Teachers of Chinese as a foreign language in Germany are native speakers of Chinese as a rule, with a university diploma not in education. Focusing on the huge intercultural differences between the people of the two countries (cf. Wang Yihong 2006) one may ask how these teachers adapt to their new educational situation in Germany and what kind of transformation of self concepts and world views they undergo. In particular one should ask whether the biographical experience of teaching in China and in Germany has an impact on the individual didactics of these teachers (cf. Meyer 2011). In addition to these two questions, one may ask what to do in order to improve the teachers’ continuing professional development.

Research objective:

It is my intention to find out, in my PhD project, what the individual didactics of Chinese teachers of Chinese as a foreign language are and what may improve their educational practice.

Conceptual Framework:

Chinese language teachers in Germany are confronted with a very different instructional situation in comparison to what they have experienced in China. For example, in China the number of students in one class is much higher than in Germany; teachers and students are used to a “peaceful” instructional environment with strict discipline, exam-oriented education, and so on. The very different German instructional circumstances produce processes of self transformation in which these teachers seek to adapt to the German environment. In my research project I have examined and will go on examining the transformational development of Chinese teachers at a Hamburg private school.

The research frame for my empirical work is determined by research work of the following authors. (1) Ewald Terhart describes different approaches to teacher professionalization. He assumes that this research can be divided into three groups focusing on a theoretical structure, a competency structure and a professional biography structure (Terhart, 2011, p.p. 205-210). My study focuses on the professional biography of the Chinese teachers, on the pedagogic culture which has determined their ways of teaching and their classroom management, and on their individual didactics based on their own previous educational experience. (2) I structure the professional competence and identity development of the Chinese teachers following the American sociologist and educationist Robert J. Havighurst (1972) who has proposed to use the concept of developmental tasks in order to describe the development of children and young people between collective societal demands and individual needs. (3) And I depend on work of the German educational researcher Uwe Hericks (2006) who has adapted and interpreted the concept from the teachers’ perspective. Professional developmental tasks of teachers can be described using the following four basic categories: (1) Competence development, in particular in the subjects the teachers teach or want to teach; (2) transfer or mediation of the acquired knowledge in the instructional process, i.e. the teachers’ didactic competence; (3) willingness and capacity to acknowledge the “otherness” of the students, i.e. their right to be different; and (4) development of interaction competence with respect to students, colleagues, principals etc. in the school as an institution.

EWALD TERHART (2011): Lehrerberuf und Professionalität: Wandel der Begrifflichkeit - Neue Steuerung als Herausforderung: Pädagogische Professionalität. Beiheft 54 der Zeitschrift für Pädagogik.Weinheim: Beltz, 202-224. MEINERT A. MEYER (2007): Didactics, Sense Making, and Educational Experience. In: European Educational Research Journal 6 (2), 161-173. MEINERT A. MEYER (2011): Professional Teacher Development and Educational Experience In: Beyond Fragment: Didactics, Learning and Teaching in Europe, 404-442. ARND-MICHAEL NOHL (2006): Interview und Dokumentarische Methode. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST (1948/1972): Developmental Tasks and Education. 3rd edition. New York: Longman Inc. Ralf Bohnsack (2010): Qualitative Analysis and Documentary Method in International Educational Research. Leverkusen: Barbara Budrich Publishers. 99-124. UWE HERICKS (2006): Professionalisierung als Entwicklungsaufgabe. Rekonstruktionen zur Berufseingangsphase von Lehrerinnen und Lehrern. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. WANG YIHONG (2006): Theory and Practice of Intercultural Communication: A DOXA Model of Capital Transformation. Hamburg :PhD thesis, Hamburg University. ZHANG XIAOJUN (2008): Initial Probe into Chinese Teacher Specialization in Elementary School in China. Hebei: The press of Hebei Normal University.