University of Bremen: Two awards from the Joachim Hertz Foundation
Success for two University of Bremen projects in the Joachim Herz Foundation competition: The awards for outstanding commitment to language development in the categories of young people and young adults aged 10 to 16 and 17 to 25 go to the Department of Education.
The Joachim Herz Foundation awards four exemplary language support projects for young people and young adults nationwide with the Megafon Prize. They should promote personality development and enable social participation. The prize was awarded for the second time on Friday, September 23rd in Hamburg. The total prize money of 70,000 euros went to two projects from Hamburg and Bremen.
The aim of the award is to promote diversity and creativity in language education. Because around 20 percent of all school leavers in Germany show considerable weaknesses in dealing with the German language. Reading, understanding and writing even simple texts cause them great problems – a clear disadvantage for individual educational and professional paths as well as social participation.
Support for young people who have not attended school in their home countries
The main prize, endowed with 25,000 euros, in the category “Language support projects for young people and young adults aged 10 to 16” was awarded to the “Education in the migration society/intercultural education” work area with the cooperating work area “German as a second language/foreign language” with the LITALPHA project ( “Literacy development in literacy classes for young people with migration experiences through action-oriented learning in all subjects using the example of ‘schoolyard design'”).
This offer is aimed at young people who have recently been living in Germany and have not attended school in their countries of origin, such as Afghanistan. You will be supported in being able to understand, speak, read and write German in a very short time so that you can follow the specialist lessons in regular classes as soon as possible. In a project week in October 2022, around 50 schoolchildren will receive action-oriented language lessons with a specific point of reference – to design their own schoolyard.
Because both student teachers and the Competence Center for Interculturality in Schools (Kom.In) of the State Institute for Schools in Bremen are involved in the project, corresponding further training offers can also be developed for teacher training.
“We are very happy about the award,” says Professor Yasemin Karakasoglu. “The award encourages us to integrate the topic of basic education for young people into teacher training and to support teachers through the university in their demanding work.” The award-winning LIALPHA project is in the teaching workshop “Subject, Language, Migration” at the University of Bremen created in cooperation with the “Alphabetisation Center of the State of Bremen” in the high school at Leibnizplatz.
Reading and writing support for professional preparation
The project “Digital Career-Related Reading and Writing Promotion” (BeLeSen for short) received the sponsorship prize of 10,000 euros. With the help of the online platform “lea.online”, it enables teachers in transition and vocational preparation measures to provide low-threshold support to young adults in improving their reading and writing skills.
The award-winning project belongs to the “Media Education and Didactic Design of Multimedia Learning Environments” work area headed by Professor Karsten D. Wolf, who jointly awarded the prize to junior professor Ilka Koppel from the Weingarten University of Applied Sciences in the category “Language Promotion Projects for Adolescents and Young Adults aged 17-25”. received.
In the BeLeSen project, the digital support materials for literacy practice created in the lea.online project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research are made available for professional preparation and teachers are supported in using them in a targeted and supportive manner for language promotion. Professor Karsten D. Wolf is happy about the award: “We give teachers age-appropriate tools and materials to give students a better start in their professional lives: free of charge as Open Educational Resources.”
About the Joachim Herz Foundation
The non-profit Joachim Herz Foundation promotes education, science and research. She works mainly operationally and is primarily active in the fields of natural sciences, economics and personal development. Small, innovative third-party projects are also supported in these three areas. In addition, the foundation supports research projects in the fields of medicine, law and engineering as well as projects in German-American exchange. The Joachim Herz Foundation was set up in 2008 and is one of the largest German foundations.