Strengthening teacher education in lesser taught languages (STELT)

The main aim of the project is to strengthen foreign language teacher education for French, German and Spanish in Norway, due to the need for formally educated French, German and Spanish teachers in Norwegian Lower Secondary schools.

Background and history

In Norway, there is an urgent need for qualified foreign language teachers of languages other than English, in particular French, German and Spanish. On a national level, about 20 % of the teachers who currently teach French, German and Spanish in lower secondary schools are not formally qualified (SSB 2014). In addition, statistics from Oslo show that a high percentage of teachers with formal qualifications are age 50 and over, especially in the case of French and German. This means that we must expect an even larger need for new, qualified language teachers within a few years from now.

OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, one of the largest providers of teacher education in Norway, does not have the staff to teach foreign languages other than English. However, based on longstanding cooperation with Universitat de Valencia, Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg and Université Caen de Normandie, the idea was born to create courses in Spanish, German and French, in which the Norwegian pre-service teachers could get their language teacher training in the countries where these languages are spoken.

As Norwegian teacher training, through national regulations, requires a combination of training in the school subject (in this case, the language in question) and subject-specific pedagogy, there was a need to create solutions that would cater for this at the partner institutions.

Thus, we started the first part of the project, with support from Diku, and in cooperation with two more Norwegian institutions of higher education with the same needs as OsloMet, the Innland Norway University of Applied Sciences and the University of Agder. As a result, since 2019, pre-service teachers from the three Norwegian institutions have been able to study French, Spanish and German for teachers as exchange students in the respective countries.

Very few Norwegian students graduate from upper secondary school with a sufficient knowledge of French, German and Spanish to study the languages at university level. This means that the number of new teachers of these languages that can be educated each year is limited.

The next stage in the project was therefore to create study programmes for in-service teachers in Norwegian lower secondary schools who would like to teach Spanish, French or German, but lack the formal education. This part of the project was formally launched in January 2019, also with the support of Diku, and with the Education Agency of Oslo as a seventh partner.

Objectives

• Strengthen French, German and Spanish as languages in Norway
• Increase the number of French, German and Spanish teachers with formal language teacher competence and updated knowledge of subject-specific pedagogy
• Contribute to strengthening the quality of foreign language teaching with an emphasis on intercultural competence 
• Contribute to developing subject-specific pedagogical competence in foreign languages
• Develop research-based knowledge on professional development of French, German and Spanish teachers
• Increase the number of students on exchange

Methods and approaches

• Working in a partnership based on three activities: student exchange, further education, and research
• Develop and run further education for teachers of French, German and Spanish
• Develop study programmes on master level for Norwegian students
• Develop courses based on blended learning
• Conduct research on professional education where pre-service teachers acquire their formal competence through longer exchange periods, and in-service teachers study with a combination of online studies and shorter stays at OsloMet and abroad 
• Conduct research on blended learning, Content and Language Integrated Learning, intercultural competence, and multilingualism in foreign language teaching

Information video about the studies at Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg (oc-media.ph-freiburg.de).