2.1 Recent developments in the Austrian mainstream education system

With regard to languages in Austria's school curricula, the report period has seen a range of innovations. At primary level (grades 1–4), the already long-standing compulsory foreign language (FL) (which is English in nearly 100% of schools from grade 1 onwards) has been revised in two respects. While there was a previous policy not to assess, there are plans to introduce compulsory assessment on the basis of effort (as in sports and arts). Similarly, the previous policy to restrict literacy activities in language education throughout primary education has been lifted for grades 3 and 4, finally responding to many learners’ desire for FL to go further than songs and nursery rhymes. Possible effects of the changes are not yet visible until the new curriculum becomes effective. At upper secondary level, all higher vocational schools have followed the lead of the technical schools introducing compulsory content and language integrated learning (CLIL) provision in up to two subjects over the final three years (grades 11–13). The actual format and exact extent of CLIL provision are decided at individual school level according to local needs and contingencies. As at primary school level, English strongly dominates all such activities.

While intercultural education had been a so-called ‘Unterrichtsprinzip’ (transversal curriculum principle not attached to a specific subject) in Austria since 1992, the curricular basis for this was finally updated in 2017: the new ‘Grundsatzerlass Interkulturelle Bildung’ (BMBWF, 2017)Footnote ⁵ takes the current policy documents of international bodies like the United Nations, the European Union and the Council of Europe into account and – in line with the recent scholarly discourse – promotes an open and diverse concept of cultures with multiple and changeable affiliations and identities. The conventional targets along the lines of ‘knowledge/acceptance of other cultures’ have been extended and partly replaced by a more critical agenda. Among the target competences mentioned are ‘an unemotional handling of heterogeneity enabling learners to identify stereotypes, (cultural) ascription (…), clichés and to react to them’ and ‘to realise how cultural ascriptions are used to exercise power and justify dominance’ (BMBWF, 2017).

Possibly the most far-reaching change in Austria's upper secondary school system has been the nationwide implementation of the new, standardised school leaving exam (the Matura) for all FLs as well as for German, mathematics and the classical languages in the years 2015/2016.Footnote ⁶ This development is a veritable paradigm shift for it is no longer the teacher of a specific class who generates the exam but expert teams coordinated by the ministry who provide the same exam for all upper secondary students to be taken on the same day and at the same time throughout the country. The exams are taken at students’ individual schools and marked by local teachers, though. As to FLs, the shift is mirrored in the testing approach and the test formats used. While content-based language exams have been replaced by competency-based exams, the test formats correspond to internationally accepted communicative task designs. Although the implementation of the new school leaving exam is rather recent, researchers in the field have explored language testing topics to a considerable extent (see Section 3.7).

In tertiary education, while few university curricula apart from philological studies contain obligatory FL modules (business and economics programmes being a notable exception), the number of M.A. degrees taught through the medium of English continues to grow and a first English medium instruction (EMI)Footnote ⁷ Bachelor's programme started in 2018 (see Section 3.4).

Austrian teacher education has experienced a major reform during the report period under the label ‘PädagogInnenbildung NEU’ (Hinger, Reference Hinger2014, p. 18ff.). Its main features are:

• • Adoption of the Bologna Process for all teacher education programmes with consecutive Bachelors and Masters programmes: four-year Bachelors programmes (240 ECTS credits) and one-to-two-year Masters programmes (60–120 ECTS credits).

• • Merging the old teacher education programmes at secondary level that were differentiated according to school type (academic/non-academic/special education into one for general education and one for vocational education subjects.

• • Joint delivery of programmes for all secondary school teachers by universities and university colleges of teacher education (UCTE) (Pädagogische Hochschulen; PH). This was to replace the former exclusive responsibility of universities for academic and higher vocationalFootnote ⁸ teacher training and of UCTE for non-academic secondary school teacher training.Footnote ⁹

The first student cohort started the new programmes in the autumn of 2015. In addition, UCTEs have also developed a number of CPD offers for in-service teachers.

In the wake of the refugee migration in 2015 and the measures for German language training in schools mentioned above, many of the in-service programmes are centred on diversity, German as a second language, and multilingualism. These are offered in addition to the further education courses provided by universities. An inventory compiled by the Bundeszentrum für Interkulturalität, Migration und Mehrsprachigkeit (BIMM) (Federal Centre for Interculturality, Migration and Plurilingualism)Footnote ¹⁰ lists a total of 30 professional development programmes for German as a second/ foreign language and language education. Another thematic area which is seeing an increased demand for teachers’ CPD is digital media. There are a number of programmes which are open to language teachers in this area, but to the best of our knowledge, only one specific programme focusing on language teaching and digital media exists.Footnote ¹¹

The government-decreed restructuring of teacher education described above created pressures regarding quality assurance as well as new axes of competition, and virtually all teacher education institutions have responded with significant investment in structural and human resources. Some of these investments predated the present report period, but most of them have happened in recent years, finally bringing the numbers of academic and research staff in the area of language education to a marginally adequate level. Some language education researchers still work within philology departments (see Dalton-Puffer et al., Reference Dalton-Puffer, Faistauer and Vetter2011, p. 184), but most universities have created organisational structures explicitly dedicated to teacher education such as the Schools of Education at Salzburg and Innsbruck Universities or the University of Vienna's Centre for Teacher Education. Meanwhile, UCTEs have also expanded their research efforts by hiring more staff with advanced research qualifications, and by creating regional and national thematic research and development centres (e.g. BIMM). It is probably fair to say that the years of the report period have been characterised by a sense of departure, coupled, perhaps, with some ‘overshooting’ in the creation of labels and centres and the like; it will be interesting to observe the period of consolidation which will inevitably follow.

In order to give readers a more tangible idea of the magnitude of the development, we would like to add a few concrete figures. If we had tabulated the total number of chairs/professorships in language education at Austrian universities in 2010, the answer would have been two (!), both in the area of German as an FL/L2: one in Vienna and one in Graz. As of 2018, there are 12 professorships across the country. Languages covered by the incumbents of these positions are German as a second or foreign language, English as a foreign language, Russian as a foreign language as well as transdisciplinary language education, all of which represent research units with junior positions connected to them. Some languages, such as individual Romance languages or Slovenian, are represented by individuals working in tenure track positions. In addition to these developments at universities, the UCTE has considerably expanded the number of research staff in the area of language education.

The fact that research positions in language education are now inscribed in universities’ development plans as well as being expanded in most UCTEs means that the discipline is gaining momentum and is finally transcending the lone warrior stage. This, in brief, is the most evident reason for the triple-size database of publications assembled for the current report compared to the earlier one.

The developments outlined above also have led to an increasing number of language education conferences on a national as well as an international level. The University of Graz has organised two international conferences, one being the first of its kind on the Psychology of language learning (2014), the other focusing on Language education across borders (2017). The University of Vienna has seen the 10th International Conference on Multilingualism (2016) and AILA Young Researchers Meeting (2017), and Vienna Business University the 14th International Conference of the Association of Language Awareness (2016). Austrian teachers of Chinese as an FL, organised as a tri-national association called ‘FaCh’ (Fachverband Chinesisch) together with their Swiss and German colleagues, hosted FaCH's international conference for the first time in 2017. As to national conferences, the Austrian Association of Language Educators (ÖGSD; www.oegsd.at) organised its 6th conference ‘Sprachen und Kulturen: Vermitteln und vernetzen’ in 2015, whereas its conferences for young researchers (Nachwuchstagung) have been held on an annual basis since 2009. In 2016, ÖGSD started a series of online conference proceedings of which there are five volumes so far.Footnote ¹² Book series on subject-specific pedagogy have been inaugurated at Salzburg and Innsbruck Universities, prominently including topics on language education, while the University of Vienna has opted for a new online journal on English teaching under the title CELT Matters. The teacher associations and (language) pedagogy have undergone a further process of professionalisation. Four examples are:

• • The journal of the Association for German as a foreign and second language (ÖdaF-Mitteilungen) is now a peer-reviewed scholarly journal edited by a science publisher. Getting it listed in international journal rankings would be the logical next step.

• • The Austrian Association for subject-specific pedagogy (ÖGFD), serving as an umbrella organisation for all subject-specific associations including the Austrian Association of Language Pedagogy (ÖGSD), was founded in Klagenfurt in 2012.

• • RISTAL, the peer-reviewed international journal of Research in Subject Teaching and Learning has been launched with major involvement of teacher educators at the University of Vienna and is open to publications on research in language education.

Altogether, these intensified activities show a highly committed and expanding professional/scientific community, but it is clear that further steps in professionalisation need to be taken.

3.1 Research into language education policy and societal multilingualism

Many Austrian researchers examine actual practices in multilingual education, where Busch (Reference Busch2011) describes a ‘shift… from minority to multilingual education’ (p. 548), with speakers/learners no longer seen as members of homogeneous communities but as possessors of ‘heteroglossic repertoires’. The notion of heteroglossia can be seen as an attempt to bridge the distinction made, for example, by the Council of Europe between multiple languages in society (multilingualism) and in the individual (plurilingualism).

