My research centres on foreign language education, with a particular focus on teachers of English, French, and German as a foreign language, across schools and universities. I investigate how cognitive factors (language aptitude, cognitive styles), biographical trajectories (language-learning biography, teaching experience), professional competence (profession-related language competences and general language proficiency), language teacher identity, subject knowledge (including AI literacy), and instructional tendencies (implicit–explicit orientations) vary across teachers, develop over time, and interact to shape professionalisation process and classroom practice.
Methodologically, I work in mixed-methods and multi-paradigm traditions spanning foreign language teaching and learning, instructed second language acquisition (ISLA), identity research, professionalisation research, (language) teacher education, and language testing and assessment. My quantitative work includes competence and performance testing (test development, rubric validation, and rater-effects analyses) and survey design (questionnaire development and psychometrics); my qualitative work includes interviews, narrative inquiry, qualitative content analysis, and thematic analysis. Across experimental, intervention and exploratory designs, I pursue research excellence anchored in social justice that aims to support sustainable and equitable foreign language education.
Current Research Projects
Habilitation project «Primary School FLE-Teachers’ Language Aptitude, Language Biography and Language Proficiency (FLE-LABP)», 2022-2027
This exploratory mixed-methods project examines whether language aptitude (LA), which has traditionally been studied as a learner individual difference, can also be conceptualised as a meaningful individual characteristic of foreign language teachers and thus help explain variation in teachers’ learning opportunities and instructional decisions. Focusing on 48 pre-service primary-school L2 French teachers at t1 and a subset of 10 participants at t2, the study investigates the participants' explicit and implicit LA scores and their L2 proficiency, how they correlate and develop over the course of one year (between their final year of teacher training and first year of teaching); and whether language history mediates links between LA and L2 proficiency. It also examines how LA connects to rational–analytical versus experiential–intuitive cognitive styles and to preferences for more explicit or implicit instruction. Participants completed an online test battery including LLAMA (explicit aptitude), a probabilistic SRT task (implicit learning), elicited imitation and a C-test (L2 proficiency), LEAP-Q (language history), and the Rational-Experiential Inventory (cognitive styles). To capture participants' implicit or explicit instructional preferences, and to triangulate and contextualise the quantitative findings, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the subset of 10 participants at t2.
Language Teacher Identity project «On Pre-Service L2 German Teachers’ Emerging Language Teacher Identities: A Narrative Inquiry», 2024-2027
This narrative inquiry project investigates the emerging language teacher identities (LTI) of five pre-service German as a Foreign Language teachers in their final stages of teacher education by tracing the interplay between their language biographies, language learning experiences, and anticipated future teaching selves. The study combines biographical profiling through the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q) with an iterative three-stage process of Narrative Knowledging, in which participants co-constructed written reflective narratives in dialogue with the researcher. Using seven open narrative prompts targeting pivotal language learning and teaching moments, the project captures how participants make sense of past experiences and translate them into professional self-understandings. Thematic content analysis identifies shared and individual patterns of identity negotiation, highlighting how biographical trajectories and imagined teaching contexts shape emerging and anticipated identities during professionalisation.
Past Research Projects
PhD dissertation «Fostering and Assessing Pre-Service English Teachers’ Oral Teacher Language Competence through an Assessment Rubric and Peer Feedback: An LSP Approach», 2018-2022
In my doctoral research, I examined whether profession-related language competence profiles (PRLCP) and the associated analytical assessment rubric (PRLC-R) provide a robust basis for developing and evaluating pre-service English teachers’ target-language competences for classroom-relevant oral feedback. The dissertation comprised two complementary studies: (1) a quasi-experimental pre–post intervention (experimental–control) in which pre-service teachers used the PRLC-R alongside systematic feedback training, assessed via a vignette-based, competence-oriented online performance test with four expert raters; and (2) semi-structured interviews with lower secondary students as “field experts” to capture learner perspectives on the linguistic quality and comprehensibility of teachers’ feedback. The rater analyses revealed substantial rater and interaction effects (including differential rater functioning), indicating that PRLC-R criteria were not sufficiently distinct or reliably applicable. After adjusting for rater bias via Multifaceted Rasch Analysis, no treatment effects were found. Student interview data suggested that “addressee-specificity” may represent an independent construct. Overall, the study highlights both the promise and key refinement needs of PRLCP/PRLC-R for needs- and action-oriented teacher language competence assessment.
Research in collaboration with the Center for Teachers' Language Competences, 2018-2022
Between 2018 and 2020, I was involved with various projects at the Centre for Teachers' Language Competences, including research, development, consulting and in-service education in the area of teachers’ language competences (foreign languages and the language of schooling). The centre's activities built on prior projects financed by the Federal Office of Culture, in which the profession-related language competence profiles for foreign language teachers were developed (Berufsspezifische Sprachkompetenzprofile für Lehrpersonen für Fremdsprachen | Pädagogische Hochschule St.Gallen). Two focal areas included the formative and summative assessment of these language competences, for which an online platform was created in 2015-2017 (Assessment of profession-related language competences for foreign language teachers. (APLC TFL)), and the piloting and further development of the language competence profiles for other educational contexts.
Specifically, I was involved as a research assistant in the following projects:
«Profession-Related Language Competences of Language Teachers (PRLC)» 2018-2022
«Testing Profession-Related Language Competences (Prüfen berufsspezifischer Sprachkompetenzen)» 2018-2022
«Profession-Related Language Competence Examination» 2021-2024
PHSG-project «Language Skills Assessment of PHSG Pre-Service Teachers», 2018-2021
Due to the changes in the curriculum for the education of foreign language teachers of the lower secondary school level (Sek I) study programme, this project involved a monitoring of foreign language competences before and after the introduction of the education variant plurilingual teacher education (AVM) Sek I. As part of the reform of the Sek I study programme, a new education profile plurilingual teacher education (AVM) was introduced in the 2016/17 academic year, which, in the context of the strategic field of action C 15, combines previous education in separate language subjects into cross-language education in line with a plurilingual approach to language teaching. The aim of this project was to assess the potential impact of this education variant AVM on students’ linguistic competences in the individual target languages. For this purpose, a competence-oriented performance test was developed to assess and compare the profession-related, productive language competences in English and French of pre-service teachers in the academic years 14/19 and 15/20 (original education variant) and 16/21 and 17/22 (AVM). In addition to the language skills, the language biographies of the pre-service teachers and their attitudes towards plurilingualism were evaluated.
Project website: Language skills assessment of PHSG pre-service teachers | St.Gallen University of Teacher Education