Academia
Here we present the projects of the Research Cluster Language Education and Multilingualism, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2013 to 2020 via the Framework Programme for Empirical Educational Research (announced in 2013). The Cluster comprised a total of 21 research projects located at different universities around Germany and a coordination office (known as KoMBi) based at the University of Hamburg.
The projects comprehensively consider the multilingual abilities of children and adolescents and investigate their development in educational institutions and informal contexts. The overall aim within the cluster was to determine the extent to which different types of language support, language biographies, learning settings and strategies have either favourable or inhibiting effects on multilingual development. This was investigated from a variety of perspectives.
The projects were funded in two phases. In the first phase (2013-2017), they researched fundamental questions concerning the role of multilingualism in the education system as well as the associated risks and opportunities. In the second funding phase (2017 - 2020), the projects conducted deeper analyses of their findings, also by testing them in and disseminating them to educational practice.
Please click on Research Projects for more detailed descriptions of the cluster’s investigations and analyses. Under Publications you can find a thematically ordered list of publications in English (needless to say a much longer list of publications in German also exists – for this, please go to the German version of our site). Some datasets from the projects are available for secondary use – for information on this, please go to Data for Secondary Use. The doctoral dissertations of emerging researchers, who were key to the work of the projects, are listed under Emerging Researchers. You can also find out more about KoMBi by going to Coordination Office.
We hope you enjoy reading about our projects and activities!
Best regards,
The Coordination Office for Multilingualism and Language Education (KoMBi)