Introduction

When we started our studies on ethnic minority teachers in 2010,Footnote 1 research was still emerging. As one German researcher puts it: “Research on minority teachers in Germany is just as hard to find as the minority teachers themselves” (Strasser, 2013).Footnote 2 In our eyes, this shortfall in research was quite severe, especially seeing as the discourse in educational policy regarding development of a strategy to recruit more minority teachers has long since moved forward.

Our examination of the topic began with a course of studies at the University of Cologne which we designed especially for minority student teachers. In this empowerment seminar, we focused on a vocational biographical reflection on educational policy and on the addressing of minority teachers as particular teachers (Lengyel & Rosen, 2012a; a similar course was later held at the University of Bremen – see Doğmuş, 2017). We presented and discussed the results of our accompanying academic research during a national lecture series, at international conferences and international symposiums (Lengyel & Rosen, 2011, 2012b, 2013, 2014). Some of the presented papers were published in a special issue of the journal “Tertium Comparationis” (see Lengyel & Rosen, 2015b) to present the state of the art in research on minority teachers and found a rich tradition of studies in the US and the UK stretching back to the start of the 1980s (Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a).

In this chapter, we reconnect to our summary back then. Our goal is to identify different thematic strands in this field that clearly go beyond its initial stage. Such a systematisation seems necessary to us in order to reflect on the development of the state of research, the shifts in the discourse and also future research perspectives. We start with some “pioneer studies” in section “Precursor and pioneer studies on minority (pre-service) teachers in German-speaking countries (up to 2013)” and then move on to the latest studies on minority teachers in section “Recent studies on minority (pre-service) teachers in German-speaking countries”, addressing relevant topical distinctions that show how well the field is now established in respect to migration-related, intercultural educational research. In our conclusion in section “Outlook”, we look at new developments and trends concerning the position of and possibilities for newly immigrated and refugee teachers in the education system.

Precursor and Pioneer Studies on Minority (Pre-service) Teachers in German-Speaking Countries (Up to 2013)

The study Diversity in the staffroom (Georgi et al., 2011), offered the first nationwide overview of minority teachers’ self-image, self-efficacy experiences and self-efficacy expectations. Together with the anthology Teachers with a migration background (Bräu et al., 2013), these two publications can be described as pioneering works of German-language research (Rosen, 2015), as they explicitly refer to the then current educational policy programme for recruiting minority teachers and reflect the educational policy context as well as the public debate on integration. In this section, we focus on the anthology, because it includes a large number of exploratory research papers and provides an insight into the emerging field of research on minority teachers, taking into account different pedagogical areas respectively professional career phases. In this respect, the dissertation projects by Akbaba (2013), Kul (2013) and Wojciechowicz (2013), which reconstruct discrimination experiences of (prospective) minority teachers based on qualitative studies, and the contribution by Schlickum (2013), which shows that minority pre-service teachers also reproduce the monolingual habitus found in German schools (Gogolin, 2008), are relevant. Central to this anthology is also a contribution to the historical (dis)continuities in the debate on diversity in staffrooms: Krüger-Potratz (2013, p. 30) discusses the legal framework such as the so-called “national primacy” of the teaching profession and the associated inferior position of non-German teachers with regard to status and salary. Further researchers analyse education policy regarding the recruitment of minority teachers in political documents from ten federal states and a resolution paper drawn up by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education. It has been proven that “thoroughly positive intentions” can have “problematic elements”, because educational policy statements are permeated by culturalizations and processes of othering (Akbaba et al., 2013, p. 52). Scepticism about education policy is also advisable if minority teachers are seen as “interculturally competent by nature” (Karakaşoğlu et al., 2013, p. 70); in principle, however, they should be given a high priority in the context of intercultural school development. In this pioneering book also the fact is addressed that differences are generated in academic discourse by distinguishing between “with” and “without a migration background” and associated paradoxes in research practice remain unsolved (Rotter & Schlickum, 2013).

