One difficulty that teachers in teacher education are faced with is the relative distance between the place of teaching, the teacher education classroom, and the subject taught, being a teacher in a classroom. The question is therefore how to involve experiences of teaching into the teacher education classroom in a way that is both practical inside the given frames and worthwhile for all participants, both students who already have experiences of teaching and those who do not.

Films and other mass media productions can be sources for such (vicarious) experiences, which can bring pictures of practice to the theoretical teacher education classroom with relatively small effort.

This paper will start at that point and address two issues: 1) a theoretical framework to examine the knowledge theoretical premises and possibilities of using mass media productions in educational purpose. This theoretical framework is based on the works of Alfred Schütz about ideal types as concept for social understanding and Niklas Luhmann's thoughts on mass media's role in society. 2) The paper will show which aspects of being a teacher and teaching are especially suitable to discuss using films. Using some examples, the paper will point out which themes that are usually addressed in films and why and how they can be adapted for educational purposes.