Since Austria is a country with seven officially recognised (and many non-recognised) language minorities, multilingualism and language policy is a traditional strand of research. Applying space as a linguistic concept in combination with the heteroglossia concept, Purkarthofer (Reference Purkarthofer2014) studied a dual-medium primary school in Carinthia using a mixed-methods approach and showed how the school ‘make(s) space for learners and language users’ (p. 210). Besides autochthonous minorities in Austria, other regions in Europe are similarly being studied. In the case of Osterkorn and Vetter's (Reference Osterkorn, Vetter, Jessner and Kramsch2015) qualitative study in a Breton ‘minority immersion’ school, the interest lies in the uniqueness of the model. They show that the learners find ways to circumvent the monolingual regime but note that its ‘emotional disempowerment of the young speakers’ (p. 136) nevertheless appears problematic. Closer to home ‘new minorities’ – language communities originating from migration – are increasingly being researched. De Cillia (Reference de Cillia, Fassmann and Dahlvik2012) gives an overview of language policy and linguistic diversity in Austria with a focus on measures for language training (Sprachförderung) for immigrants (pp. 192–201). He also analyses public and private discourse on migration and education, which shows how a ‘discourse of difference’ excludes immigrants and their languages in education and other public domains by constructing a concept of Austria as a monolingual state (pp. 201–210). A special case in researching minority languages is the transnational Romani community, as the conventional dichotomous categories of national/autochthonous vs allochthonous/migration minority cannot be applied to a minority that is spread out all over Europe (Busch, Reference Busch and Cichon2012b).

Naturally for scholars studying language education policy, German, the majority language in Austria, is also an important research interest. One of the aspects of the use of German in the Austrian education system is the fact that German is a pluri-centric language and Austrian German one of the non-dominant varieties, which often leads to an under-developed esteem for the Austrian standard in educational contexts (de Cillia & Ransmayr, Reference de Cillia, Ransmayr, Lenz, Ahlers and Glauninger2015). With regard to languages brought to the education system by students as part of their home language repertoires, (Austrian) German is very much in a dominant position, though. This dominance is often discussed critically as it leads to other languages being marginalised (Hofer, Reference Hofer, Gombos, Hill, Wakounig and Yildiz2014), given the demand for full accuracy in the national majority language. Dirim and Knappik (Reference Dirim and Knappik2014) argue that this concept is not adequate in today's multilingual context as it results in discrimination of a significant part of society and compromises the educational success of students who do not fully conform to this unrealistic norm. In teacher education as well, advanced literacy levels in the majority language are seen as the key factor for eligibility as (future) teachers. Knappik (Reference Knappik, Doğmuş, Karakaşoğlu and Mecheril2016), however, finds that teacher educators accept linguistic deficits from autochthonous student teachers, but are far less ready to do so with regard to allochthonous students.

Plurilingualism thus has two aspects: ‘inner’ or varietal plurilingualism – especially relevant in the Austrian context with many dialect speakers – and the ‘outer’ plurilingualism, comprising varieties belonging to different languages. Concluding an interview study with 66 learners and 18 teachers from secondary schools, Dannerer (Reference Dannerer and Oomen-Welke2013, p. 73) states: ‘inner and outer plurilingualism should no longer be treated separately, neither on the level of formal and functional linguistic description nor from the perspective of the connection between language and identity’.

In the next section we move the focus to the multilingual individual.

3.2 Individual multilingualism (plurilingualism)

Recent research in Austria regarding individual multilingualism has two foci: studies of cross-linguistic influences in multilinguals and studies on multilingual(ism) pedagogy. An example of a study focusing on L1 and L2 interaction is Gučanin-Nairz (Reference Gučanin-Nairz2015a, Reference Gučanin-Nairzb), who presents an error analysis of secondary school student's (L1 = Croatian, L2 = German) compositions written in two languages, in the German class and in the Croatian ‘mother tongue’ class (Reference Gučanin-Nairz2015a, p. 56). The analysis of orthographical errors surprisingly shows that transfer occurs approximately to the same extent in both directions (Reference Gučanin-Nairz2015a, p. 60). The analysis of grammatical errors found a stronger influence of L2 on L1 than vice versa. This is partly attributed to the fact that many of the students are strong L1 dialect speakers. The author recommends that teachers in ‘mother tongue’ classes should consider applying methods from FL teaching to explain complex grammatical features (Reference Gučanin-Nairz2015b, p. 64) of the standard L1 variety.

This classical bilingual approach is increasingly being broadened to include interaction with other languages, examining L3 or even L4. Notwithstanding the central role of transfer in considering individual multilingualism (plurilingualism), there are other factors to consider: among the most discussed are language awareness (Angelovska & Hahn, Reference Angelovska, Hahn and Gabryś2012; Volgger, Reference Volgger2012; Allgäuer-Hackl & Jessner, Reference Allgäuer-Hackl and Jessner2013) and language learning strategies (Kerschhofer-Puhalo, Reference Kerschhofer-Puhalo, Lütke and Petersen2014; Peter & Unterthiner, Reference Peter, Unterthiner, R. Hilbe, S. Kutzelmann, U. Massler and K. Peter2017). In one of a series of studies about English as an L3, Angelovska and Hahn (Reference Angelovska, Hahn and Gabryś2012) examine the role of language awareness for grammar learning by observing so-called one-to-one ‘language reflection sessions’ with 13 learners with different L1s and German as L2. These sessions are carried out with the aim of ‘fostering L3 grammar learning by raising language awareness interactively’ (Reference Angelovska, Hahn and Gabryś2012, p. 190). They report that learners are generally capable of successfully reflecting on the different languages at their disposal and use this for their L3 grammar learning process, but sometimes fail to do so. Failure is mainly attributed to the teacher intervening prematurely, thus interrupting the reflection process (Reference Angelovska, Hahn and Gabryś2012, p. 199).

Within research on multilingualism, there is a growing trend to see languages as part of a linguistic (i.e. plurilingual) repertoire (Busch, Reference Busch2012a) and to adapt research designs (Kerschhofer-Puhalo, Reference Kerschhofer-Puhalo, Lütke and Petersen2014) and teaching approaches accordingly (Bleiker et al., Reference Bleiker, Cuenat, Kutzelmann, Massler, Peter and Pisall2016; Boeckmann, Reference Boeckmann2016). Genuinely multi-/plurilingual pedagogical designs are being developed or refined, such as multilingual writing/literacy (Sorger, Reference Sorger, Sorger, Janíková, Káňa, Reitbrecht and Brychová2013), plurilingual majority language teaching (Boeckmann, Reference Boeckmann2012), multilingual reading/listening (Peter, Reference Peter, R. Hilbe, S. Kutzelmann, U. Massler and K. Peter2017) or intercomprehension (Ollivier & Strasser, Reference Ollivier and Strasser2013). Peter, Unterthiner, and Zerlauth (Reference Peter, Unterthiner, Zerlauth and M. Rückl2016) report on a design-based research project that explores the potential of listening to multilingual reading aloud for reading strategy training and reading/listening comprehension at the lower secondary level. Over the period of several weeks, the teacher reads to the class, alternating approximately every 400 words between the majority language and another language shared by the whole class (usually English). Reading aloud is accompanied by reading strategy modelling and training as well as literary discussions. Initial evaluation results show a clearly positive response of the participating 12–13-year-old students, especially in terms of their reading motivation. Another innovative project studies the use of Spanish-English bilingual poems in multilingual language pedagogy (Mayr-Hueber, Reference Mayr-Hueber2016). The thought processes of multilingual and ‘monolingual’ learners are compared in an elaborate action research study incorporating videography, learner texts, stimulated recall and semi-structured interviews in an inductive content analysis. The study finds that, although initially there is a difference between multilinguals and monolinguals as to the acceptance of bilingual literature, all learners eventually enjoy the multilingual teaching approach and report a rise in their language awareness as well as their acceptance of multiple languages and forms of expression. In sum, the multilingual pedagogies being explored in these studies assume that the linguistic resources in the mind are ‘integrated components of a linguistic repertoire and that language learning means developing the linguistic repertoire further’ (Vetter, Reference Vetter, J. Hüttner, B. Mehlmauer-Larcher and S. Reichl2012, p. 228) and so put an emphasis on cross-linguistic learning activities such as inferencing from prior linguistic knowledge, intercomprehension and language comparison (Boeckmann, Reference Boeckmann2016).

