Linguistic heterogeneity as challenge for teacher education

Sprachliche Heterogenität ist ein Merkmal der deutschen Gesellschaft. Sie kann als Ressource begriffen werden, die es auszubauen und zu fördern gilt, sie kann aber auch als Privatangelegenheit betrachtet werden, indem die gesellschaftliche Aufgabe auf die Vermittlung der Mehrheitssprache reduziert wird. Am Beispiel des neuen Lehrerausbildungsgesetzes in NRW wird diskutiert, welche Wege in der Lehrerausbildung gegangen werden (sollten). (DIPF/Orig.)Linguistic diversity is a characteristic of German society. It can be seen as a resource of the society that has to be developed and encouraged. But it can also be viewed as a private matter - so that the social task is reduced to teaching the majority\u27s language. The paper discusses, based on the new teacher law in NRW, which path is good for teacher education. (DIPF/Orig.

Migrants' educational success through innovation: The case of the Hamburg bilingual schools

Although Germany has experienced net in-migration for the past five decades, this fact has only recently been officially acknowledged. Furthermore, Germany is marked by a general monolingual self-concept very much attached to the idea of a nation-state with one homogeneous language. However, in large urban areas of Germany about 35 per cent of the population has a migration background, as has almost every second child enrolling in primary school. Hence the country is marked by this dichotomy between a monolingual policy discourse and a multilingual society, manifested in everyday life and, as a consequence, in educational institutions. The fact is that this political attitude towards Germany's own migration history and migrants has led to an educational gap between students with a migration background and their monolingual peers. In 2000, a project was started in Hamburg, aiming to overcome this educational gap and involving the creation of bilingual schools for some of the largest migrant languages. Bilingual classes were thus set up for the following language combinations: German-Portuguese, German-Italian, German-Spanish and German-Turkish, and were evaluated by the University of Hamburg. This paper reports on the model used and the specific school outcomes of the students attending these classes. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V