The aim of the collaborative project is to bring together interdisciplinary and interregional approaches to the heritage languagesspoken in Germany and to heritage language teaching. This will be achieved through an event series that will enable the perspectives, findings and needs of research and teaching practice to be closely linked.
moreResearch & Development
Current Projects
The Mercator Institute for Literacy and Language Education researches and develops concepts, instruments and measures for language education in a variety of projects. The institute follows a benefit-inspired and applied understanding of research and conducts research on current and socially relevant issues of language education from nursery school to the point of transition into work. The project teams use both qualitative and quantitative methods and are interdisciplinary. On this page you will find information about current research and development projects of the institute.
HSU-Interregio
Interdisciplinary and interregional research, development and networking in heritage language education
Meta-project
Language Education in the Immigrant Society
The aim of the meta-project is to link the work of the funded projects, to network groups of stakeholders, to conduct its own research on multilingualism and transfer, and to disseminate project results in a target group-oriented manner.
moreIDeALL
Immigrant Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Students as Additional Language Learners
The aim of the project is to establish an interdisciplinary and international discourse and research network as a basis for research on the learning situation of newly immigrated d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, their educational support and the further development of teacher education and training.
moreSecond Language Acquisition
of Newly Immigrated d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing students
The aims of the project are to gain general information about the classroom situation of newly immigrated d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, to strengthen the teacher training in the Master's program for Special Education students with this specialty and to intensify the interdisciplinary work between the areas of Special Education and DaZ in teaching and research at the University of Cologne.
moreLanguage Skills of Newly Immigrated Students
in Mainstream Education
The aim of the project is to analyze the linguistic development of newly immigrated students in the school language German, the foreign language English, and the first language Russian and to what extent their linguistic competencies are interlingually related.
moreSchuMaS
Schule macht stark
The overall goal of the "Schule macht stark" initiative is to improve the educational opportunities of socially disadvantaged schoolchildren. The Mercator Institute, together with its partners, is focusing on a sub-project in the field of teaching development. It supports the teachers of participating schools, helping them plan and conduct their lessons such that all pupils can achieve basic standards of literacy and numeracy.
moreBiSS-Transfer
Transfer of Language Education, Reading and Writing Support
The initiative’s objective is the science-based transfer of concepts for language education, reading and writing support in up to 2700 schools and nurseries in Germany.
moreResearch network (Forschungsnetzwerk BiSS-Transfer)
The aim of the research network ("Forschungsnetzwerk BiSS-Transfer") is to gain reliable insights into how scientifically evaluated measures to promote language education can be successfully transferred into schools and which conditions should be in place for them to best exert impact on the various levels of the education system.
moreCOMeIN
Communities of Practice NRW for Innovative Teacher Education
The aim of the overall project is to promote digital competences of teachers. The research groups of the Mercator Institute and Bielefeld University focus in this regard on the promotion of digital skills in the context of teaching German as a second language and Content and Language Integrated Learning.
moreEdToolS
Implementation of digital writing tools in subject-matter instruction in secondary education
The project aims to investigate the implementation of digital writing tools in subject-matter instruction. Empirically based results should help pupils to use these tools effectively to produce texts.
moreDevelopment of a reference vocabulary for schools
The project aims to develop and provide an annotated vocabulary, that is based on linguistics and language teaching realized as web-based application – and to which the target groups can relate their questions in order to gain founded vocabulary for the grades 1 to 10.
moreDevelopment of an assessment method for writing skills
The project’s objective is to develop a test method able to assess the writing skills of pupils aged 10 to 15 at all types of school.
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