3.3 Research on language teacher education

Some of the research reported here has been inspired by the paradigm shift in teacher education reported in the introduction of this article. From the point of view of language education, the positive aspects of the reform – among them an expansion of ECTS credits available for subjects (languages) and subject (language) pedagogy (Hinger, Reference Hirzinger-Unterrainer2014, p. 20ff.) – are limited. On the one hand, qualification levels for teaching languages in primary school have been reduced (see Section 3.5; Buchholz, Fasching, & Dokalik-Jonak, Reference Buchholz, Fasching and Dokalik-Jonak2014); on the other, the aspects of multilingualism and the role of German as an L2 in the context of migration have not found as much resonance in the new curricula as many experts deem necessary. The fact that Austria is a multilingual country and the education system has to adapt to this situation has so far only marginally changed teacher education curricula. As Dannerer, Knappik, and Springsits (Reference Dannerer and Oomen-Welke2013, p. 43) remarked in an analysis of teacher education policy written before the reform but just as valid after it, an ‘orientation towards the reality of a multilingual society instead of … maintaining the fiction of a monolingual society’ is urgently needed. Some important demands are:

• • increased training in multilingualism, L2 pedagogy and intercultural studies for kindergarten teachers in combination with upgrading their education to the tertiary level (see Section 3.5; de Cillia, Reference de Cillia2013, p. 12);

• • introduction of formal training for the so-called ‘mother-tongue’ teachers teaching migrant languages;Footnote ¹³

• • integrated, continuous language education and language-aware teaching in all school levels and all subjects (Carré-Karlinger & Feyerer, Reference Carré-Karlinger, Feyerer and Rangosch-Schneck2012, p. 79; Dannerer et al., Reference Dannerer, Knappik, Springsits, de Cillia and Vetter2013, p. 42f.; de Cillia, Reference de Cillia2013, p. 15f.). (See Section 3.4 on language(s) in other subjects.)

Although teacher education reform has brought an increase in courses dedicated to linguistic heterogeneity especially in the curricula for primary school teacher education, the situation is still far from satisfactory (Gsellmann-Rath, Reference Gsellmann-Rath, Dirim and Wegner2018). Another approach to improving teacher qualifications is the introduction of the Framework model for basic competences for language education for all teaching staff (Carré-Karlinger et al., Reference Carré-Karlinger, Gilly, Haller, Huber-Kriegler, Vetter and Wojnesitz2014; see Introduction of this article) in CPD courses.

Education and training for language teaching in adult education is much less regulated: many adult education trainers only hold a degree in the respective philology. There are still trainers without any academic teaching qualifications, competence in the target language being their main asset. Qualification options specialising in adult education are rare and sometimes costly. The most important ones are offered by the Association of Austrian Adult Education Centres (VÖV) and the Vienna adult education centres (Wiener VHS), the latter also offering training for reading literacy/basic education instructors for (migrant) adults (Faistauer, Reference Faistauer2013, p. 96ff.; Fritz, Reference Fritz, Vetter and Cillia2013, p. 211). Literacy/basic education courses are a long-standing and well-developed focus of Wiener VHS and have also generated research: Doberer-Bey (Reference Doberer-Bey2013), a qualitative study on learner biographies, reveals the increasing demands on adults brought about by structural changes in the labour market, as well as their learning processes.

In addition, all Austrian universities offer training courses for teaching German as a foreign or second language; Vienna, Graz and Innsbruck also have specialised M.A. programmes in this field (Doberer-Bey, Reference Doberer-Bey2013, p. 91ff.). Yet, despite the quality of these courses, the degree of professionalisation in adult education remains considerably low. One of the reasons is that employers do not insist on adequate qualifications. For example, trainers for state-funded compulsory so-called ‘integration’ courses for immigrants are not required to have a specialist qualification in German as an L2 – other teaching qualifications or even sufficient experience are also accepted (Doberer-Bey, Reference Doberer-Bey2013, p. 99f.).Footnote ¹⁴

With regard to the practice of teacher education, there is a general trend to make student teachers more autonomous, by encouraging them to reflect on their academic courses from the perspective of their experience in teaching practice and vice versa. One approach to this objective is the use of portfolios. Mehlmauer-Larcher (Reference Mehlmauer-Larcher, J. Hüttner, B. Mehlmauer-Larcher and S. Reichl2012) describes the use of the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL)Footnote ¹⁵ in pre-service teacher education (PSTE) to accompany the practicum phase and reports on a study showing a positive reaction of student teachers, who welcome the opportunity for structured reflection and self-assessment, although they found the latter rather challenging. The challenge of self-guided study, especially in the early stages of PSTE, is also a focus of da Rocha's (Reference da Rocha2015) project: a course on autonomy that gave the students total freedom in managing their learning (‘independent study’). The results show their principal willingness to take on responsibility for their own learning, but also their difficulties in creating their own structures and deadlines. This experience made the students and also the teacher educator reflect rather fundamentally on their approaches to learning and develop their individual ‘mental learning spaces’.

Hinger (Reference Hinger and Doff2016b) reports on the evaluation of the language teacher education model IMoFFootnote ¹⁶ which builds on student teachers’ own (e.g. linguistic) diversity. A survey shows that linguistic diversity among university students is considerably lower than among school learners (p. 163f.). However, heterogeneity is further underscored by the fact that part of this teacher education model is organised across target languages, requiring students to work with peers who are studying other languages. The idea of cooperation is also stressed through parts of the course being taught through team teaching. One of the objectives of this cooperation is developing teaching sequences involving multiple languages – with the idea of inspiring cross-linguistic activities in students’ later professional practice (p. 166). Hirzinger-Unterrainer (Reference Hirzinger-Unterrainer2013) finds in her mixed-methods analysis of the students’ perspective on IMoF that they show comparatively little interest in multilingual pedagogy at the beginning of the course. In the interview concluding the introductory course, however, many recognise the potential of cross-language teacher education for multilingual pedagogy. With regard to team teaching, students show more interest in the beginning and are open to practising it in their own teaching, although only a few have experienced it in their own school career. The immediate model function of university team-teaching classes for their own school teaching is asserted by many students (between 52 and 64%), but the author cautions that these attitudes do not necessarily mean students will actively engage in cross-linguistic cooperation once they enter the profession.

Austria also has teacher education programmes that are bilingual by definition: the programmes that prepare teachers for the bilingual schools for recognised ethnic groups in Austria, such as the German-Slovene schools in Carinthia. An evaluation study of new teacher education curricula for bilingual teaching followed students and teachers of UCTE Carinthia over a four-year period (Angerer-Pitschko et al., Reference Angerer-Pitschko, Domej, Khan and Wakounig2011; Stefan & Angerer-Pitschko, Reference Stefan and Angerer-Pitschko2013). Although the overall acceptance of the curriculum was high, several suggestions for improvement were made, like focusing on students’ competence in the less dominant language (Slovene) by requiring a CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) level of B2 at entrance into the programme and/or studying at a university in Slovenia for at least one semester. The language competence of future language teachers in monolingual German programmes is researched from two perspectives, one could be called ‘norm-critical’ and the other ‘norm-oriented’: an example of the first is Knappik, Dirim and Döll's (Reference Knappik, Dirim and Döll2013) interview study, which found that many teacher educators are opposed to recruiting student teachers using ‘migration specific registers’ of German and demand ‘perfect German’ instead. The authors criticise this institutional ‘native speakerism’ and ask whether teacher educators should not focus on developing the academic register of all students regardless of their linguistic background (Reference Knappik2013, p. 56ff.). This seems well advised in view of Sorger's (Reference Sorger2016) more norm-oriented analysis of students’ discourse proficiency (Textkompetenz) in an evaluation of UCTE written entrance exams, which shows considerable deficits in many exam papers irrespective of L1 background. This leads to the recommendation to enhance linguistic reflection and strategic writing in schools and to increase the focus on this area in teacher education. Although these two perspectives appear quite different, in fact the remedy in both cases could be the same: promoting academic writing in teacher education with a much clearer focus than at present (see Section 3.6).

3.4 Language(s) in other subjects

The role of language competence for educational success and the importance of language for learning across different subjects are two issues that have received increasing attention over the last decade in Austria.Footnote ¹⁷ This interest concerns different but also intersecting groups of learners: German L2 learners in the Austrian school system, university students struggling with academic writing in German, and FL learners participating in CLIL programmes at secondary level or in EMI tertiary programmes. Despite clearly shared concerns among these groups, we have decided to group current work in this area into four research contexts: language-aware content teaching,Footnote ¹⁸ CLIL, EMI, and academic writing. The reason for this is that each of them has its own pattern of links to research discourses within and beyond Austria. In the case of language-aware content teaching, these links are mainly to the German research scene, while the other three have more ties to academic discussions led in English. We regard it as a great asset that events organised on a national level (e.g. by VERBALFootnote ¹⁹ or ÖGSD) bring these various discourses into contact with each other, enabling cross-fertilisation.