In the anthology, Bandorski and Karakaşoğlu (2013, p. 133) present the findings of a study using a mixed-methods design on the study progress and satisfaction of student teachers which was designed and carried out as migration-sensitive basic research aimed at providing an empirically proven requirements analysis. In the quantitative section, data from 560 student teachers was collected via written questionnaires. Here are some central results of the multivariate analysis: The authors note that the “large majority of student teachers with a migration background [...] do not consider themselves a ‘group’ with specific characteristics and support needs” and therefore recommend not addressing them as such to avoid any potential stigma (Bandorski & Karakaşoğlu, 2013, p. 147; translation from German by the authors). Bandorski and Karakaşoğlu (2013) interpret the fact that the respondents “with a migration background” are somewhat more strongly motivated by inequality-sensitive pedagogy than those “without a migration background” as “cautiously confirming indications” of education policy (p. 152).

Edelmann (2013) focuses on how minority teachers deal with migration-related heterogeneity. Using interviews conducted in Zurich, Switzerland, she explores the fact that, among those interviewed, young minority teachers in particular favour a ‘tacit’ recognition of heterogeneity, in which possible differences and similarities remain unspoken (Edelmann, 2013, p. 200). Interestingly, “often due to their own negative experiences during their school years, it is particularly important to them never to address their pupils directly about their origin or even as representatives of a culture” (Edelmann, 2013, p. 200; translation from German by the authors). In the two contributions by Karakaş with Ackermann and by Georgi, the results of the study Diversity in the Staffroom from the corresponding monograph from 2011 are presented. The former turn to the experiences of minority teachers with migrant parents. They reconstruct these by analysing the content from five of the 45 narrative interviews. The examples are used to illustrate different “access strategies” to parents (Karakaş & Ackermann, 2013, p. 183; translation from German by the authors). One common feature is that the teachers here “specifically make use of their migration-specific resources to increase the participation of migrant parents in parents’ evenings and in discussions with parents” (Karakaş & Ackermann, 2013, p. 183; translation from German by the authors). It can also be seen that they have their own special insights on the deficit-oriented discourse on migrant parents among the teaching staff (Karakaş & Ackermann, 2013, p. 184; translation from German by the authors). Georgi’s contribution sheds empirical light on the self-assessments of minority teachers regarding their handling of multilingualism and cultural heterogeneity. According to Georgi, one consistent finding from both the quantitative and qualitative data is that the respondents make less use of their non-German languages as a resource in classroom activities than in extra-curricular interactions (Georgi, 2013b, p. 228, p. 233). The usage contexts of multilingualism in class are broadly diversified: from disciplining minority pupils to building up a relationship of trust with them, as well as for contrastive language work (Georgi, 2013b, p. 228). However, there are also reports of some schools encouraging pupils to distance themselves from their own multilingualism, on the grounds that “German should be spoken in schools as a matter of principle” (Georgi, 2013b, p. 232; translation from German by the authors). These findings lead to the open question of what “resource orientation” for minority teachers might look like in teacher education (Georgi, 2013b, p. 238). This question is also supported by a finding presented by Göbel as the “interim result[s]” (2013b, p. 215) of an exploratory study using statistical evaluation methods. It examines teachers’ emotional reactions to “critical incidents” (n = 59) and shows (for the nine minority teachers that were interviewed) that they report “a higher emotional burden” of the critical events and make “rather more complex interpretations” of these situations (Göbel, 2013, p. 217).

While this pioneering work in Germany and other parts of German-speaking Europe deals with (prospective) minority teachers in the education system in a general and also racism-critical manner by exploring their perspectives within the educational policy discussion, the field of research is now being further differentiated thanks to the more recent studies.

Recent Studies on Minority (Pre-service) Teachers in German-Speaking Countries

In the following section, we present the current state of research, largely drawing on the systematization developed by Rosen and Jacob (2021, pp. 2–5).Footnote 3 We present examples of research foci that not only look more deeply at othering processes and experiences of discrimination, but also link them to other dimensions of inequality and focus on questions of gender, religion and language.

