Projects
Development and professionalization in the second phase of foreign language teacher training
Based on the question of how teachers in the second phase of English teacher training perceive their own professionalization process and how their development can be described, a group of teachers in preparatory service was scientifically accompanied over the entire period of the second training phase.
Reading and understanding picture books: A study of learners’ engagement with aspects of ambiguity in literary texts
The project focuses on explorative research into the reading processes and sense-making of lower-intermediate learners of English.
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Sustainability and the EFLC
The project’s overall objective is to communicate English didactic considerations on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to regional educational institutions (schools, Studienseminare , school boards).
Find out moreA phenomenology of pre-service language teacher education in Germany
This research project explores the lived experience of teachers who have studied English at university. What do they retain? How do they feel about specific incidents they recall? What has been most meaningful to them? Or more broadly: What is it like to undergo pre-service language teacher education in Germany? The latter provision is a thoroughly investigated area within the larger context of teacher education, however not from a holistic and phenomenological point of view. The research design is based on interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith et al. 2022), foregrounding what is experienced as meaningful by the individual. By means of episodic-narrative interviews (Flick 2011; Schütze 1983), English teachers from across Germany (n = 20) were asked to report on their university experience. The technique features considerable openness so as to elicit what is deemed noteworthy by the respondent themself. The interviewees relate important events and, crucially, evince strong evaluations of specific occurrences they recall. Among numerous findings, the study reveals individual orientations toward different educational aims. On one end of the spectrum, teachers display an appreciation of generally formative experiences and personal growth (“Bildung”), on the other end, and far more frequently, they express an unfulfilled desire to be trained in utilitarian ways for what awaits them as teachers in the foreign language classroom (“Ausbildung”).
- Flick, Uwe (2011). Das episodische Interview. In: Gertrud Oelerich and Hans-Uwe Otto (eds.): Empirische Forschung und soziale Arbeit. Ein Studienbuch. 1st ed. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften / Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 273–280.
- Schütze, Fritz (1983). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. In: Neue Praxis 13 (3), 283–293.
- Smith, Jonathan; Flowers, Paul; Larkin, Michael (2022). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. Theory, method and research. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage.