquire scientific methods and self-understanding in a special way by reflecting on disciplinary boundaries, but also by recognising common basic debates on social theory.