A first line of research concerns studies which illuminate the professional self-concepts of (prospective) minority teachers by going into greater depth using hermeneutic methodologies such as biographical analysis (Mantel, 2017) or documentary method (Rotter, 2014a; Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a) to discover hidden structures of meaning and develop different typologies. These studies show that the participants’ professional self-concepts are shaped very differently and that they attach different importance to their own migration background by assigning it great or even no significance at all or by sharply rejecting or even overemphasising the connection between their own professionalism as a teacher with migration experiences (Rotter, 2014a). Similarly, pre-service minority teachers wish to simply be considered members of the staff and not be reduced to the role of integration experts. However, they do feel particularly responsible for shaping the migration society and enabling equal opportunities in education (Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a). Conversely, they also show that teachers are constantly confronted with the challenge of defending their allegiances and identities as well as justifying their sensitivity in dealing with migration-related diversity (Mantel, 2020). Recent research also expands the views of (prospective) teachers on complementary issues by shedding light on the experiences and assessments of their pupils, colleagues and head teachers (Bressler & Rotter, 2017; Rotter & Timpe, 2016; Strasser & Waburg, 2015). Here, too, there are very different evaluations. Interestingly enough, it seems that the pupils in particular attach little importance to the minority status of their teachers, and when they do, then only in certain situations and in connection to other dimensions of difference (e.g., age, gender, class) which carry more weight for the pupils (Strasser & Waburg, 2015). In an international comparative project, Waburg and Strasser (2018) pursue a hitherto unique question by taking an intersectional perspective and asking “whether and how other difference dimensions besides ethnicity become relevant for teachers and their actions” (p. 55; translation from German by the authors). While the interplay between “the two categories of gender and ethnicity/race” in the Anglo-American world was examined with a view to “black male teachers”, this “has not yet been taken into account in the German-speaking world” (Waburg & Strasser, 2018, p. 58). Waburg and Strasser assume that “dealing with educational policy expectations is not independent of gender-related attributions” and ask “how female and male teachers with a migration background position themselves and which of the expectations placed on them they try to fulfil and how” (Waburg & Strasser, 2018, p. 55; translation from German by the authors). To this end, they choose an explorative design that uses documentary method to reconstruct hidden orientation patterns surveyed in individual interviews and group discussions with teachers in Germany and Austria. The first results reported in the following are based on two group discussions with three teachers from an Austrian primary school and three teachers from an Austrian grammar school (Waburg & Strasser, 2018, p. 60). The analysis provides indications of the gender-specific positioning of minority teachers in relation to the expectations directed at them: “The women open up, share their own experiences, talk to students and parents, take advantage of the assumed proximity between themselves and migrant parents” (Waburg & Strasser, 2018, pp. 67–68; translation from German by the authors). Communal aspects such as warmth and community orientation, feeling connected and focussing on other people become clear. Male teachers, however, do not open up in the same way: They too share their experiences, but with a focus on being role models and an emphasis on “agency” aspects such as competence, instrumentality and self-assertion. Unlike the female interviewees, they do not mention “that they proactively care for and advise minority pupils and their parents and consciously ensure a positive classroom climate” (Waburg & Strasser, 2018, p. 67; translation from German by the authors). It is not only a gender-specific orientation that becomes visible here, but also gender stereotypes in the professional approaches of teachers which will need to be reviewed in future on the basis of broader studies, especially with regard to specific school forms. In this respect, Waburg and Strasser also point out that the female interviewees work at a primary school and, as class teachers, form a fixed reference person for younger pupils, while the male interviewees work exclusively with older pupils in upper secondary schools and do not have the opportunity to form relationships in a comparable framework because they are working as subject teachers who thus focus on specific academic subjects. In this respect, their emphasis on achievement can also be explained by the school form, whereas the school culture of the primary school is oriented towards the formation of relationships and therefore suggests “communal” aspects (Waburg & Strasser, 2018, p. 68).

A second research focus sheds light on the discrimination and racism experienced by (prospective) minority teachers as well as processes of othering in everyday school life (Akbaba, 2017a, b; Doğmuş, 2016; El & Fereidooni, 2016; Fereidooni, 2016; Karakaşoğlu & Doğmuş, 2016; Karakaşoğlu & Wojciechowicz, 2017). In addition to more or less open forms of racism, it looks primarily at the subtle forms of discrimination, which are related to the addressing of teachers as interculturally competent because of their own or their family’s migration biography. Furthermore, it examines paradoxes in school interactions, for example in Akbaba’s ethnography and discourse analysis (2017b), which stands out from the multitude of interview studies: While teachers are implicitly requested to capitalize their ‘foreignness’, they are called upon to do so within reference frames that (threaten to) marginalize them. In the above-mentioned studies, the starting points for processes of othering are various facets of migration-related diversity; however, one dimension that has been rather neglected in this respect so far is religious belonging.

