MRC Speaker Series - Tobias Schroedler
MRC Speaker Series - Tobias Schroedler
Multilingual Research Center Speaker Series
Tobias Schroedler
University of Duisburg-Essen
Institute for German as a Second and Foreign Language
Preparing Teachers of Multilingual Learners: Insights into Curricular Components and the Development of Pre-Service Teachers’ Beliefs about Multilingualism
Abstract: While preparing teachers to cater for the needs of multilingual learners is by now a relatively established field of research, evolving societal developments and diverse local conditions continue to present new challenges and generate varying needs (Wernicke et al. 2021, Schroedler 2021). This presentation begins by introducing the local context of Germany’s Ruhr Area, one of Europe’s most linguistically diverse regions. Some explanations on how teacher education functions within the German education system and issues of ongoing educational inequities (with regard to ‘migrant learners’) are addressed. Regulations require all pre-service teachers to complete coursework on German as an additional language (GAL) and multilingualism. To assess the program’s effectiveness, a longitudinal study was launched that surveys the affective-motivational competence development concerning multilingualism in teaching and learning of two full cohorts (n=499) of pre-service middle school teachers at four measuring points (Schroedler et al. 2023, 2024). A validated questionnaire (Fischer 2020) was used to measure the participants’ professional beliefs (Borg 2001) on three scales. Moreover, participants’ relevant opportunities to learn (OTL) were captured along 16 themes with immediate relevance to German as an additional language and multilingualism (Ehmke & Lemmrich 2018). The study’s data show significant improvements of participants’ beliefs about multilingualism and multilingual learners across all scales from t1 to t4. The analysis of the 16 OTL-themes provides a nuanced picture of how the attained curriculum corresponds to the intended curriculum. The presentation concludes with a critical reflection of the study’s research methodology and findings, followed by an open discussion in which all participants are invited to share their perspectives on preparing future teachers for the needs of multilingual learners, including relevant curricular structures and contents.
Bio: Dr. Tobias Schroedler is Junior Professor of Multilingualism and Social Inclusion at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He holds an M.Phil. (2011) and Ph.D. (2016) in Applied Linguistics from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). Before his current role, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg (Germany) and has been visiting scholar at Macquarie University Sydney (Australia), as well as the universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria (South Africa). His research addresses multilingualism in education, multilingual pedagogies, institutional multilingualism, language use in the labor market, and language ideologies, including the prestige and value assigned to languages. He currently leads five funded research projects on international comparisons of heritage languages in education, on using multilingual repertoires in the workplace, and on teacher professionalization for multilingual learning contexts.
Note: This talk is offered as an in-person only event and will not be recorded. Please save the date, and we look forward to seeing you there!