Introducing German preservice teachers to remote teaching : Policy, preparation and perceptions of competence development of future foreign language teachers

This article considers the policies, preparations and perceptions of competence development of pre-service foreign language teachers within the context of an innovative remote teacher training module. Responding to a recent call for triangulated research on teacher professional competences and to curricular changes resulting from the turn of German universities to online teaching in summer term 2020, a Developmental Model of Teacher Professional Competence (DevTPC) is proposed that can serve as basis for operationalising required context- and content-specific teacher competences. The article’s aim is to establish the theoretical background of the DevTPC and report on first promising results of a pilot study (n=39) asking pre-service foreign language teachers about their perceived competence development in remote foreign language teaching between April and July 2020. By focussing on the perceived development of technological pedagogical content knowledge in the area of foreign language instruction, the results of the pilot study contextualise the potential of remote teaching contexts to transform foreign language teacher training and (foreign) language education in the years to come. The article ends with a series of questions and recommendations for further research to promote innovation in remote foreign language teacher training

Teaching current crises : designing task-based online lessons on U.S. structural racism with the help of educational web tools

This article explores the foreign language learning potentials that selected digital tools hold with respect to teaching about U.S. structural racism. Teaching complex topics like structural racism in online learning environments requires highly competent foreign language teachers and high-quality online learning materials. These demands and resulting digital teaching innovations have a significant effect on how university-based (foreign language) teacher training should be structured in the future (Amhag et al., 2019). To address these demands, we have integrated distance teaching as a mandatory element in foreign language teacher training at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Stadler-Heer & Böttger, 2021). This article presents exemplary online lessons on the topic of structural racism which were developed, tested, and evaluated by pre-service teachers in two remote university teacher training courses. Drawing on the principles of task-based language teaching, the presented digital lesson materials aim to foster secondary school students’ intercultural communicative competence