During our literature review, we became aware of two contributions that deal with anti-Muslim discrimination as a specific form of racism in the context of the professionalisation of prospective minority teachers in Germany (Karakaşoğlu & Doğmuş, 2016; Karakaşoğlu & Wojciechowicz, 2017). Firstly, Karakaşoğlu and Doğmuş present explorative findings from two interlinked qualitative research projects “that focus on teacher training programmes in the first and second phase of teacher formation in Germany” (2016, p. 92). Based on the analysis of interviews according to grounded theory and the documentary method, they show how the “stereotypical societal discourse on ‘migrants’ as ‘Muslims’” negatively affects pre-service teachers and their academic instructors alike. Mirroring the perspective of the instructor in the first phase who doesn’t reflect on this practice of othering in terms of “muslimization” with the perspective of a student teacher who faces othering in this respect, Karakaşoğlu and Doğmuş identify “deeply rooted images of deficient students with a ‘migration background’ both at university and during in-service training” (2016, p. 98). They explain these “stereotypical and even racist images of ‘people with a migration background’ as uncivilized ‘Muslims’” (Karakaşoğlu & Doğmuş, 2016, p. 92) as the result of a poorly considered reflection of the respective German social discourse. The second article supports this result in that it analyses the complementary perspective of fellow students who are also studying to become teachers (Karakaşoğlu & Wojciechowicz, 2017). The authors reconstruct “openly communicated devaluations and defences in dealing with prospective female teachers wearing Muslim headscarves and with the religious heterogeneity of the school community as a dominant interpretative perspective” (Karakaşoğlu & Wojciechowicz, 2017, p. 513). In addition, they conclude that “the Muslim headscarf is generally assigned a specific, anti-democratic symbolic character and the consideration of Muslim holidays at school has the potential to disadvantage the ‘German’ student body” (Karakaşoğlu & Wojciechowicz, 2017, p. 524; translation from German by the authors). All three cases analysed in this paper are concerned with “banning all visible religious expressions of Islam that do not comply with those norms considered legitimate or established from everyday school life” (Karakaşoğlu & Wojciechowicz, 2017, p. 524; translation from German by the authors). It can be concluded “that ‘Muslim migrants’ in their new role as prospective teachers are perceived as challenges for school routines” (Karakaşoğlu & Doğmuş, 2016, p. 99). In this respect, it appears necessary “to integrate content on migration-related religious plurality and attitudes to Muslim religious practice, in particular attitudes with a tendency towards anti-Muslim racism, more strongly than before in the further training of educators and in university teacher training” (Karakaşoğlu & Wojciechowicz, 2017, p. 526; translation from German by the authors).

Compared to the aforementioned research foci, fewer studies have turned to language as another relevant social category of difference and inequality in the context of (prospective) minority teachers and the associated language- or multilingualism-related issues (Döll & Knappik, 2015; Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a; Panagiotopoulou & Rosen, 2016). To illustrate this third research focus, we present the results of two studies. In our qualitative study (Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a) on minority pre-service teachers and perspectives on the recruitment of minority teachers, we gathered different datasets for specific research foci. Concerning language and multilingualism, we asked pre-service teachers to reflect on how their personal multilingualism might benefit them as teachers, and to think of scenarios in which they might be able to use their languages in a meaningful manner. We analysed the written personal statements from ten pre-service teachers and found three different standpoints: (a) the benefits of multilingualism, (b) the potential of shared experiences, and (c) ambivalence towards the use of personal multilingualism. As far as the benefits are concerned, some of the pre-service teachers addressed the antinomy between wishing to use their languages in the classroom and knowing that the German school system is far away from this ideal. Benefits are also seen in the supposed higher metalinguistic abilities (higher language awareness) of multilinguals that could support classroom and learning activities. Furthermore, the pre-service teachers mention opportunities for cooperation with parents because “cooperation would be more successful if bi-/multilingual communication were possible” (Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a, p. 176). Some of them point out that they are more than ready to adopt the role of an intermediary but not that of an interpreter. Finally, they also address the ability to recognise their students (second) language learning difficulties better than monolinguals due to their own knowledge of other languages. Turning to the second argument of sharing common realities and experiences, the pre-service teachers reflect in detail about the teaching and learning possibilities this offers in the classroom. For instance, they assume that they are better able to understand the process of second language acquisition because of their own experiences. This shared experience, also considering the linguicism that some of them have faced, would help them to build relationships with students who expect them to be more sensitive, empathetic, and understanding towards students who are learning German and may therefore face discrimination. The third argument concerning ambivalent feelings about multilingual language use in the professional field not only focuses on the antinomy of individual multilingualism, e.g., translanguaging practices in the classroom, but also on the monolingual language policy of the educational system. Moreover, some of the pre-service teachers voice their fears of being stereotyped and forced into a special role because of their multilingualism. One student teacher puts it like this: “[A]re you suddenly a stopgap when your colleagues don’t know what to do anymore?” (Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a, p. 179).

