School of Humanities

Post-doctoral research fellow in language didactics

Public competition to fill the position of Research Fellow in Language Didactics (Postdoctoral) for the period Sept 1, 2023 – August 31, 2024 (with the possibility of extension for 9 months).

The deadline for applying for the position is April 03, 2023 (inclusive).

The candidate will be expected to undertake research in one of the following areas:

• language and content learning, pluriliteracy;
• (language) education in multilingual classroom.

At the moment, Estonia is in an interesting phase of transition from Russian and Estonian language to Estonian-language education. Up until now, Estonian as a second language is mostly learned in Estonian language classrooms, only immersion programs have been implementing Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Forthcoming years can be expected to be challenging for content teachers in Estonian schools who currently lack knowledge and skills to support language learning in their content lessons. Therefore the language and content learning has become particularly important. However, we are lacking design-based programmes to adapt this approach in our school system on a larger scale. Furthermore, the studies on implementing CLIL are almost non-existing in the context of teaching Estonian. The outcome of the postdoctoral fellow's research should be applicable to both teacher education and in-service training.

The second challenge Estonian schools are facing is the trend towards a multilingual and multicultural classroom. The setting of foreign language education in Estonia is currently based on the assumption of a linguistically homogeneous classroom. Due to the increase of migration over the last years, however, a growing number of foreign language teachers in Estonian schools, especially in urban areas, work in multilingual settings, i.e. they have students in their classrooms who are capable of functioning in different languages. The classrooms are becoming increasingly heterogeneous and the students’ needs have to be addressed accordingly. Since the multilingual classroom in Estonia with its specific settings has not yet received thorough scholarly attention, there is a range of questions concerning language acquisition and learning to be addressed.

The Postdoctoral Fellow is expected to contribute to the research in one of the two areas described above, to conduct research in Estonia and collaborate with scholars at Tallinn University. The Fellow is expected to conduct one's own research on a chosen topic independently, write and publish academic papers, and demonstrate own initiative in above-mentioned activities, providing solutions to the above-mentioned problems for teacher training programs and in-service training.