In order to address the needs of vulnerable learners, interest in language-aware content teaching has been fuelled by top-down initiatives (Council of Europe) and bottom-up pressure from classroom teachers. In 2011, ÖSZ initiated a project which, besides professional development events, has produced a substantial website (www.sprachsensiblerunterricht.at) with teaching materials and handbooks for primary- and secondary-level subject teachers (e.g. Carnevale & Wojnesitz, Reference Carnevale and Wojnesitz2014; Fuchs, Hofer, & Mulley, Reference Fuchs, Hofer and Mulley2015). This was preceded by a large-scale empirical exploration into the status quo, involving surveys among 3,500 learners and 300 teachers as well as an analysis of 70 classroom lessons covering a range of subjects and educational levels. The project report (later published as Schmölzer-Eibinger et al., Reference Schmölzer-Eibinger, Dorner, Langer and Helten-Pacher2013) contains a well-constructed set of rubrics targeting classroom language awareness in teachers and learners. Schmölzer-Eibinger has also continued work based on her 2008 pedagogical model for fostering literale Handlungskompetenz ‘functional literacy’ (described in Dalton-Puffer et al., Reference Dalton-Puffer, Faistauer and Vetter2011, p. 195) via a series of design-based research collaborations with subject teachers (e.g. Dorner & Schmölzer-Eibinger, Reference Dorner and Schmölzer-Eibinger2012; Schmölzer-Eibinger & Fanta, Reference Schmölzer-Eibinger, Fanta, Bachmann and Feilke2014). The model accords a central role to student writing combined with focus-on-form elements and reflective discussions. It resembles the Sydney School's genre-based approach (e.g. Rose & Martin, Reference Rose and Martin2012), but is less linguistically technical and therefore perhaps more immediately accessible to subject teachers without involving extensive CPD. Within the context of Austrian school-level content pedagogy, which is traditionally anchored in orality, the model's emphasis on literacy activities can be considered a major step forward and is complemented by the work of the science educator Tanja Tajmel (e.g. Tajmel, Reference Tajmel, Eberhardt and Niederhaus2017). This positive development is receiving further thrust via edited volumes in writing for learning and a handbook on writing in German as an L2 (Schmölzer-Eibinger & Thürmann, Reference Schmölzer-Eibinger and Thürmann2015; Grießhaber et al., Reference Grießhaber, Schmölzer-Eibinger, Roll and Schramm2018).

Related concerns regarding generic linguistic practices involved in content teaching have also sparked work in the research context of CLIL (English being the dominant target language in Austrian CLIL programmes) with Dalton-Puffer's Construct of Cognitive Discourse Functions providing an interdisciplinary nexus of linguistic-cognitive activity in content-oriented teaching-learning situations (Dalton-Puffer, Reference Dalton-Puffer2013). The construct of seven basic speech actions that are directly relatable to competence statements in subject curricula has been successful as a framework of analysis for classroom interaction in a range of CLIL subjects (Dalton-Puffer et al., Reference Dalton-Puffer, Bauer-Marschallinger, Brückl-Mackey, Hofmann, Hopf, Kröss and Lechner2018) and is currently being trialled in two interdisciplinary design-based research projects in CLIL history and science education. A similar interest in disciplinary cognition is pursued in Hüttner and Smit's (Reference Hüttner and Smit2017) observational discourse study, focusing on learners’ acts of argumentation as instantiations of subject literacy and content learning. The content subject studied is itself a new aspect in school-level CLIL/immersion research, namely Business Studies and Economics, where the ability of arguing a factual position appropriately is seen as a key subject literacy element. (On argumentation in classroom discourse, see also Schwarze (Reference Schwarze2016)). In terms of general language outcomes of CLIL programmes, the focus in the report period has been exclusively on vocabulary development with studies by Gierlinger and Wagner (Reference Gierlinger and Wagner2016) as well as Mewald (Reference Mewald2015).

In terms of language policy, CLIL in Austria entered a new phase during the report period by being made compulsory in upper secondary colleges of vocational education. Smit and Finker's (Reference Smit and Finker2016) multiple case study involving classroom observation as well as teacher and student interviews at different sites across the country uncovered a range of good practice examples as well as motivated participants, but it also casts doubt on the long-term sustainability of this organisational-pedagogical model if CLIL is made obligatory without ensuring the necessary structural support. The 2016 study thus corroborates analogous insights reported in Hüttner, Dalton-Puffer and Smit's (Reference Hüttner, Dalton-Puffer and Smit2013) study on teacher beliefs, which was conducted in the same educational context before CLIL became mandatory. CLIL teacher beliefs are also the focus of Gierlinger's (Reference Gierlinger, Valcke and Wilkinson2017) dual case study that is set at lower secondary level. This longitudinal study perceptively uncovers the tensions between the participants’ subject teacher expert role and their L2 user non-expert role which give rise to moments of ‘deficit teacher-self’ but also create opportunities for authentic co-constructed learning by putting learners and teachers on a more equal footing. We will not elaborate on this research context further as Austrian CLIL researchers are active internationally as speakers, symposium organisers and editors, and their work is easily accessible.

Another cluster of internationally well-connected work centres on English-medium degree programmes at tertiary level, a world-wide trend of which Austrian institutions are also part. Contrary to the nationally oriented school systems, the more international character of university education has meant that its academic study is considerably less beset by terminological squabbles, which does not, however, mean that there are not numerous differences across contexts. In order to address this variability, Dafouz and Smit (Reference Dafouz and Smit2016) have presented a conceptual framework designed to grasp the dynamic nature of English-medium education in multilingual university settings. Discourse serves as the access point to the six dimensions of the roadmapping-model (roles of English, academic disciplines, management, agents, practices and processes, internationalisation and glocalisation). The framework has been successfully applied in doctoral projects supervised by Ute Smit. Gaisch (Reference Gaisch2014), a qualitative study of EMI at a university of applied computer sciences, uses a combination of Nexus Analysis and the roadmapping framework as her analytical approach in trying to uncover what affordances computer science lecturers recognise with regard to EMI. Komori-Glatz (Reference Komori-Glatz2018) investigates peer-to-peer interaction in multicultural student teams working on business simulations as part of a global marketing M.A. programme. The analytical focus lies on how students develop disciplinary language as well as the role of relational talk in achieving their team goals. Findings highlight the role of constructive disagreement in negotiating meaning in peer-to-peer contexts and the emergence of a highly local community of practice within the team's boundaries. This ethnographic case study builds on an earlier survey of EMI programmes at the business faculties of Austrian state universities (Unterberger, Reference Unterberger2014). A specific aspect of the overall concern with language and disciplinarity in EMI is examined by Sing in a series of corpus-linguistic studies (e.g. Sing, Reference Sing, Göpferich and Neumann2016), showing that English as a second language (ESL) business students’ main strategies for constructing technicality and disciplinarity in their term papers are naming technical terms and embedding them in a taxonomic relationship, while authorial positioning remains rather undeveloped. Another corpus-linguistic study of ESL student texts is Schiftner's (Reference Schiftner2017) thesis on coherence in the texts of English majors. This study develops a highly articulate three-way analytical model combining global coherence ratings by expert teachers with semantic relations expressed in terms of Rhetorical Structure Theory and an analysis of cohesive devices.

Naturally, the bulk of academic writing research in Austria is concerned with academic writing in German, especially student writing. While the corpus-linguistic groundwork reported on in the 2011 survey continues, a larger number of publications now focus on implementing professional writing support at universities, be it by conceptual work on writing in and across disciplines (Huemer, Rheindorf, & Gruber, Reference Huemer, Rheindorf and Gruber2012), or by describing and evaluating actual institutional or curricular measures (Doleschal et al., Reference Doleschal, Mertlitsch, Rheindorf and Wetschanow2013; see also www.aau.at/schreibcenter). It is thus fair to say that academic writing is now no longer ‘locked away’ within the individual academic disciplines. Making the experience of authorship with its concomitant appropriation and perspectivisation of ‘facts’ and knowledge is crucial also for students in teacher education. This is vehemently argued by Knappik (Reference Knappik2013), who designed an assessment rubric for use by teacher educators across subjects to support her point. Besides becoming a component in student teachers’ professionalisation, writing awareness has been made a crucial part also of upper secondary teachers’ professional practice through the introduction of a mandatory ‘pre-scientific paper’ as part of the national school leaving examinations. Teachers of all subjects now have to assess such papers submitted by learners in their last year of schooling. Exploratory empirical work (Struger, Reference Struger2013) demonstrated that learners mainly interpreted the task as collating information on a general topic area, while independently structured texts that were guided by actual questions and contained argumentative passages were few and far between. This points to a massive need for development in secondary-level writing education, but also, and perhaps especially so, in teacher preparation in this area. Esterl and Wetschanow (Reference Esterl and Wetschanow2014) seek to address this need with regard to a broad range of issues from genre specifications to assessment.

A topic causally connected to the widespread use of EMI and communication is, of course, English as a lingua franca (ELF). This research area lies outside the main remit of this article but leading ELF researchers based in Austria have reflected on the impact ELF research can have on (English) language teaching. Embedded in a wider argument concerning the reframing of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in the age of ELF, Seidlhofer (Reference Seidlhofer and Vettorel2015) points out that ELF users evidently manage complex real-life transactions, ‘above and beyond what teachers and testers tell them they can do’ (p. 25) and she argues fervently to reframe our image of the learner. Pitzl's (Reference Pitzl2015) critical analysis of the CEFR's descriptors of intercultural competence is of direct relevance to all target languages. Based on evidence accrued in studies on intercultural ELF business communication, Pitzl concludes that ‘(E)LT discourse and language teaching practice would benefit from abandoning … essentialist concepts in favor of a more realistic approach to understanding as a jointly negotiated and interactional process’ (Pitzl, Reference Pitzl2015, p. 91).

