Zur Spezifik fremdsprachendidaktischer Professionsforschung: Unterrichtsplanung als Kategorie für Professionalisierungsprozesse

Abstract

The scholarly interest in the field of foreign language teaching and learning has recently widened its scope within the competence-paradigm from learners’ competences to competences of teachers. Foreign language teacher education has thus been subject of many international and national publications and studies. Focussing on the situation of foreign language teacher education in Germany, results of international research can only partly be applied. This is primarily due to different standards in certain phases of teacher education. From a national perspective, one of the challenges in foreign language teacher education is rooted in the federal system: The 16 federal states of Germany have different regularities concerning the second phase of teacher education (in-service training). Looking at national research on foreign language teacher education, emphasis on investigating knowledge of foreign language teachers based on concepts of pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman) has to be noted. Throughout this article, we would like to critically evaluate underlying competence models, and establish lesson planning as a key category of identifying competence development of foreign language teachers. Lesson planning is conceptualised as an activity that requires language teachers to draw upon all areas of their knowledge. Presenting results of an empirical research study conducted with teacher trainees, the article concludes with relevant research foci that should be addressed in the field of foreign language teacher education.