The practice of university teaching has been little analysed so far. This also applies to seminars in the context of research-based learning, which have been widely implemented with the introduction of the longterm internship in the master’s degree program in teaching (e.g. in North Rhine-Westphalia). In this article, we use preparatory seminars at two university locations in North Rhine-Westphalia to address the question of how lecturers support students in preparing for their study projects. Study projects are defined as “systematic, theory- and method-based explorations and reflections on the field of school” (MSW NRW 2010, p. 7). We are therefore interested in how lecturers themselves position themselves with regard to study projects in teacher education and how they make the processes of research-based learning relevat in their seminars. Using the documentary method, we analyse eleven seminar sessions from different subjects (educational sciences and subject didactics), and reconstruct which process logics are evident in the seminar sessions. In this respect, we can initially distinguish between the formats of research colloquium (discussion of study projects) and research workshop (practice of research). What both formats have in common is that they use examples (e.g. from study projects) to refer to general procedures and principles of research. The practices of showing and demonstrating what research is and how research is done are therefore always exemplary. They are committed to the claim that what is shown is significant for the individual or different approaches of all students. At the same time, the lecturers’ of demonstrating research document a framework of orientation that we have described as compelling confidence. This refers to the perspective on the students’ study projects that appears necessary in the “final spurt” of the semester—as mentioned in one sequence—and is geared towards (successful) implementation.
