Multilingualism
Areas we work on in the focal point “multilingualism” include the analysis of multilingual children’s language skills, research topics concerning multilingualism and the integration of refugees into university structures.
Projects: Research & Practice
TRANSLANG - Translanguaging in international teacher education
The project "TRANSLANG - Translanguaging in International Teacher Education", funded by the DAAD program "Lehramt.International", focuses on the internationalization of teacher education. The thematic focus is on improving classroom discourse in linguistically heterogeneous learning groups by using multilingualism as a resource for teaching. For this purpose, translanguaging as a procedure for multilingual educational discourse and as a currently discussed research and didactic approach will be worked on broadly and intensively together in regular focus teaching courses in the teacher training program.
Project component 1 consists of annual TeacherTranslanguagingCamps with a focus on current teaching research on translanguaging as well as intercultural workshops with a focus on diversity-sensitive and discrimination-critical teaching and learning. The measures are aimed at all student teachers at the University of Hildesheim and partner universities.
The second. Project component is the offer of the "International Project Band Translanguaging", in which mobility windows are opened for students. The participating student teachers complete a stay at one of the partner universities of the University of Hildesheim and are engaged in research related to the title of the project band.
The project was jointly applied for by:
Center for Teacher Training and Educational Research (CeLeB).
Institute for German Language and Literature, DaZ
IKK Institute for Intercultural Communication
International Office
Colleagues from all 4 departments
Vice President for International Affairs
ZBI Focal Point Multilingualism
ZBI Center for Educational Integration
As well as the partner universities:
Ain Shams University Cairo, Egypt
Free University of Bolzano, Italy
Masaryk univerzita Brno, Czech Republic
Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Toluca, Mexico
Multilingualism in Lower Saxony-Scotland Initiative of the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony (MWK)
The state of Lower Saxony has announced a funding initiative for 2019 and 2020 to strengthen projects with institutions in the partner region of Scotland. In this program, it was possible to place an initiation visit with one of the proven experts on early childhood multilingualism, Prof. Antonella Horace at the University of Edinburgh, for 2019, which was placed interdisciplinary from several institutes of the Department 3 and the Center for Educational Integration.
Thus, in December 2019, Prof. Sorace and Elke Montanari exchanged ideas about the research priorities. Special space was given to the presentation of the network "Bilingualism Matters", which the University of Edinburgh implements internationally. In the sense of the current political developments, regional cooperations can become more important, was the common assessment. Furthermore, details of the Summer School planned for 2020 were discussed. This was followed by a meeting with the team from "Bilingualism Matters", a worldwide network on multilingualism issues. Here, common issues from the school environment were discussed. In Lower Saxony and Scotland, for example, the discussions about additive versus integrative language support for newcomers in the respective school languages are important common topics. If the MWK approves the application, the exchange will be followed by a Lower Saxony-Scotland Summer School on Multilingualism and Diversity with Prof. Sorace. The date for this can be noted in advance: July 9-11, 2020.