Another study that focuses on language, tackling different views on dialects and multilingualism among minority pre-service teachers, comes from another German-speaking country, Austria. Döll and Knappik (2015) re-analyse interview data from a project which originally aimed at revealing the linguistic requirements for student teachers during their studies at university. While analysing the 35 interviews, it became apparent that a second analysis was required, concentrating on how the faculty addresses the inclusion and exclusion of minority pre-service teachers. The findings can be summarised as follows: Whereas minority pre-service teachers are either seen as others with “fundamentally imperfect” or “perfect” proficiency (Döll & Knappik, 2015, p. 192), dialect speakers are not addressed as others and are placed on the dialect–standard continuum, conceding their potential to adopt to the standard over time. Minority pre-service teachers are also put into the role of others when it comes to their responsibilities at school or when teaching German as a subject but the analysis also reveals the faculties dilemma, as, for one thing, they “have to ensure that students in pre-service teacher education acquire all necessary skills to later teach” (Döll & Knappik, 2015, p. 199). However, there are still no analyses of “the specific language proficiency requirements of teaching in Austrian schools” and it is not clear “what level of proficiency in German can be considered as sufficient for teaching” (Döll & Knappik, 2015, p. 200). The authors conclude that this manner of addressing minority pre-service teachers and discussing the language proficiency issue can be understood within the leitmotif of native-speakerism where native speakers are considered superior to other speakers of the same language (Döll & Knappik, 2015, p. 200).

In summary, the results of the study so far illustrate the spectrum in which (future) teachers move with regard to language differentiation: They themselves reflect the conflicting realm of ‘multilingual language practices – monolingual institutional policies’ in parts and position themselves differently along this spectrum. The underlying linguicism is revealed in the perspectives of the teachers, in native-speakerism, and the related dilemma faced by the faculty itself.

A fourth research focus consists of studies that allow comparisons between (prospective) minority and majority teachers and partly explores the effects of representation of (prospective) minority teachers (Edelmann et al., 2015; Glock & Schuchart, 2020; Höckel, 2020; Kleen et al., 2019; Klein et al., 2019; Rosen & Jacob, 2021; Rotter, 2014b; Strasser & Leutwyler, 2020). In a recent study, Höckel (2020) examines – from an economic perspective – the effect of minority teachers who teach German in secondary schools on the German language performance of pupils. The study looks at teachers who either migrated themselves or have at least one parent who migrated and/or have acquired a language other than German. It uses a large data set from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), from grade 5 (context data from N = 4724 students and N = 719 German teachers). Six percent of teachers in the study are minority teachers, which is comparable with the figures of the Federal Statistical Office. Using OLS regressions, Höckel demonstrates a positive and statistically significant effect of minority teachers on reading comprehension performance in German for all pupils regardless of their origin. If the groups are divided (into minority and majority pupils), the effect is even larger among minority pupils. In order to explain this result, Höckel conducts various in-depth analyses to clarify whether the effect can be explained by a possible linguistic proximity between pupils and teachers or by situations in which the role model effect is significant: the results illustrate that the minority teacher effect “is not driven by specific language matches between foreign origin students and teachers” (Höckel, 2020, p. 19). With regard to the role model effect, the analyses bear out the conclusion that the strong positive effect of having a minority teacher on minority students “can partly be attributed to a role model effect that motivates foreign origin students differently than their native counterparts” (Höckel, 2020, p. 21). Interestingly, the pre-service teachers in our research (Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a) as well as the teachers in the study by Georgi et al. (2011) also address the role model effect and partially agree that they can be role models.

