Forschnungsbasiertes Lehren und Lernen in der internationalen Germanistik: Glokale Lehrforschungsprojekte zur 'mehrsprachigen Arbeitskommunikation'

Abstract

At present, universities around the world are facing the challenge of bridging the gap between traditional, school-like methods of academic teaching and the new paradigm of de-schooled, research-based academic teaching. According to the current reform agenda, today's academic teaching must meet scientific and occupational purposes at the same time. Within this context, the humanities - especially foreign language philologies - are often accused of not seriously taking into account the manifold post-academic needs of their students. Taking three examples from international German philology (Germany, Russia, Finland), the article demonstrates in detail how a distinctive approach to research-based academic teaching helps to successfully achieve the interwined goals of producing both scientific and occupational qualifications. The Germersheim online encyclopedia of literary translators (UeLEX) (1), the Russian-German City Guide of Volgograd (2), and alumni tracer studies arried out in Tampere, Finnland (3), illustrate cases of best practice showing how students may systematically expand their scientific and occupational competencies while investigating multilingual workplace communication under the guidance of their teachers. In particular, the relevance of the students' participation in the three 'teaching doing research' projects in terms of maintaining their profiles on social media (e.g. LinkedIn) is highlighted. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the sesearch-based academic teaching approach presented in this artcile are discussed critically.