Pre-service teacher education in Germany pertaining to refugee education
An analysis of discourses in place
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22260702 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roswita Dressler (0000-0003-1579-6446, University of Calgary), Miriam Siggelkow (0009-0005-3964-6903, University of Calgary) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-06 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Educational Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2748-9310 • E-ISSN: 2748-9329 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/eduling-2025-0024 |
| OpenAlex | W7167426492 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
Recent waves of refugees into Germany have focused attention on the educational needs of refugee children in the German school system regarding language learning, students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) and trauma-informed pedagogy. As instructors in pre-service teacher education programs consider the content of their courses, they too need to be responsive to the increasing diversity and unique needs in the classrooms, since they are preparing pre-service teachers to teach in those classrooms. This is challenging as many of these university instructors are research associates [ wissenschaftliche MitarbeiterInnen ], contract employees whose precarious employment limits means they are only responsible for the content of their individual courses. To investigate what understandings these instructors draw upon when teaching pre-service teachers, interviews ( n = 8) in a pre-service teacher education program were conducted. The analysis was informed by Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) conceptualization of discourses in place and an adapted discourse mapping method from Neander Christensson (2024). Findings revealed that instructors emphasized the need for pre-service teachers to understand refugee children as multilingual learners with an urgency to learn German. Little emphasis was placed on other aspects of refugee education (i.e., SLIFE or trauma-informed pedagogy), in part from a discourse in place of separation of responsibilities between teachers and school psychologists. These findings shed light on tensions within this particular German teacher education program that reflect discourses in place at the scale of teacher education or the educational system and hinder the inclusion of evidence-based practices for teaching refugee children
Conceptualization · Discourse analysis · German · Refugee · Teacher education · Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees · Linguistic Education and Pedagogy · Migration, Health and Trauma
Der monolinguale Habitus der multilingualen Schule
Teachers' perspectives on providing support to children after trauma
Teacher Identity Discourses in Place—Exploring Discursive Resources in Pre-Service Teachers’ Constructions of Teacher Identity
Every teacher should be a language teacher for multilingual learners
Sociolinguistic scales in retrospect
Integration of Newly Arrived Refugee Children into the German School System
How the different policies and school systems affect the inclusion of Syrian refugee children in Sweden, Germany, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey
Bridging Borders
What Shapes the Integration Trajectory of Refugee Students? A Comparative Policy Analysis in Two German States
The Lives, Aspirations, and Needs of Refugee and Immigrant Students With Interrupted Formal Education (Sife) in a Secondary Newcomer Program
Toward a Unified Theory of Language Development
Nexus Analysis
Inter-Rater Reliability Methods in Qualitative Case Study Research
| Highly cited | No |
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