Höckel (2020) also looks for explanations for a positive effect on the German reading comprehension performance of pupils, regardless of their origin. She uses further modelling to investigate the assumption that “conscious competence” (Höckel, 2020, p. 22) leads to better learning outcomes in language teaching. She shows that those teachers, who have acquired another language at home in addition to German, have an even greater effect on the reading comprehension performance of pupils than “foreign origin teachers”, especially for monolingual pupils. This result is in line with those regarding the perceptions of pre-service teachers in our research (Lengyel & Rosen, 2015a). The student teachers explicitly referred to their higher language awareness as a result of their experience in acquiring German as a second language, which enabled them to help their pupils during language teaching.

Höckel’s study (2020) contrasts the result of a study by Klein et al. (2019) where the general question is raised: “Do migrant students benefit from being taught by a migrant teacher?” Working with a large data-set of more than 9000 9th grade pupils and over 400 teachers, the authors found no statistical effects in their multivariate-analyses looking for performance-related effects among minority teachers. This indicates that studies in specific subjects that allow directed hypotheses are necessary to arrive at less ambiguous findings. Höckel’s study (2020), which specifically targets subject teachers and examines effects on a clearly defined area of competence, seems therefore more purposeful. These comparative competence studies also underline the difficulties of carrying out such studies, since the number of minority teachers in the available samples is often too small to be meaningfully included in statistical analyses. This also applies, for example, to further analyses of the question as to whether and to what extent performance-related effects can be linked to the same (ethnic) origin.

Studies that focus on minority teachers’ beliefs about minority students can be very illuminating in this context. Teachers’ beliefs are seen as a part of their professional competence that may influence the students’ performance in general or in a specific way, for example, when teachers have low expectations with regard to the achievement levels of minority students. Turning to minority teachers, the question arises as to whether they have more positive beliefs about minority students compared to those of teachers representing the ‘majority’, or even whether this effect only shows for minority teachers of a certain ethnic group towards students of the same group (in-group favouritism). In a study using a between-subjects design, Kleen et al. (2019) researched beliefs in terms of the implicit and explicit attitudes of pre-service teachers (N = 149). They categorised the pre-service teachers into three groups: Turkish minority pre-service teachers, minority pre-service teachers and ‘majority’ pre-service teachers. Implicit attitudes were measured using a specific test on cognitive associations between two concepts, whereas for the explicit attitudes, a prejudice beliefs scale was applied (Kleen et al., 2019, p. 879). The authors did not find any significant effect for the explicit attitudes. Yet, the ANOVA shows a significant main effect to the extent that the pre-service teachers from the Turkish group demonstrate higher values on positive implicit attitudes towards Turkish students compared to pre-service teachers from other ethnic minorities. But even these pre-service teachers show more positive implicit attitudes than those from the majority group (here: English). Kleen et al.’s study (2019) reveals that comparative studies, which may also examine questions about the influences of minority teachers on pupils, should include different characteristics or aspects that are already known (from (teacher) research) to influence school performance and educational success.

Conclusions and Implications

Previously, research has focused on (prospective) minority teachers who belong to the second or third generation of migrants. These are established minorities who, although still affected by social inequalities, have completed their schooling in Germany and have been socialised accordingly. Now, research is being carried out that focuses on the first generation, i.e. on newly immigrated or refugee teachers. Since 2016, qualification programmes have been in place to provide support for the transition to teaching in the German school system, a process characterised by institutional barriers and a lack of recognition of vocational qualifications acquired abroad. These are based in university teacher education and usually specifically tailored to refugee teachers (Purrmann et al., 2020; Terhart et al., 2020; Wojciechowicz & Vock, 2019). The discourses on qualification programmes for refugee teachers, international teacher migration, minority teachers and the internationalisation of teacher education are now increasingly being brought together, as initial publications show (Terhart & Rosen, 2022; Schmidt & Schneider, 2016).

