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The head of a football playing robot. © Nikolas Golsch​​/​​TU Dort­mund
BMBF Funding Raised

Rethinking and Researching Multilingualism

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Four children sitting next to each other, each reading a book © vectorfusionart​/​Adobe Stock
How can a new approach to multilingualism be achieved in the educational context, considering important factors such as socioeconomic status, individual beliefs, and the quantity and quality of linguistic input? This is what Prof. Barbara Mertins from the Department of Cultural Studies of TU Dortmund University is investigating in her new project “BeeMEHR – Why Multilingualism is Simply More,” which started in August. The project participants aim to bridge the gap between scientific findings and school and societal prejudices against multilingualism. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with around 800,000 euros.

BeeMEHR aims to raise awareness among teachers, educators, and parents about a scientific understanding of multilingualism, thereby eliminating the stigmatization of multilingual individuals, inside and outside of school. “Especially in the educational context, factors such as the so-called ‘migration background’ are equated with multilingualism and mistakenly identified as the direct cause of poor reading performance,” says Prof. Barbara Mertins. “This correlation is untenable from a psycholinguistic perspective, as crucial factors such as family socioeconomic status or the quantity and quality of linguistic input are overlooked.” The first goal is to convey these new insights about multilingualism to educational professionals and parents through seminars, lectures, and coaching offers in the form of a certificate, so that existing beliefs, prejudices, and myths about multilingualism can be transformed into new practices.

Developing a Digital Learning Platform

As a second goal, the team led by Prof. Mertins will continue to systematically investigate the relationship between cognitive control, metalinguistic awareness, and reading competence, which they have been researching for years. This highly data-driven and experimental basic research aims to promote the acquisition of reading and writing skills, so that the cognitive and linguistic abilities of all children with weak language skills – regardless of social, linguistic, and cultural background – can be specifically strengthened. For this purpose, the team is developing a digital learning platform and an app that promote metalinguistic awareness and cognitive attention control.

In the BeeMEHR project, Prof. Barbara Mertins and her team are collaborating with various non-university partners in Herne: the Catholic Family Center St. Anna, the daycare center in the St. Elisabeth Group, the Municipal Catholic Primary School on Bergstraße, the Islamic Community in Herne-Röhlinghausen e. V., and Ruhrwerk e. V. This collaboration provides them with access to people from different social, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds and the opportunity to accompany children’s developmental steps.

The project receives around 800,000 euros from the BMBF’s “Integration through Education” program, which consists of funds from the federal government and the European Social Fund Plus. The project duration is three years.

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