As society undergoes sweeping changes, the circumstances surrounding school education are also changing. Issues such as the deterioration of children’s desire to learn and academic ability, bullying, and nonattendance have emerged. To appropriately respond to these issues, improvement of teacher qualifications and skills is required now more than ever. Because teacher qualifications and skills are formed continuously during the stages of teacher development, hiring, and training, the present study focuses on university, which represents the “development” stage. Using case examples of practical teaching, we consider the potential for improvement of the qualifications and skills cultivated at university. We continuously conducted group discussions on various education issues with volunteers, primarily graduate students. The findings of a questionnaire study administered to the participants indicated that group discussion had high effectiveness for the items “The social skill of trying to cooperate with others,” “The ethical perspective of awareness of behavior that serves as a model,” and “Sense of mission as a teacher,” suggesting that discussion can result in improvement in teacher qualifications and skills. In addition, 95% of students answered that they were able to acquire “Ability to speak in front of people” and “Listening skills.” These findings suggest that group discussion is effective. In the future, we intend to further examine the nature of practical teaching that takes advantage of the characteristics of students at teaching colleges