3.5 Early language learning

In the 2011 research overview on Austria, the section on early language learning reported exclusively on learners in the 6–10 age bracket – which is co-extensive with primary education in Austria – with research interests directed at both learners of German L2 and EFL in school contexts. As will become evident below, research activities have noticeably shifted to the pre-school or kindergarten age group in the ensuing years. A significant shift in the theoretical framing of the work on early language learners has also taken place: in continuation of earlier work on the multilingualism of autochthonous and immigrant populations in the country, most researchers now frame their work on early language education as education for multilingualism (see also section on language education policy research).

Based on the educational policy steps taken as a consequence of the LEPP process and a parallel growth in public awareness regarding the degree of linguistic diversity in Austrian pre-school and primary classrooms, policy makers have shown a certain interest in what is happening ‘on the ground’. This has translated into a small number of funded research and development projects. Alongside publicly funded projects, research continues to be fuelled by childhood education professionals who do empirical research for their Masters’ or doctoral theses. The following section will first describe the work done in the pre-school context (kindergarten) and will then turn to primary education.

An important characteristic of Austrian pre-school is the fact that pre-school educators are qualified at upper secondary level and are mostly German speakers whose FL/L2 repertoire rarely includes an immigrant language. Kindergarten assistants, on the other hand, are more often L2 speakers of German (43% in one of the studies reported below). A third category of kindergarten staff, ‘intercultural staff’ (Interkulturelle Mitarbeiter), was introduced in one of the Austrian provinces, Lower Austria, in 1992 with the explicit aim to support immigrant children in their adaptation to kindergarten. These staff members must have an L1 other than German. The high percentage of children entering pre-school with L1s other than German (88% in one of the studies reported below), many of whom are confronted with the majority language for the first time at that moment, underscores the urgency of assuming agency for language education in this context.

Two research groups have been active during the report period, researching kindergartens in the capital city Vienna as well as the surrounding province of Lower Austria, using either applied/educational linguistics frameworks (Boeckmann et al., Reference Boeckmann, Lins, Orlovsky and Wondraczek2011; Sobzcak-Filipczak, Reference Sobzcak-Filipczak2013) or working as a multidisciplinary team including not only linguists but also education and child psychology experts (Datler, Studener-Kuras, & Bruns, Reference Datler, Studener-Kuras, Bruns, Dahlvik, Reinprecht and Sievers2014). As these studies converge strongly in their main findings, they will be summarised together below.

The pre-schools involved in the various studies show passive acceptance of, rather than active orientation towards, multilingualism. Staff members are clearly aware of the importance of L1 development for L2 acquisition and show appreciation, warmth and respect for children and parents of all backgrounds. These attitudes, however, do not translate into their actual language practices, which show an almost complete monolingual orientation towards German. Except for materials used during EFL courses, no physical presence was found of other languages in the shape of signage, print or audio materials, songs or rhymes, greetings or farewell formulae, a situation seemingly sanctioned by a strong public discourse on the necessity of immigrants to develop a good competence in the dominant language. For those children whose main contact with German is in kindergarten, the quality of educator-child interactions would be a crucial factor in their language development, but it turned out there were very few adult-child interactions that were dialogic in nature and required a verbal response from the child. This requirement was rather reserved for the dedicated ‘German language support’ sessions; however, those often lacked the immediate situational and emotional resonance crucial for any learning in this age group. Providing spontaneous situational language support, however, is difficult and requires highly language-aware educators, something that seems to be impossible to achieve through intensive but short-term CPD measures. Even if Austrian pre-school educator qualifications were finally to be raised to tertiary level, achieving this kind of awareness would clearly remain a long-term project, unless more citizens with immigrant backgrounds can be persuaded to join the pre-school education workforce.

Two further research-based initiatives provide CPD for in-service kindergarten educators with regard to intercultural language education and the support of multilingualism. In a project financed with EU funds for the border regions between Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Boeckmann et al. (Reference Boeckmann, Lins, Orlovsky and Wondraczek2011) developed a handbook of techniques and materials for actively supporting languages other than the respective national language at kindergarten, including both neighbouring and immigrant languages. Based on an accessible theory part and a didactic framework, the handbook introduces nine categories of concrete activities with 41 exemplars overall. A companion piece aiming at teacher development through reflection is the ECML's ‘Portfolio for promoting inclusive, plurilingual and intercultural education at pre-school (PEPELINO)’, which was developed through the participation of an Austrian team-member (Goullier et al., Reference Goullier, Carré-Karlinger, Orlova and Roussi2015).

An interesting innovation in the repertoire of research methods has emerged from the multidisciplinary research group: given the decisive influence of children's emotional experience on their language development, both regarding their family's migration experience and their personal relationships at kindergarten, the team used Young Child Observation, an ethnographic, psychoanalytic research method from infant psychology. The method has one non-participant researcher carrying out intensive observation per focus child for one hour per week over a whole school year, observing behaviour (interactions entered, how did s/he act verbally and non-verbally); immediately after each observation the observer writes a descriptive protocol which is then discussed and interpreted in a group meeting of all observers of focus children (Datler et al., Reference Datler, Hover-Reisner, Fürstaller, Datler, Adamo and Rustin2013).

A further research group, working in a psycholinguistic framework, is studying the lexical and grammatical development of Viennese three-year old kindergarten children from families of different socioeconomic and linguistic backgrounds (German or Turkish as home language). First results indicate that contrary to German L1 children, L1 vocabulary size is not significantly mediated by socioeconomic status (SES) in Turkish L1 children, with only slight effects of SES on vocabulary size in German L2. Contrary to expectations, the factor, ‘time spent in kindergarten prior to the language test’ showed only weak effects. For reasons yet to be investigated, SES of Turkish L1 families does seem to have an impact on the children's rate of acquisition of German noun and verb morphology (Czinglar et al., Reference Czinglar, Korecky-Kröll, Uzunkaya-Sharma, Dressler, Köpcke and Ziegler2015).

Turning to the level of primary education, this section will focus on matters other than German L2, since this is covered elsewhere in this article. After Buchholz's sobering (Reference Buchholz2007) study regarding the implementation and outcomes of compulsory EFL teaching in Austrian primary schools, researchers turned their attention to improving the situation through policy as well as conceptual work for teacher education.

A special issue of Austria's most important education journal Erziehung und Unterricht (Education & Classroom Teaching) was dedicated to primary level English teaching, where teacher educators from different institutions presented their ideas for competence models that should inform the next generation of primary teacher education curricula (Buchholz et al., Reference Buchholz, Fasching and Dokalik-Jonak2014; Mewald, Reference Mewald2014). Mewald's model is of particular interest in that it aims at constructing a learning environment for future teachers where they are encouraged to reflect on their own multilingualism and to transfer insights and strategies across languages (German L2, family and heritage languages, or FLs (English)). The model has a strong experiential component involving the learning of a completely new language to A1 level as well as studying part of the curriculum through the medium of English, so that student teachers experience studying curricular content in an imperfectly known language. In an analysis of all newly developed primary teacher education programmes in Austria, Buchholz (Reference Buchholz2012) found that the recently reformed curricula had actually worsened teachers’ preparation for teaching an FL (de facto English) by way of reducing contact hours, abolishing language competence checks prior to admission to the programme, and abolishing obligatory final exams in the FL.

Similar to the pre-school studies reported on above, the linguistic diversity and multilingual nature of the primary classroom was the focus of a project led by Buchholz (Reference Buchholz, Wegner and Vetter2014) in the province of Burgenland which found a paradoxical linguistic situation where teachers were mostly plurilingual, but lessons were monolingual. Only in the bilingual schools designated for authochtonous ethnic minorities were lessons predominantly bilingual, whereas the languages of the migrant students were totally neglected.

Learners’ age-appropriate competences in L1s other than German vary from high (in the authochtonous minority languages Croatian and Hungarian) to low (Turkish, Romanian, Albanian). Similar to what was found in the pre-school studies, immigrant languages are never officially present in schools and language diversity is actively dealt with exclusively in terms of German L2 language support (whose actual implementation Buchholz is also critical of in many instances). On the other hand, a significant number of German L1 children learn one of the authochtonous minority languages, achieving significantly higher levels of competence than in the English classes, a result which Buchholz puts down to the fact that, other than English, Croatian and Hungarian were taught by staff with expert language competence. Of all children, 97% in her sample expressed the wish to learn more languages than they already know, showing great openness to and appreciation for speakers of other languages.

A conspicuous gap still exists with regard to experimental or design-based studies of primary level language learning. One quasi-experimental study on multi-media-based listening instruction in EFL was carried out by Sejdiu (Reference Sejdiu2014). Using a pretest-posttest experimental-control design with a ten-week intervention, the author was able to show that the experimental group experienced significant gains in English especially in listening for detail.

