The school system of the officially multilingual Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen – South Tyrol (Italy), which generally follows national regulations, nevertheless has some special features, such as separately organised school boards, one German, one Italian and one Ladin. Provision is also made for the right to first-language instruction in the three languages mentioned, as well as the obligation to teach German or Italian respectively as a second language (The New Autonomy Statute 2019/1972). English is taught as a foreign language, as it is throughout the national territory. Schools in Italy have a high degree of autonomy. Only framework guidelines describing competency goals for all school levels are set by the state. Each school, on the other hand, is responsible for designing concrete curricula based on these guidelines.
The paper deals with the role of lexicographic resources in the South Tyrolean educational context against the backdrop of legal provisions (The New Autonomy Statute 2019/1972) and the "commitment" to multilingualism on the part of educational institutions (Framework Guidelines DE, Framework Guidelines IT), taking into account both normative requirements and their application in practice[1]. The focus is on two questions that have been little researched so far, not only in the specific context but also internationally (cf. Abel in print, Nied Curcio in print): To what extent are lexicographic resources represented in the school framework guidelines? How are they actually used in schools?
In this context, the term "lexicografic resource" is defined very broadly, including different kinds of online lexical resources (such as translation programmes and user generated content), and, referring also to the "dictionaries of the future [as] lexical or linguistic information systems" (Villa-Vigoni-Theses 2018).
For the case study presented here, the South Tyrolean framework guidelines provided by the German and the Italian school boards at all levels of education for German and Italian as first (L1) and second (L2) languages, as well as for English as a foreign language (L3) were examined by means of a document analysis (framework guidelines DE, framework guidelines IT, cf. Abel in press). In a second step, a questionnaire survey with language teachers of all school levels (German and Italian as L1/L2, English as L3; number of survey respondents: 644) determined the actual use of lexicographic resources, taking into account several dimensions, including which digital and printed resources are (not) used and for which reasons certain resources are (not) chosen (cf. Müller-Spitzer et al. 2018).
In the paper, the results of the study will be synoptically presented and critically discussed. Afterwards, the participants of the workshop are invited to discuss the conclusions of the insights gained to further develop dictionary didactics, teacher training and educational policies.
Bibliography
[Rahmenrichtilinien DE] Rahmenrichtlinien der Schulen mit deutscher Unterrichtssprache: https://www.provinz.bz.it/bildung-sprache/didaktik-beratung/rahmenrichtlinien.asp
[Rahmenrichtlinien IT] Rahmenrichtlinien der Schulen mit italienischer Unterrichtssprache: https://www.provinz.bz.it/formazione-lingue/scuola-italiana/sistema-scolastico/indicazioni-provinciali.asp
Abel, Andrea (in print): Wörterbücher der Zukunft in Bildungskontexten der Gegenwart: eine Fallstudie aus dem Südtiroler Schulwesen. In: EURALEX Proceedings 2022.
Das neue Autonomiestatut (2019/1972): Geschichte und Kompetenzen; das Sonderstatut für die Region Trentino-Südtirol; das Staatsgesetz Nr. 118 vom 11. März 1972. (https://www.landtag-bz.org/de/datenbanken-sammlungen/autonomiestatut.asp)
Müller-Spitzer, Carolin/Ribeiro Silveira, María/Wolfer, Sascha/Kosem, Iztok/Lew, Robert (2018): Eine europaweite Umfrage zu Wörterbuchbenutzung und -kultur. Ergebnisse der deutschen Teilnehmenden. In: Sprachreport 2/2018. 26–35.
Nied Curcio, Martina (in print): Dictionaries, Foreign Language Learners and Teachers. New Challenges in the Digital Era. In: EURALEX Proceedings 2022.
Villa-Vigoni-Theses 2018 [English version], ed. by a committee of specialists from the fields of dic-tionary research, practical lexicography, German as a foreign language, Italian studies, translation science and empirical linguistics (DOI: https://hdl.handle.net/10863/9156)
[1] The Ladin school system is not included in the study.
