Center for empirical Research on Language and Education (ERLE)

Organisational unit: Institute

Organisation profile

The newly founded research centre “Empirical Research on Language and Education (ERLE)”, offers an innovative research environment for interdisciplinary exchange on research in the field of language and education. ERLE focusses on basic research in the area of language and education in school- and teaching-related contexts with a particular emphasis on the question how students’ learning is affected by language factors. Within this framework, professors, post-docs, and doctoral candidates at the Leuphana University Lueneburg pursue the development and conceptualization of a structured empirical research programme in this research area.

Main research areas

The research projects in ERLE (Empirical Research on Language and Education) focus on empirical research in the field of “language and education” and in particular on questions concerning the interdependence of language and subject-related learning processes and outcomes.

Numerous studies have shown the diversity of language competencies among learners and their overall connection with subject-related learning processes. Thereby, they emphasize the importance of language competencies as a key to the educational success of children and adolescents. However, (subject-)specific findings on the cause-effect relationships are still unanswered. Projects in ERLE address this area of research and investigate how teaching processes should be designed to promote subject as well as language learning, and how (prospective) teachers should be professionalized regarding this matter.