3.6 Literature and culture in language learning

Debates on the dimension of culture in language education look back on a long tradition. For the current Austrian language education curricula, the CEFR's notion of intercultural competence has functioned as the immediate source of inspiration, and Dalton-Puffer et al. (Reference Dalton-Puffer, Faistauer and Vetter2011) accordingly featured a short section on ‘Interculturality’. Meanwhile, however, work done in the area of ‘language and culture’ has broadened significantly. There are several reasons for this intensified activity:

• • contact between ‘cultures’ is a given in Austrian classrooms and no longer something that one needs to be prepared for by attending FL lessons;

• • the washback of introducing competence orientation and standardised exams into Austrian language education is resulting in a progressive marginalisation of culture topics and literature in curricula and classrooms;

• • curricular reform in teacher education (see Section 2) has put teacher educators under pressure to justify the presence of literary studies in teacher education curricula.

Within the overall purview of cultural learning in language education, scholarly work has crystallised around several points, which we will discuss in the following order: the theoretical debate concerning trans- vs interculturality, the contribution of literature (and what kinds of literature) to the aims of language education, assessment, extent of literature teaching in the FL classroom, and literature in language teacher education.

While the understanding of intercultural learning inscribed into the Austrian language education curriculaFootnote ²⁰ is implicitly based on a view of cultural plurality that rests on linguistic, ethnic and ultimately national foundations (and is thus fully in line with the socio-cultural and intercultural competence formulated in the CEFR), Austrian scholars have prominently participated in a lively theoretical debate among German-speaking language educators and theorists about which theoretical notion of culture can best do justice to the era of globalisation. In this debate, the concept of ‘transculturality’ has been pitted against ‘interculturality' as the one which suitably grasps the hybridisation of global modernity. Delanoy's (Reference Delanoy, Eisenmann and Summer2012) profound and perceptive analysis of the arguments brought forward on both sides demonstrates the productive force of the debate in bringing to light blind spots in both theories and also their internal heterogeneity and mutual overlaps. Importantly, in our view, Delanoy cautions against a one-sidedly celebratory rhetoric regarding fluid, transient and individualised cultures and identities. His argument is that the critical positions supposedly emerging from such fully individualised practices are bound to need collective action if they are to stand a chance of asserting themselves in the social arena.

For Delanoy, then, the aims of language education lie in the empowerment of the individual learner by developing a communicative competence that allows them to act responsibly for themselves but also enables them to respond (be ‘response-able’) to wider social concerns. In this dialogic and power-critical understanding of language education, a separation between communicative and cultural competences makes no sense (Delanoy, Reference Delanoy, Dobric and Onysko2017) – and so would require a rewriting of the national curriculum.

How this or indeed any other kind of cultural learning is to be orchestrated in the classroom, is the question we turn to next. The ubiquity of course books in the everyday life of the FL classroom means that, in real terms, what is presented in those textbooks will constitute a significant input with regard to cultural learning. However, and quite in keeping with the dearth of professional textbook research internationally, this topic has appeared to arouse the interest of students writing their Masters’ theses much earlier than that of research professionals. There are certain indications that a sea-change may be under way (see Section 3.10).

By far the most intensively researched and discussed aspect of inter/transcultural pedagogy is the role of literature. As noted above, this stands in stark contrast to the progressive marginalisation of literature in the Austrian FL curriculum, where it is mentioned as one in a row of possible ‘topics’ along with family, food, or adolescence at lower and as one ‘text type’ among many at upper secondary level. Many good arguments are brought forward as to why working with literary texts is particularly effective in fostering the cultural competences aimed for in language education. Despite differences in individual focus, scholars agree that literary texts enable learners to closely and safely examine issues of identity construction, since fictional characters themselves are constructions which invite both identification and de-construction (Krammer, Reference Krammer, Pfabigan and Zelger2012; Reichl, Reference Reichl, Bland and Lütge2013). Likewise, there is a consensus that understanding, whether literary or inter/transcultural, is something fragmentary and tentative and its emergence in the individual has a subjective as well as an intersubjective component, and thus requires underpinnings both in literary and learning theories that are constructivist, dialogic and critical in nature (Krammer, Reference Krammer, Pfabigan and Zelger2012; Reichl, Reference Reichl, Bland and Lütge2013; Wintersteiner, Reference Wintersteiner2013; Alter, Reference Alter2015; Delanoy, Reference Delanoy, Delanoy, Eisenmann and Matz2015).

In order to implement these basic considerations in the classroom, the choice of literary texts is a decisive step and has been given considerable attention. Deliberations are guided by the idea that literary texts often create the kind of cognitive dissonance which can be productive for de-and re-constructing apparent ‘givens’ in the interest of identity formation and cultural learning. Reichl (Reference Reichl, Bland and Lütge2013) makes a case for dissonance arising from narrative technique, while Alter and Merse (Reference Alter, Merse, Fäcke, Rost-Rot and Thaler2014) explore the potential of problematic and taboo themes for the same purpose; both publications illustrate their arguments with a range of examples from young adult fiction written in English. However, few other target languages can fall back on such a well-populated literary genre for school-level learners. For Italian, for instance, the challenges of using literature with adolescents in terms of linguistic difficulty and background knowledge must be confronted in other ways. Cicala (e.g. Reference Cicala2011) proposes an intertextual approach that uses ‘text ensembles’ (Delanoy, Reference Delanoy, Delanoy, Eisenmann and Matz2015, p. 39) for work on a global theme like ‘Travelling the Seas’, allowing for highly topical as well as historical perspectives on migration from and to Italy. The use of multimodal books, picture books, comics and graphic novels has been dealt with in relation to EFL (Mayrhofer & Reichl, Reference Mayrhofer, Reichl, Lütge and Stein2017; da Rocha, Haidacher-Horn, & Müller-Caron, Reference da Rocha, Haidacher-Horn and Müller-Caron2017) and German L2 (Eder & Dirim, Reference Eder and Dirim2017). All these publications present teaching projects using concrete classroom ideas and aiming to integrate multilingualism and multiliteracies (see also Pölzleitner & Schumm-Fauster, Reference Pölzleitner and Schumm-Fauster2013; Peter et al., Reference Peter, Unterthiner, Zerlauth and M. Rückl2016). In a semester-long multiple case study, Schumm-Fauster (Reference Schumm-Fauster2017) gauges the impact of young adult literature in a tertiary-level intercultural competences course, finding highly individual learning trajectories.

In contrast to other aspects of communicative competence, which are undergoing a continuous process of standardisation (see Section 3.7), the assessment of intercultural competence remains an open question. How the outcomes of the Intercultural Learning written into the curricula alongside other communicative competences are to be ‘measured’ and assessed is a problem that is not specific to the Austrian context. Current work by the University of Innsbruck's language testing and assessment research group is exploring interesting options in this direction (Ratheiser & Spöttl, Reference Ratheiser and Spöttl2017). For the time being, however, the dominant opinion seems to be that producing precise descriptions of outcomes (like attitudes, and appreciation and enjoyment of different languages and cultures) with regard to learning goals would not only be extremely difficult but would also create a paradox in view of the fluidity of the transcultural space for which these competences are being formed. Boeckmann (Reference Boeckmann2012) finds that ‘In contrast to assessing knowledge, understanding and skills of learners, it is hard to see an immediate relation between teaching activities and outcomes with respect to attitudes. […] As teachers, it can be our intention and hope that the knowledge and skills elements we are teaching will produce the attitudes we wish for, but we cannot predict that that will happen’ (Boeckmann, Reference Boeckmann2012, p. 267). A similar position is also put forward by Schumm-Fauster (Reference Schumm-Fauster2017) and Alter (Reference Alter2015), the latter conceding that assessment in the sphere of cultural learning is limited to analytical tasks, whereas affective and pragmatic levels of inter/transcultural competence remain inaccessible to quantification.Footnote ²¹ Having reported on theoretical, conceptual, and developmental research in the area of cultural learning, it has to be conceded that we know remarkably little about the actual type and quantity of cultural and literary teaching and learning in Austrian language classrooms. While most future language teachers have to pass significant numbers of literature and cultural studies courses themselves, teacher education curricula rarely contain compulsory modules dedicated to the development of pedagogical content knowledge and teaching methodology training in the area of literature and culture. Consequently, teacher educators concerned about the overall ecology of teacher education programmes and their coherent delivery have made suggestions as to what could be done. Reichl (Reference Reichl, J. Hüttner, B. Mehlmauer-Larcher and S. Reichl2012) and Delanoy (Reference Delanoy, Delanoy, Eisenmann and Matz2015) report on two-pronged designs they have used in university literature courses, combining tertiary-level literary criticism with raising student teachers’ awareness for the requirements that arise in transferring similar activities to the school-level classroom. The most extensive work in this respect is Spann's (Reference Spann2015) longitudinal project that develops a pedagogical design for pre-service language teacher education courses, combining literary appreciation with case-based reflection for professional development, based on literary and media texts revolving around teachers’ professional identities and related challenges.

