This doctoral research project, embedded in the design-based research tradition as conceptualised by Plomp et al., investigates how a teacher education intervention can be designed to enhance pre-service primary EFL teachers’ self-efficacy for catering to learner heterogeneity through digitally-mediated language learning tasks (the learning object). It responds to gaps in policy guidance, teacher education practice, and existing research by examining how a seminar grounded in self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1997) and approaches to situated reflective practice (Lave & Wenger, 1990) can support pre-service teachers in developing the confidence to plan, implement, and reflect on heterogeneity-responsive EFL teaching.

The project is implemented in three iterations and in collaboration with multiple stakeholders. While the researcher also takes on the role of lecturer, partnerships with primary schools provide authentic classroom settings for one key component of the intervention, namely the teaching cycles. Pre-service teachers serve both as target learning group and as practitioners of digitally-mediated language learning tasks, contributing to the refinement of the intervention design through their participation and feedback. University lecturers and researchers support this process, by enabling a reciprocal exchange in which theoretical insights and practical knowledge continuously inform one another.

The project produces both practical and theoretical contributions. It generates design principles that specify how an intervention can foster pre-service teachers‘ self-efficacy for catering to heterogeneity through digitally-mediated language learning tasks, alongside concrete seminar materials, tools, and products that support planning and enacting the learning object in diverse primary EFL classrooms. At the same time, it advances design-based research in foreign language teacher education by demonstrating how iterative, practice-embedded development can enhance professional learning and better prepare future EFL teachers for the realities of heterogeneous learning environments.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

New publications:

Kratzer, A. & Cutrim Schmid, E. (2025). Empowering language student
teachers through university-school collaboration: enhancing competencies and self-efficacy through situated reflective practice for integrating classroom technology and addressing heterogeneity. In Stefanie Schnebel, Taha Ertugrul Kuzu, Anja Kürzinger, Stefan Immerfall, Gerda Bernhard & Robert Grassinger (Eds), Heterogenität gestalten. Perspektiven auf die Grundschulentwicklung. Münster:
Waxmann, 243-262.

Cutrim Schmid, E. & Kratzer, A. (2025). Integrating technology-mediated language learning tasks into the young learner English as a foreign language classroom: Unravelling a pre-service teacher’s competence development. Language Teaching for Young Learners, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1075/ltyl.24006.cut.