Читать книгу English in Elementary Schools - Anja Steinlen - Страница 26

In Germany, many teachers in bilingual elementary school programs hold a degree in bilingual teaching (Piske, 2015). According to the KMK (2013b), teachers in such programs (independent of the school form) ideally have obtained a teaching qualification for a content subject (e.g., math, science, geography) and for a modern foreign language (e.g., English, French). Regarding the schools in this study, most teachers at the bilingual program in the Hügelschule in Tübingen (Baden-Württemberg) hold a degree in bilingual teaching (“Europalehramt” at the Pädagogische Hochschulen Freiburg or Karlsruhe) or a degree for English-as-a-subject and for another content subject. However, there are problems with teacher supply due to a lack of training courses in many Federal States. Therefore, it is also possible to teach in a bilingual program with a teaching qualification for a subject and a high level of FL competence, which should at least correspond to C1 (according to the CEFR, European Commission, 2001). For example, the teachers in the Muhlius Schule in Kiel (Schleswig-Holstein) have all spent at least three years or more in an English-speaking country, whereas the teachers at the Platanus Schule in Berlin are either native English speakers or have a high competence in English at the C2 level.

In order to meet the demand for teachers in bilingual programs, the obvious solution is to employ teachers who are trained with a dual subject qualification, holding, for example, joint degrees in English and science for elementary schools. However, even in such cases, teachers are usually not provided with the specific English terminology for the respective subject (e.g., science or mathematics), and they usually do not have any experience in teaching science in the bilingual classroom. Usually, teachers working in schools with bilingual programs have pragmatically developed a certain teaching method of their own, frequently unsystematic, highly personal in style, and yet, just as frequently, highly successful. Still, the need to increase systematic bilingual-oriented teacher training, specifically aimed at the needs of the bilingual classroom (such as the “Europalehramt”), is more than obvious (e.g., Burmeister & Pasternak, 2004; Fischer, 2019; Kersten et al., 2010b; Möller, Fleckenstein, Hohenstein, Preusler, Paulick, Isabell & Baumert, 2018; Tel2L, 2000).