International Conference: language education for sustainable development

Julia Edeleva is a postdoctoral researcher and instructor at TU Braunschweig in a self-directed externally funded project DaF-Z mit Nachhaltigkeit. From 2020 till 2023, she was a research fellow with the project ELIKASA on the development of literacy skills in low-literate migrants in German as L2 at FSU Jena. She did her PhD on the topic of relative clause acquisition and processing in Russian, German and French. Her primary research areas are psycholinguistics, L1 and L2 acquisition in children and adults, literacy skills and their development. Gina Do Manh is a teaching and research fellow with the project DaF-Z mit Nachhaltigkeit at TU Braunschweig. From 2020 till 2023, she was a research fellow with the project ELIKASA on the development of literacy skills in low-literate migrants in German as L2. In her doctoral research, she investigates L2 literacy development with a special focus on ecological validity. Mirjam Daum is a teaching and research fellow with the DaF/DaZ study programme and the project DaF-Z mit Nachhaltigkeit at TU Braunschweig. From 2017 till 2023, she worked as an instructor in German as a foreign language and an intercultural trainer at the International Centre of TU Clausthal. Prof. Dr. Martin Neef is a university professor of German Linguistics at the TU Braunschweig. His research focuses on theories of the language system (phonology, morphology, syntax) and the writing system. He is the author of four monographs, about 50 articles, about as many shorter texts, and co-editor of twelve edited volumes. From 2008 to 2015, he was General Editor of the journal Written Language and Literacy. From 2007 to 2019 and again since 2021, he has been directing the German as a Foreign Language/German as a Second Language study program at the TU Braunschweig.

Coyle, D., Meyer, O. (2023). An Introduction to the Special Issue 'Towards Pluriliteracies Approach to Language Teaching and Learning: Theories and Principles for Transoformative Practices". English Teaching and Learning, 47, 267-270; Kassel, K., Rimanoczy, I. (Eds.) (2018). Developing a Sustainability Mindset in Management Education. London: Routledge; Scheidt, M., & Edeleva, J. (2023, März 1). Learning Matrix Railway Signalling. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7689889

Recent theoretical advances in language learning gave rise to mindset-sustaining considerations in language education (Coyle & Meyer, 2023). There is growing recognition that grammatical, lexical, and communication rules no longer constitute a major hurdle in language use. Rather than focusing on fragmented learning goals and outcomes, more holistic, critical pedagogies (e.g, pedagogy of pluriliteracies, Coyle & Meyer, 2023) strive to engender ‘responsible activism’ as a plurilingual and pluricultural endeavour that enables to engage in deeper reflection and embrace uncertainty for global citizenship. We present first results of the project DaFZ mit Nachhaltigkeit (TU Braunschweig) whose goal is to challenge pedagogical practices beyond the pure study of linguistic systems towards the complexity of meaning construction in a multilingual and multimodal world.
We draw on the results of a practical session with Civil Engineering students who had to negotiate the meaning of basic terms in group interactions during subject-specific problem-solving activities (Scheidt & Edeleva, 2023). Their interactions were audio-recorded and transcribed using speech-recognition algorithms. We inspected their group interactions for the incidence of basic terms and their co-occurrences in an ontological relation. We discuss how contextonym maps (i.e., basic terms and their immediate environment) representing emergent ‘knowledge patterns’ in student interactions can be used to transform material and task design for deeper learning involving key competences like critical thinking and problem-solving. Second, we present the results of a survey of pre-service L2 German teachers for their “values, knowledge, and competency” that constitute the sustainability mindset (Kassel et al., 2018). Teacher dispositions are an essential pre-requisite to transform their actual teaching practices enabling them to create plurilingual learning spaces across disciplines. Finally, we discuss how a conceptual shift in the view of language learning and teaching affects language assessment along the vector of the alignment between the needs, goals, and practices.