3.7 Testing and assessing

Since 2011, several school reforms concerning standardisation processes Bildungsstandards (education standards) for year 8 in all school types and standardised school leaving exams for year 12/13 have been passed by the Austrian parliament and were implemented at a national level in 2015. Regarding FL education, education standards are in place only for English, whereas the standardised school leaving exam applies also to French, Italian and Spanish as well as to the classical languages Greek and Latin. These reforms are widely seen as a paradigm shift in the Austrian school system. In language education, these exams finally consider the competency-based requirements of the CEFR-based FL curricula, already implemented in upper secondary schools in 2004, followed by lower secondary schools in 2006. The shift is mirrored by an increase in research activities, linked also to the establishment of research units such as the Language Testing Centre at the University of Klagenfurt or the Language Testing Research Group (LTRG) at Innsbruck University. Alongside comes the noticeable enhancement of assessment literacy of FL teachers in Austria as over 100 serving school teachers underwent sophisticated training programmes to become item writers, trained by international as well as national experts in the field. Proof of this increasing interest in language testing is also the organisation of the 9th EALTA (European Association of Language Testing and Assessment) conference in 2012, the 4th EALTA summer school in 2016, and the 1st EALTA winter school in 2018 all of which were hosted by the LTRG team at Innsbruck University.

Most publications on language testing and assessment refer to the education standards and the standardised school leaving exam. On the one hand, the publications focus on accompanying research concerning the different language skills and linguistic competences and their implementation in the standardisation processes. On the other hand, publications describe and explain how to design adequate communicative language tests in order to prepare learners for the competency-based task and exam types. Consequently, several manuals have been published to provide insights into the links between the CEFR descriptors and task requirements and to offer sample communicative tasks for different CEFR levels (see BIFIE, 2011; Gassner et al., Reference Gassner, Mewald, Brock, Lackenbauer and Siller2011; ÖSZ, 2011). Additionally, the Ministry of Education makes all former exams available online.Footnote ²² Thus, teachers can easily access and use tasks that have gone through statistically sophisticated testing procedures, and download test specifications, criterion-based assessment rubrics, etc. The same applies for tasks regarding the education standards.Footnote ²³ For further requirements of classroom-based exams, FL teachers can refer to specific guidelines (see BMBF, 2013). In the wake of these developments, assessment literacy and washback phenomena are gaining space in the Austrian research context (Hinger, Reference Hinger and Doff2016a; Frötscher, Reference Frötscher, Tsagari and Banerjee2016, Reference Frötscher and Sigott2018; Kremmel et al., Reference Kremmel, Eberharter, Holzknecht, Konrad, Xerri and Briffa2018).

Beyond primary and secondary school contexts, language testing at tertiary level is examined in a number of Ph.D. theses such as Heaney (Reference Heaney2011) on testing reading comprehension or Berger (Reference Berger2016a, Reference Bergerb) on scaling descriptors for assessing speaking. Berger, winner of the 2015 Christopher Brumfit thesis award offered by Language Teaching, carried out an inter-university project involving five universities in Austria. His focus was on validating rating scales for assessing advanced speaking skills, using a multi-method approach to triangulate expert judgments and performance data based on classical test theory and item response theory. Thus, Berger is able to develop more fine-grained, evidence-based descriptors to the existing CEFR level descriptions at the C1 and C2 levels. Furthermore, he argues that rating scale validation needs to be mapped to theoretical models of performance assessment. Consequently, he broadens and convincingly enriches existing ones on the basis of his empirical findings. Another Ph.D. thesis worth mentioning is Kremmel's (Reference Kremmel2016) work that examines vocabulary assessment from a general perspective. Kremmel, winner of the Robert Lado Memorial Award 2015 of the International Language Testing Association, challenges classical vocabulary level tests by proposing a two-fold differentiation. While he suggests changing the counting unit (word family versus lemma), he also proposes scrutinising the item frequency bands – 1.000 lexical items in all frequency bands as used until now vs having a smaller number of items in the higher frequency bands and a larger number of items in the lower frequency bands. Further empirical findings could prove him right.

The increase in studies on language testing and assessment becomes apparent as well in commissioned research made feasible by a continuously growing in-situ expertise. Thus, Innsbruck's LTRG team, on behalf of the British Council, carried out a study to examine cognitive processes of learners performing listening tasks through eye-tracking and retrospective stimulated recalls (Holzknecht et al., Reference Holzknecht, Eberharter, Kremmel, Zehentner, McCray, Konrad and Spöttl2017). The findings show the potential new technology offers to capture cognitive processes when listening to test items in EFL.

In addition, the expanding know-how in language testing is sought after by international colleagues when requiring testing contributions for manuals in language teaching and learning (see Stadler Reference Stadler and Bergmann2014). Consequently, the first handbook for language teachers on language testing and assessment in German has been published recently and refers to modern as well as to classical languages (Hinger & Stadler, Reference Hinger and Stadler2018).

Finally, Sigott's (Reference Sigott2018) edited volume covers the paradigm shift outlined above that led the country from purely content-based assessment to a communicative and competency-based language assessment approach (Spöttl et al., Reference Spöttl, Eberharter, Holzknecht, Kremmel and Zehentner2018).

3.8 Language acquisition and learning

Language acquisition and language learning is the most prominently studied field in the Austrian context. Studies cover a number of areas and consider psychological aspects, psycho- and neurolinguistic phenomena, phonetics and music, language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening) as well as vocabulary and grammar.

To start with, we briefly report on recent work from the field of neurolinguistics that refers to music and language learning and focuses, e.g. on individual differences in phonetic language aptitude by taking into account possible interfaces between music, speech and foreign accent imitation (Christiner & Reiterer, Reference Christiner and Reiterer2015; Vaquero, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Reiterer, Reference Vaquero, Rodriguez-Fornells and Reiterer2017). From a neurolinguistic research perspective, Wucherer and Reiterer (Reference Wucherer and Reiterer2016) investigated the gender factor in language learning. They also included personality and motivation differences when studying 32 female and 32 male late language learners. The findings show that male learners outperformed female learners in phonetic speech imitation (pronunciation) whereas females achieved better outcomes in grammar learning. Contrary to established teaching traditions, the authors suggest that teachers might take into account gender differences in the language classrooms more consistently.

In what follows, longitudinal research studying acquisitional aspects in formal school settings is described in more depth. Dannerer's (Reference Dannerer2012) postdoctoral thesis investigates the acquisition of oral and written story-telling in learners over a period of eight years (grades 5 to 12), thus extending from lower to upper secondary school. The longitudinal study refers to German as the language of schooling and analyses a sample of 48 learners, eight of them growing up with an L1 other than German. The data elicit oral and written stories by using strip cartoons to cater for comparability of task conditions. The analysis of the performances focuses on genre-specific as well as on linguistic criteria, such as linearity and synchrony, local relations, emotionality, suspense factors, sentence complexity, spelling or morphosyntax. After a qualitative analysis, the data are contrasted quantitatively by comparing the oral and the written tasks, comparing the different grades involved and by pointing out differences between girls and boys and between German L1 and German L2 participants. Results show that narrating simultaneous events remains a linguistic challenge even for advanced learners. However, only few differences can be seen between the oral and the written performances; to mention just two, the use of present tense when narrating past events occurs earlier in oral than in written stories whereas the conjunctive is used earlier in written than in oral performances. Furthermore, differences between girls and boys are not evidenced by the arithmetic averages but show up when measuring dispersion: female data are less homogeneous regarding length of text in the oral performances than the male data. Interestingly, the learners with an L1 other than German show a greater similarity between their oral and written stories. From the very beginning, they seem to make considerable effort to achieve written linguistic norms in their oral stories. Finally, Dannerer offers some suggestions for the classroom, probably the most important being the claim to focus more on oral language skills than on writing when teaching narratives.

In Czinglar (Reference Czinglar2014) the grammar acquisition of Russian L1 speakers learning German L2 is studied. Focusing on the age factor in unguided language learning, two subjects are investigated: one coming to Germany at the age of eight, the other at the age of fourteen. The 18-month longitudinal study considers the finiteness of verbs as well as lexical learning. Results show that the younger subject acquires the final verb position as required in German subordinated clauses after nine months whereas the older subject has not reached that point after 18 months. However, no differences are seen in the XV-position, neither in verb inversion nor in verb splitting in main clauses. This holds true for subject-verb agreement as well. Czinglar argues that the size of the verbal lexicon could be a differential factor as the younger learner shows a richer verbal lexicon than the older one. This may point to possible input differences. Furthermore, grammar structures, which are either learned earlier along the acquisitional path or learned more rapidly, might be less vulnerable to transfer phenomena than structures learned later or slower.

