Modern and efficient fire service career training

Background and Problem

Professional fire services are expected to face a growing need for personnel in the coming years. This is due, on the one hand, to positions becoming vacant as staff retire and, on the other, to additional needs arising from changing conditions, such as the increase in emergency medical service call-outs in an ageing society or additional challenges in civil protection. Attractive training and career pathways are therefore needed for fire service personnel – pathways whose quality guarantees a high standard of safety.

Training in the professional fire service has traditionally taken place within the framework of ‘career training’ (Laufbahnausbildung) governed by civil service law. Entry to the intermediate service (mittlerer Dienst) requires completed vocational training in a skilled trade or another suitable occupation. For the higher intermediate service (gehobener Dienst) and the higher service (höherer Dienst), a Bachelor's or Master's degree respectively is required instead.

In the federal state of Hamburg, the firefighting and emergency medical service training within these career training programmes is provided by the Feuerwehrakademie Hamburg.

The aim of the FLAME project is to make the career training at the Feuerwehrakademie Hamburg work-process-oriented and competence-promoting, and to support it with suitable digital tools.

The ITB is responsible for providing vocational-scientific support for this modernisation and expansion.

Research question

• How can the career training for firefighters be mapped and described using a structure of occupational fields of action?

• What measures can be used to establish and implement action-oriented teaching based on learning situations in a training institution that has to date been geared predominantly towards teacher-centred instruction organised along subject-systematic lines?

• Which support systems in the form of train-the-trainer measures and (digital) tools contribute to the success of this reorientation?

Approach

The draft structure of occupational fields of action developed through a nationwide cooperation between the state fire service schools can serve as the starting point for introducing action-oriented teaching. In addition to this draft, both (1) a needs and conditions analysis and (2) work process analyses in operational service feed into the (3) descriptions of the fields of action to be used for career training in Hamburg.

Building on this, (4) workshops with the training staff of the Feuerwehrakademie Hamburg are used to develop (5) work-process- and competence-oriented learning situations as digitally supported educational measures for firefighting training, enriched with cross-media training materials. In addition, (6) an examination is carried out of which digital tools can provide didactically meaningful support both for designing and deploying digitally supported educational measures and for documenting, reflecting on and presenting training content and career pathways.

Alongside this, a learning-pathway-based hybrid continuing training programme (7) serves to professionalise the training staff.

Results

The intended results of the FLAME project are a modernised learning approach and a support system for participants and instructors alike at the Feuerwehrakademie.

Its central elements are

• documentation of the needs and conditions analysis

• presentation of the structure of occupational fields of action

• documentation of work process analyses

• descriptions of the occupational fields of action

• digitally supported educational measures for initial, advanced and continuing training (task collection, methods collection and media pool)

• digital tools to support the educational measures

• learning-pathway-based continuing training for trainers

Dissemination and Transfer Activities

Concrete results such as learning situations feed, via the AGBF (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Leiterinnen und Leiter der Berufsfeuerwehren in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – the working group of the heads of professional fire services in the Federal Republic of Germany), into a nationwide process for the modernisation of fire service training.

Dissemination and public relations are coordinated with the Feuerwehrakademie Hamburg. A publication in Feuerwehr Hamburg's magazine ‘Löschblatt’ is currently still planned.

Weinowski, N., Meyne, L. & Fenzl, C. (2025). Feuer und Flamme für das Lernfeldkonzept?! Kompetenzorientierung in der Laufbahnausbildung der Feuerwehr. bwp@ Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik – online, 49, 1–22. https://www.bwpat.de/ausgabe49/weinowski_etal_bwpat49.pdf