The overall goal of the Graduate School is to create an innovative and sustainable context for the qualification of young researchers in the field of elementary school-related teaching research. In doing so, the qualification and supervision concept has to deal with the special challenge of a graduate school spread over two locations. The school jointly accepts the first cohort of doctoral students and accommodates them as a group at each of the two locations. A number of event formats and regular meetings are planned for the joint work of the Graduate School, which also aims to create a cross-location identity. These events will be held alternately at both locations partly as block events and in some cases as video meetings.

Within the framework of the Graduate School, doctoral candidates will be offered various qualification formats aimed at orientation in scientific discourse, in the cultures of specific academic disciplines and integration into the respective scientific community. For graduates of a teaching degree program, who are among the main target groups of the Graduate School, the group offers basic training in the field of philosophy of science as well as in the methodology and methods of qualitative or quantitative social research.

The qualification program extends over three years and accompanies the independent research process in the doctoral and post-doctoral phase. The program consists of both mandatory and elective or self-organized parts. The compulsory offerings serve, among other things, to create a common theoretical and methodological basis in the school, which enables scientific discourse and exchange across the individual dissertation projects and also beyond the school itself. The elective courses are based on the specific needs of the students, which in some cases only become clear during the research process. The program is structured in such a way that the intensity of the joint and obligatory events decreases from the first to the third year, so that doctoral candidates can concentrate on working on their individual dissertations.