Hinger (Reference Hinger2016a) studied the morphosyntactic learner-language development in students of a second and a third year of learning Spanish in a vocational school setting. Over a period of one semester, she conducted classroom observations to determine the amount of grammar instruction compared to other areas of teaching as well as the morphosyntactic structures taught. Insights from the latter served as a basis for collecting spontaneous oral performances elicited at three points in time: at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the semester. A third data set came from an analysis of written classroom tests. The triangulation of the data sets shows that the structures taught and tested matched (pointing to content or curricular validity) whereas the oral performance data deviated considerably. Most importantly, the classroom observation data and the spontaneous speech production data confirm there is a gap (widely recognised) between grammar instruction and the acquisition of grammar features, referred to as the ‘inert knowledge problem’ (Larsen-Freeman, Reference Larsen-Freeman, Long and Doughty2009) and discussed in SLA in the (non)-interface debate. Additionally, the findings expand this debate further by showing that the written classroom test results mirror the instruction pattern but not the acquisition path. The latter confirmed the well-underpinned TAM (tense, aspect, mood) order in the acquisition of L1 and L2 verbal systems of languages such as English or French. The study's outcomes call for learner-language sensitive teaching and testing by taking into account the time required to mentally process morphosyntactic features. A further observation of the study is the large amount of explicit grammar instruction given in the classroom, suggesting more time should be dedicated to communicative language skills, especially speaking.

When it comes to researching lexical approaches in language learning it is encouraging to see that the word-level perspective is giving way to research on phraseology (Kremmel et al., Reference Kremmel, Frick, Parhammer and Lutz2016) and collocation (Konecny & Autelli, Reference Konecny, Autelli, Carpentieri, Hosp and Winkler2015). Furthermore, methodological perspectives in the language classroom are being addressed, such as approaches enhanced by gestures (Schmiderer, Reference Schmiderer2016) and the use of mobile devices (Hirzinger-Unterrainer, Reference Hirzinger-Unterrainer2016). Interestingly, apart from Kremmel et al. (Reference Kremmel, Frick, Parhammer and Lutz2016) who deal with EFL, the language taught in the examples given is Italian L2 (also Klammler & Schneider, Reference Klammler and Schneider2011). With regard to aspects of grammar, research often refers to German L2. Of special interest in this context is work by Rotter (Reference Rotter2015) on using a focus-on-form approach to enhance language learning in the primary school context for German L2 by combining content and form from a communication perspective. Rotter studies learner–teacher interaction to gain insights into what help teachers need when dealing with form and content in the German L2 classroom. Rotter concludes with the suggestion that PSTE programmes should include differentiated training and distinguish focus-on-form and accuracy perspectives from communicative language use in order to encourage trainees to dedicate more space to communicative aims. Processing Instruction might be seen as an emerging field in the Austrian context, Angelovska (Reference Angelovska, Lee and Benati2013) and Benati and Angelovska (Reference Benati and Angelovska2015) being the most prominent figures in this area.

Merging psychology and language learning is the research focus of Sarah Mercer, who has contributed extensively to the development of the field at an international level (e.g. Williams, Mercer, & Ryan, Reference Williams, Mercer and Ryan2015). Mercer puts special emphasis on the recent approach of using Positive Psychology in language education (MacIntyre, Gregersen, & Mercer, Reference MacIntyre, Gregersen and Mercer2016). Additionally, she discusses complex system perspectives by exploring how language learners’ self-concept can develop and affect the learning process (e.g. Mercer, Reference Mercer, Dörnyei, MacIntyre and Henry2015, Reference Mercer and King2016). As a consequence, the first conference of its kind Matters of the Mind: Psychology and Language Learning was organised in 2014.Footnote ²⁴

3.9 Digital media

Though digital media as tools in FL education is a domain which has emerged recently, already a considerable number of publications on the subject have been produced in Austria. These can be categorised according to two major sections: one relates to research papers on the potential value of digital media for language learning; the other refers to contributions that describe how to practically implement and employ digital media in the language classroom.

The most comprehensive research has been carried out at the University of Vienna where two international projects on eTandem language learning (eTLL) have been conducted over a period of three years. Under the guidance of Vetter, the L3-TaSK project and FAME (Fostering Autonomy and Motivation), examine different aspects of eTandems as a means of linguistic cooperation across long distances. Whereas FAME focuses particularly on learners’ autonomy and motivation, including FL anxiety phenomena (see El-Hariri & Jung, Reference El-Hariri and Jung2015; El-Hariri, Reference El-Hariri2017), L3-TaSK provides insights into areas such as the learners’ L3 use, their beliefs and attitudes regarding telecollaborative task design, the teacher's role, task design for online collaborative interaction or conversational analysis perspectives of eTandem dialogues (El-Hariri, Reference El-Hariri2016; Fink, Reference Fink2016; Kronsteiner & Vetter, Reference Kronsteiner and Vetter2016; Renner, Fink, & Volgger, Reference Renner, Fink and Volgger2016; Vetter, Reference Vetter, Funk, Gerlach and Spaniel-Weise2017). While learners of Chinese, Spanish and German have been involved in the L3-TaSK project, learners of French, Spanish and German in Austria, France and Colombia comprise the population of the FAME project. To highlight only a few insights, the studies’ results suggest that eTandems have great potential for reducing the fear of speaking a FL when talking to ‘real’ speakers of the FL. At the same time, the learners’ confidence while using the FL increases as they become more familiar with both the language and their eTandem partners. Nevertheless, learners state that even though they feel confident when speaking with their tandem partners, they still get nervous in class. The researchers find two reasons for this, one being classroom evaluation, the other being a more general fear of speaking in public and in front of others. Altogether, the potential of eTLL needs to be developed further by focusing more on learner-centred tasks, taking technological issues more seriously before starting an eTLL project, implementing awareness-raising to challenge learners’ negative beliefs when using technical devices and by integrating the approach into institutional language learning.

Exploiting devices learners use in their daily life outside school contexts is the aim of the so-called mobile learning approach. As this trend is fairly recent, mainly developing researchers are attending to it in academic theses. In her postdoctoral thesis Hirzinger-Unterrainer (Reference Hirzinger-Unterrainer2014, Reference Hirzinger-Unterrainer2016) pinpoints the use of audio- and video-podcasts for enhancing vocabulary acquisition in Italian as a FL – a rather under-researched language in pedagogy – in the upper secondary school context. She proposes applying communicative tasks represented and recorded by teams of learners to be submitted for individual learning settings on the learners’ mobile devices. The longitudinal study comprises classroom observation to spot vocabulary teaching in situ as well as vocabulary tests (pre-post-design) for different experimental groups to compare the lexical achievement of the learners with groups having been exposed to more traditional ways of vocabulary learning. The study's conclusions are mixed and underline the need to integrate technological tools into the instructional setting in order to deploy their potential.

As to contributions on how to apply digital media in the classroom, most of them refer to web-based topics such as WebQuests in FL education (Csida & Mewald, Reference Csida and Mewald2016), or the use of apps (Strasser, Reference Strasser and Barberi2014) and digital platforms as part of blended learning approaches in language learning (Strasser, Reference Strasser2011). Promising postdoctoral research by Höfler is underway examining the use of YouTube videos in the language classroom (see Höfler, Reference Höfler, Corti and Wolf2017).

3.10 Research on teaching materials

Despite their importance in formal instruction well up into the intermediate levels, textbooks and teaching materials have not received much research attention to date. A certain sea-change seems to be in the making internationally (see Garton & Graves, Reference Garton and Graves2014), and Austrian researchers are at the forefront of this rediscovered interest. Such orientation is particularly appropriate in the Austrian context, where state-funded textbooks produced by a range of national and international publishers are distributed to every pupil at the beginning of each school year, but where there is no empirical evidence to date as to their actual use or effects and effectiveness. We use the term ‘materials’ in this section in order to make clear that we are not only referring to conventional books but also other formats, e.g. online materials.

Up until recently, materials have been the object of research attention almost exclusively in the shape of Masters’ theses featuring product-oriented analyses of individual textbooks or series, with a wide range of foci from vocabulary presentation to gendered language use. While these analyses are without doubt of considerable value in the formation of future practitioners and their professional skills-base, systematic comparative analyses of different products – for instance of a specific grade level and school type – that could have a wider impact are largely missing. Process-oriented studies on how teachers use materials in their lessons and their decision-making around this are still missing altogether, as are outcome-oriented studies on the effects of (different) materials.

From 2016 onwards, however, one can discern an intensified professional dialogue on these themes, a dialogue which happens in close exchange between Austrian and German researchers working not only on English but also on Romance and Slavic languages. Rückl's edited volume (Reference Rückl2016), for example, while observing an overall theme of multilingualism and transculturality, features several contributions that deal with these topics in relation to teaching materials. All these studies are product-oriented in that they investigate the implementation of pedagogical concepts like language diversity, multilingualism or language awareness in a specific set of materials (e.g. Corti (Reference Corti2016) on materials for Spanish, Hofinger (Reference Hofinger2016) on grammar in Austrian textbooks for Italian). Rückl's own work seems to be the only one to date that investigates the effect of teaching materials. In her quasi-experimental field study, Rückl (Reference Rückl, Fäcke and Mehlmauer-Larcher2017) uses a mixed-method approach in order to gauge the impact of materials on the parallel learning of several Romance languages at upper secondary level. Her specific interest is the extent to which materials can serve as a catalyst for stimulating proficiency in the target language as well as language awareness and language learning competence as a basis for the development of plurilingual competence. The latter study is one of 11 featured in an edited volume (Fäcke & Mehlmauer-Larcher, Reference Fäcke and Mehlmauer-Larcher2017) dedicated entirely to materials research.