Focusing on Multilingualism

Learning Objectives and Teaching Examples in Diversity-Sensitive Teacher Education

Abstract

With regard to the current educational policy in German speaking countries, multilingualism plays a vital role. On the one hand, an increasing number of students in the German school system do not speak German as their first language (L1). Instead, their L1 is e.g. Turkish, Arabic or Russian. Therefore, German classrooms can be considered multilingual. On the other hand, being able to communicate in multiple (prestigious) languages, such as French, Spanish and English, represents a pre-eminent educational goal. Against this background, we need well-educated teachers, who are both competent in dealing with the multilingual resources their students bring to class and willing to take advantage of possible synergies between languages for improving learning results. In the context of the “Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung”, a joint initiative of the Federal Government and the Länder, which aims to improve the quality of teacher training, researchers and teacher educators from different disciplines at the university X are exploring various diversity dimensions. The goal is to substantiate a diversity-sensitive teacher education. The diversity dimension “Language(s)”, which is the key focus of this article, forms the conceptual basis for developing extended teaching concepts for teacher training that combine diverging perspectives of different fields of study on multilingualism. Consequently, this paper addresses aspects of language awareness and language learning awareness as well as language-sensitive subject teaching. The presented learning objectives and examples shall enable teacher training students of all subjects and disciplines to deal with linguistically heterogeneous groups and create multilingual and language-sensitive (foreign language and subject) lessons.