Learning to Teach Many Languages: A Multilingual Teacher Education Programme Offered by the Wiener Volkshochschulen

Abstract

In this chapter I describe a multilingual teacher education course offered by the largest institution for adult education in Vienna. First, I discuss the Austrian educational and political context in which the course has evolved, a context defined by monolingualism, the pressure to learn German — the national first language, and a climate of increasingly restrictive migration politics. A brief survey of the political and historical background to the current debate about migration, and integration and language is presented. The original motivation for offering the course was the identification of a general lack of qualifications for language teachers in adult education. Finally, I provide the rationale for offering a multilingual teacher training course, illustrated by examples of specific training activities that address the multilingual strand, political issues related to language, and teaching methodology. The course presented here is unique in teacher training in Europe for adult education because it includes teachers from very different backgrounds teaching a host of different languages, such as Azeri, Farsi and Albanian.