Language and communication are key to education, participation and personal development, regardless of age, developmental conditions and institution. We research and teach in order to support the acquisition and expansion of individual language skills. At the centre of our work is the removal of educational barriers faced by people with language and communication impairments. The fields of action of language pedagogy and professionalisation are education and upbringing, teaching, prevention, diagnostics, counselling, cooperation and supervision.
Our interdisciplinary TeamPSK@EUF at Europa-Universität Flensburg consists of educational scientists, (psycho)linguists, multilingualism researchers, inclusion researchers, media educators, childhood researchers and early childhood educators, among others. Accordingly, our individual research focuses and areas of interest are equally diverse. We stand for international, transdisciplinary research that uses qualitative and quantitative research methods to approach the reduction of educational barriers in the context of linguistic heterogeneity and diverse learning needs. With our projects, we actively contribute to the conceptualisation and development of language, speech and communication diagnostic procedures for monolingual and multilingual, monomodal and multimodal individuals. In our work, we develop and formulate criteria for a language-pedagogically grounded, evidence-based approach to support and teaching concepts in a multilingual society. Our contribution to language pedagogical theorising leads, among other things, to the didactic foundation of inclusive digital language pedagogy in the transformation society.
Our teaching programme reflects our collaborative approach: as a team, we design, plan and discuss seminars and exercises together and with colleagues from other subjects and faculties in order to offer a coherent, interconnected and interlinked curriculum in the Department of Speech and Language Education (PSK). The courses are geared towards future language teaching activities across the lifespan. Our educational mission is not limited to teaching in schools but recognises the changing professional realities of teachers for inclusion as a challenge and an opportunity. PSK students can test and deepen their competences with regard to their future professional work in various cooperative forms of learning and with the help of digital media. A particular strength of our programme is its early and intensive practical orientation: we not only offer the obligatory academically supervised internships. We also support PSK students in their professional development by organising a two-semester individual educational support programme for people with speech and communication impairments with supervision. This enables students to test and develop their critical-reflective skills in practice at an early stage.