Norm and Practice of the Foreign Language Classroom: Reconstructive Studies on the Teaching of Romance Languages in the Context of Social Change and Educational Reforms

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernd Tesch
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 427834126

The project's aim is to reconstruct everyday practices in lessons of French and Spanish. It thus focuses on the gap between programmatic, normative developments in societal developments, educational policies and foreign language teaching research on the one hand, and the lacking empirical research on foreign language classrooms. This gap is especially visible concerning the teaching of the romance languages French and Spanish where theoretical recommendations on topics ranging from e.g. multilingualism to teaching literature contrast with little research on actual everyday classroom practices.Drawing on the sociology of knowledge approach of the Documentary Method, we assume that social practice is based on embodied, implicit knowledge accumulated during socialization and that explicit knowledge is a superstructure referring to social norms. While primordiality is assigned to practice, norms can in turn become part of the practice and members of society like students and teachers have to negotiate between normative forces and the actual practices.The filming of everyday lessons allows for the rule-guided reconstruction of norms and practices as well as their negotiation concerning. To that aim, the filmed lessons will have to include non-foreign language subjects like biology or history. This will allow for a broad overview of different practices and norms in French and Spanish classrooms in Germany leading to a typology of their negotiation by teachers and students.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants