Research

Interaction and Language Development in the Language Classroom

The school visit to the Ratsgymnasium in Peine was organised by Dr Becker as part of the “Interaction and Language Development in the Language Classroom”-course. It took place on Monday, June 22nd, 2015 and the purpose was to conduct an English lesson for the duration of 45 minutes in the 5th grade.

A carousel workshop was prepared and the pupils were allocated to six different stations. After completing the task at the given station (approx. 7 minutes) the students moved on to the next one. The stations were supervised by groups of university students who monitored the language ability of the participants with the key focus on spoken fluency.

The visit proved to be an enjoyable experience for both pupils and students alike. Furthermore, it provided a rewarding opportunity to gain more experience in employing interactive methods in the classroom, in order to promote language fluency. (Franziska Proskawetz)

Orpheus Project

Short documentaries in English about environmental expertise/research in Lower Saxony have been produced in the past years. They can be used to promote eco-literacy. They can be downloaded from the digital library of TU Braunschweig.  

Developing a research terrain for didactic aspects/laymen understanding of green energies inventions and R & D

This research belongs to the field of environmental humanities. Work was started in 2012 and is being done at two levels:

A.
English or German/English explanatory teaching material is being prepared about current innovations. The focus is on local ones, but not exclusively.  The target groups are pupils in primary and secondary schools and their teachers. Ecoliteracy might increase. Situated within the humanities, we cannot create direct formats like the expert-laymen communication by engineers, agriculturalists, foresters, companies. Rather, the direction of explanation is a loop: as non-specialists we address the experts and ask questions from our horizon of understanding, the experts explain and on this basis the material is produced. It will be tried out in schools to get a picture of the ways of understanding of pupils, and also of the teacher training students (e.g. their reserves about the comprehensibility of topics, their subjective theories about nature and technology). The material will comprise short films, lesson plans, worksheets and brochures.

B.
Putting together prototypes of explaining particular scientific research and products.  This will comprise linguistic analyses, observations, feedback from learners and material developers, considerations of the content difficulty.

The work takes place in the following contexts:

a) the seminars for students in teacher training, master theses, practical modules,
b) a rural space for thinking and trying out and communicating,
c) a few schools on the island of Sumatra, in or near Padang, where the UNP (Universitas Negeri Padang) is located with which there is a co-operation.

So far, in two seminars, the participants have analysed scientific communication, e.g. the format of Kinder-Uni, written teaching suggestions e.g. about biogas plants, Desertec, short croppice research,

And some video material was put together about climate change research.

Examples of what has been created: work of students as part of their seminars, fieldwork in schools and with Braunschweig researchers.

The video „Esther and the barley“ (Autumn 2013, featuring Dr. Mitterbauer, Dr. Erbs, Dr. Bender) is based on current research at the Thünen Institut Braunschweig (Institute for Biodiversity, Prof. Dr. Weigel). A copy can be obtained through a written request to A. Kubanek

Intergenerational English

This research focuses on Early English (Englisch in der Grundschule/ 5. Klasse). Based on a long-term experience with the didactics of Early English, it appears  to me that a new focus  needs to be placed on the content/ topics presented to the children. They follow a textbook, there is a curriculum, but the content seems, at times, exchangeable (“beliebig”). Narratives in stories and by visitors, music, cultural and eco-literacy topics  can serve to create a motivational bond between child and foreign language. A different future-oriented, socially responsible approach to content will be worked out:
In recent years much ingenuity has gone into creating tools for senior citizens, including those with a differing world view due to Alzheimer. Award-winning products and approaches will be looked at and the question will be posed how the idea behind it, or the approach or product itself can be usefully transferred to the Early English classroom.  Examples are: Mehrgenerationenhaus, mobile phones for elderly persons, the “memory box”, tools for assisted communication.

How the German-French “Valisette” (= teaching material for German and French children in pre-primary and primary education) is being understood and made use of by the educators in Germany and France.

Research for the Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk. (2011-2014). Team: Prof. Dr. Gilles Brougère, Prof. Dr. Daniela Caspari, Prof. Dr. Angelika Kubanek, Prof. Dr. Dominique Macaire, Dr. Julia Putsche-Fischer

In line with the so-called regard creusé principle of the DFJW we investigate how educators are using this newly developed material, their ideas about teaching contexts, about differences between German and French educational cultures, about intercultural learning at that early age.