One example of the merging of discourses on minority teachers in Europe, their potential as change agents to transform the monolingual language market in the education system, and the discourse on newly immigrated or refugee teachers is Putjata’s (language biographical) interview study (Putjata, 2017, 2018) featuring teachers who immigrated to Israel from Russia after completing their training in their country of origin and having already worked there as teachers. As new policies on teacher absorption and language education policy were launched in Israel in the 1990s, Putjata addresses the question as to how these policies were perceived by the teachers themselves and whether they had noticed any status change in schools as a result of these new policies (Putjata, 2018, p. 3). The results show the importance of policy strategies in integrating newly immigrated teachers into the labour market: The teachers emphasised that the Hebrew courses included in the preparatory measure were particularly important, as integration into the labour market and language learning could take place in parallel, without the acquisition of the national language as a prerequisite (Putjata, 2018, p. 7). Moreover, Putjata showed that the interviewees positioned themselves both as “new immigrant multilingual teachers” as well as part of the educational system in their narratives. By implementing suitable policies that recognise the qualifications and professional experience acquired in the country of origin as relevant in the migration context and for the respective education system, the teachers’ perception of themselves and their positioning in the social and educational context also changes. Nevertheless, it also becomes clear that it is problematic if education policy efforts refer only to certain groups and ignores other newly immigrated persons (e.g. those from Ethiopia in Israel), who are accordingly not given the opportunity to use their skills for professional integration into the teaching profession.

The “Refugee Teachers” programmes introduced at some universities, qualification programmes for integration into school practice, as mentioned above, are not, as in the example described by Putjata, positioned at the national policy level in Germany, but at the project level (with limited duration) within individual federal states. Nevertheless, they have put the discussion about a general recognition of ‘single-subject teachers’, i.e. teachers who have a degree in only one subject, back on the education policy agenda. This is a key question because the recognition of qualifications acquired prior to migration regularly fails in Germany because of the requirement to study two subjects, a regulation which is almost unique in international comparison. However, since the societal orientation towards the (supposed) advantages of training in two subjects is extremely effective in Germany, the opportunities that could arise from migration and international mobility remain largely unused despite a shortage of teachers (see also Putjata, 2019).

If the focus in research in the coming years, and we see this as a perspective, is placed both on the first generation of minority teachers and on established minority teachers of the second and third generation of immigrants, then the formulation of common issues will make it possible to focus more strongly on the discriminatory structures of the German education system, including teacher education. Thus, in future it is possible that the question of the inclusion of minority teachers will no longer be correlated with ethnicised attributions of professional competence or with a “capitalization” (Dunn, 2016) of their transnational (professional) biographies in times of acute teacher shortages. There is a risk that mobility is positively connoted and, in particular, discursively presented as useful, but that a distinction is made between useful and threatening subjects of mobility or between legitimate and illegitimate migrants (Ratfisch, 2015). In this respect, when recruiting internationally trained teachers or minority teachers, educational policy and research should be guided by the argument of their social representation: “it should be a social institution’s intention to display our diverse society in order to enable minorities to be socially representative (...) [S]o the aim should rather be to diversify the teaching staff so it mirrors the diversity within our society” (Rotter & Timpe, 2016, p. 98). Thus, the argument often used in the German discourse that minority teachers should prove effective or useful in reducing educational inequalities should be rejected as utilitarian ethnicisation.

The contribution of our study shows that research on minority teachers in Germany is becoming more differentiated, although that there are still desiderata. On the one hand, with the focus on gender and language, other dimensions along which social inequalities emerge are being considered. This seems central to future educational research in order to address migration-related diversity and race in an intersectional rather than one-sided way. On the other hand, established research topics such as racism are further differentiated by specifically examining minority teachers’ experiences of anti-Muslim racism. Overall, forward-looking research approaches are highlighted that overcome the ethnicised attribution of professional competence to minority teachers by shedding light on the discriminatory structures of the German education system.