Consortium for language and subject matter didactics in primary and lower secondary school
About the Consortium
The Consortium was established in 2013 and consists of the University of Copenhagen (Faculty of Humanities, HUM) and University College Copenhagen.
The Consortium focuses on language (Danish, Danish as a second language, German, French, and English) and the didactics of language studies. This focus is founded in the need to strengthen the language teaching in primary and lower secondary school, to ensure that students are better equipped for a globalised world. The effort to improve language studies will qualify the students for the transition from primary and lower secondary school to vocational and/or academically-oriented youth education, just as the Consortium seeks to support and improve the transition from studying a professional bachelor at a university college to studying a Master’s programme at a university.
The Consortium provides a joint platform for research-based knowledge of language and subject matter didactics put to practical use. The Consortium’s work with subject matter didactics relates primarily to language studies but can, in the long-term, be applied to teaching and learning in other relevant humanity subjects as well as to science subjects, including mathematics. This, however, will require a new collaboration agreement and joint coordination of existing academic collaboration.
The Consortium has a specific focus on evaluative follow-up research, which creates a solid platform for engaging collaborations with relevant external stakeholders (public authorities, NGOs, enterprises/companies etc.).
The Consortium, furthermore, intends to incorporate international education and research communities to ensure that the national educational research and practice more consistently incorporates and builds upon international knowledge.
The objectives of the Consortium are:
- To strengthen knowledge about language and didactics by building a shared research capacity;
- To provide new knowledge about language and subject matter didactics that strengthens basic education and results in new teaching methods, as well as creates more and new supplementary and further educational offers;
- To strengthen already existing initiatives and develop new collaborations with international education and research communities to ensure that the national educational research and practice more consistently incorporates and builds upon international knowledge;
- To establish a professional environment for language and subject matter didactics where the research results from the Consortium are regularly communicated to relevant national and international education and research communities as well as external stakeholders.
Under revison.
Themes are listed in a non-preferential order:
- digitalisation within language studies: Use of new media and resources in language teaching
- the intercultural aspect of language studies
- language didactics
- early language learning
- CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning)
- “application orientation” in the educational practice
- teacher cognition.
The Consortium collaborates with for example:
- University of Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
- Cardiff University: Centre for Language and Communication Research (CLCR)
- Swansea University: College of Arts and Humanities
- Stockholm University: Department of Language Education.
For more information about the consortium, please contact Professor Anne Holmen, aholmen@hum.ku.dk
Collaborative partners
