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The next questions aimed to find out how many state preschools offered German as a second language (→ question 2a) and if the preschool teachers were involved in teaching German to the children (→ question 2a-1). Apart from the relevance of this information to be able to select a representative context of practice for the sampling, it would also indicate if preschool teachers had some experience in teaching children languages (in this case, German as a second language), through which teachers might have developed some competence that they could then transfer to teaching English. Data that provided this information resulted from the following questions:

Is German taught in your preschool? (Findet in Ihrem Kindergarten Deutschförderung statt?) (question 2a).

Who teaches German in your preschool? (Wer unterrichtet Deutsch als zweite Sprache?) (question 2a-1).

The staff involved in teaching the children comprises the head of the preschool, the preschool teachers, preschool teachers’ assistants, teachers for special needs and expert language teachers who come to the preschool. With the exception of one preschool, all state preschools offered German as a second language. In over half of the preschools, the preschool teachers were not responsible for teaching the children German (→ statistical data 5). With one exception, preschool teachers otherwise shared the responsibility with expert teachers coming to the preschool and / or with the head of the preschool or other staff members. 22 of the preschools had an external expert teacher who came to the preschool to support language teaching (→ statistical data 5 & 6).

Figure 6:

Statistical data 5: Staff teaching GSL in state preschools

Figure 7:

Statistical data 6: An expert GSL teacher comes to the preschool

The results of this data show that over half of the preschool teachers did not have experience in teaching German and the preschool teachers who actually taught German only shared the responsibility. Therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have developed competences in teaching a language, which the teacher education project could build on. In the sampling selected for this study none of the participating preschool teachers were responsible to teach the children German. It was the responsibility of the head of the preschool and an expert language teacher to offer German to small groups throughout the week.