Ladenburg Roundtable

The number of immigrants in Germany has strongly increased since 2015; the same is true of the group of children and adolescents: According to latest calculations based on the microcensus for 2023, 13.3% of all persons aged 5 to 20 years living in Germany immigrated themselves, and no less than 8.9% came to the country at the age of 5 or older. This presents society, and especially the education system, with particular challenges. To meet these challenges, a comprehensive scientific accompaniment of the learning processes and academic experiences of the students is important, as this would enable indications for adequate (also linguistic) schooling to be devised. But here in particular, major deficiencies are discernible, because substantiated empirical findings relating to the linguistic – and later also academic – development of these students are largely lacking. This then makes it difficult to model the expected linguistic development and to devise appropriate specific support measures for this target group.

At the Ladenburg Roundtable, 14 experienced scientists from various disciplines and with different research focuses exchanged views as to how the linguistic development of newly immigrated school pupils in Germany can be empirically analyzed, and what consequences further research would have for science and educational practice. The aim of this gathering was to formulate a common strategy for research into the linguistic development of this target group, despite the often highly divergent approaches to research represented.

In the course of this Roundtable, access to research, research findings, and desiderata in the German-speaking countries were discussed from the perspective of the research foci German as a foreign or second language, multilingualism research, sociology and psycholinguistics; joint perspectives were then derived. The participants agreed that well-coordinated collaboration in research across different locations and disciplines is necessary in order to address existing desiderata and identify perspectives for improving the educational situation of newly immigrated students. The research group decided to work together on the establishment and implementation of a cooperative, interdisciplinary, multi-local, and longitudinal project to research individual courses of linguistic development among newly immigrated school pupils, while taking into consideration their positions within social, societal, and in particular didactic structures. The long-term aim is to model the expected linguistic development and develop corresponding targeted support measures for this target group.

On the basis of this discussion, which was held for the first time in this form in Ladenburg, a group of interested participants came together to discuss the potential of a close-knit, long-term research cooperation. The Ladenburg Roundtable was perceived by all participants as an excellent opportunity for the initial development of common interests and ideas, in order to enable a focus on the important target group of newly immigrated students within the German school system and thus to provide impetus for further cooperation in research and practice.