Jan Hiller takes over Professorship of Geography Didactics and Education for Sustainable Development

Jan Hiller comes from northern Baden-Württemberg, where he currently lives with his family of four. He completed his teacher training and Master's degree at the Ludwigsburg University of Education (PH). After his teacher training and several years at school as a teacher of geography, biology and mathematics, he returned to the Ludwigsburg University of Education for his doctorate at the interface of economic geography and geography didactics. The topic was "The company case study as a teaching method for geography lessons". "After that, the university simply didn’t let me go", says Hiller. From 2013, he worked partly as a teacher and partly as a research associate. In 2019, he swapped school completely for university – in Ludwigsburg and, in the meantime, as a substitute professor of geography didactics at the University of Giessen. 

To this day, Hiller is particularly attracted by the freedom of science, which offers scope for exploring current topics. He also wants to use this at the KU for his favorite topic of education for sustainable development (ESD). "My aim is to use ESD to promote even greater sense of responsibility and creative competence in modern societies", explains Hiller. "I can well imagine aligning ESD more strongly towards democracy education." For example, it is exciting to see what potential ESD offers in the face of uncertainty and times of crises. Jan Hiller considers service learning, a form of project-based learning, as an important pillar of ESD: "Creating learning products that have real added value for society conveys competence and self-efficacy." This can be observed both in and outside of school contexts. In fact, in numerous projects in his career to date, he has found that the didactic skills acquired during his teacher training are also useful in the field of non-formal education. 

Hiller is correspondingly positive about the link between geography didactics and ESD in his new position at the KU, as he is responsible for the multi-award-winning Master's degree program in ESD in addition to geography teacher training. "For me, geography is the subject that integrates ESD – it's a real strength to think about ESD and geography together." In addition to education for sustainable development, Hiller's second focus of interest is task didactics. For years, he has been researching the question of how good learning tasks are designed in terms of content and methodology. Hiller gained a lot of experience at the Ludwigsburg University of Education in the field of digital education, in particular the use of smartphone apps in the context of sustainability. "The didactic concepts we have developed work in very different application scenarios, for example in urban areas as well as in nature", says Hiller. Accordingly, he also developed evidence-based learning environments with nature and national parks. Learning in extracurricular places – whether in a nature park or a museum: the so-called excursion didactics is another focus of the professor's work. 

 In addition to ESD and task didactics, Hiller has a third major goal: The professor would like to set up a so-called "geo-learning studio". It is intended to be a learning workshop that is also open to students outside of lectures. "It's important to me to create a place where people enjoy studying – kind of a geographical living room", says Hiller, describing his idea. With seating areas, a collection of geography didactic materials and media and a laboratory corner, the aim is to create a creative space for sustainability-oriented, research-based learning. Not just in relation to the geo-learning studio, but with regard to research and teaching at the KU in general, Hiller emphasizes: “I'm looking forward to being able to shape the teaching practice here!”