Isabelle Sophie Thaler earned an MSc in Teacher Education with distinction from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Research in Second Language Education from the University of Cambridge. Prior to her studies in England, she had completed the first state examination at the University of Regensburg to qualify as a secondary school teacher (Gymnasium) for English and French. Additionally, she had worked for Prof Dr Kirchhoff at the TEFL department and completed an additional degree in Teaching German as a Foreign Language.

During her studies, Isabelle gained international teaching experience: She spent six months as a teaching assistant (funded by the PAD) at a comprehensive school in Devon, England, and another six months at a secondary school in Nice, France, as part of Lehramt International (supported by the DAAD). While in France, she also attended the University Nice-Sophia-Antipolis.

Isabelle’s studies have been funded by two scholarships from the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (Universitätsförderungand Promotionsförderung). In addition, she became a scholar of the mentor-mentee-programme Karriereförderprogramm für Frauen der Begabtenförderungswerke (Cusanuswerk) under the mentorship of Prof. Michael Byram.

Her research focuses on the university-based phase of language teacher education and includes qualitative, predominantly phenomenographic and arts-informed, research methods:

• University-based language teacher educators: identities, professional development
• Pre-service foreign language teachers: beliefs, cognition, professional vision, teacher learnin, classroom discourse

In addition, she is interested in intercultural learning, which she examines through (collaborative) autoethnographic research methods in the context of school exchanges. Her research interests also extend to (digital) citizenship education, with a particular focus on (digital) empathy.

Thaler, I. S., & Meininger, B. (2025). The Digital Poetry Escape Room: Sparking Pupils’ Motivation for Poetry through a Competicooperative Environment. In T. Summer & R. Gießler (Eds.), Digital Textualities and Spaces in ELT (pp. 113-137). Narr Francke Attempto.

Thaler, I. S. (2023). (Digital) empathising: (De-)constructing (digital) empathy in foreign language teaching. Training, Language and Culture, 7(3), 23–30. https://doi.org/10.22363/2521-442X-2023-7-3-23-30

Bracci, L., Biagi, F., & Thaler, I. S. (2022). Digital citizenship education in foreign language learning: Missing interrelations between European reference frameworks and drafting assessment descriptors. ICC Journal, 4(2), 5–27.

Simões, A. R., Lütge, C., Bracci, L., Biaggi, F., Thaler, I., & Coronha, M. (2022). How to Develop Digital Citizenship Education? – a Workshop for Foreign Language Educators. In Education and New Developments 2022 (Vol. 1, pp. 579–582). https://doi.org/10.36315/2022v1end128

 Thaler, I. S. (2021). Light-bulb moments und light-bulb-moment strategies im Schüler_innenaustausch. Ein partizipativer ethnographischer Ansatz. Sprachendidaktik: Der Wissenschaftliche Nachwuchs Im Dialog. Extended Abstracts Zur 12. ÖGSD Nachwuchstagung, 8–12.

Thaler, I. S. (2021). Light-bulb moments in professional discourse during study abroad exchanges. Issues of Applied Linguistics, 42, 7–40.

Thaler, I. S. (2019). Can a sociolinguistic perspective of Second Language Acquisition solve ‘the longstanding human curiosity’ of learning languages? Training Language and Culture, 3(3), 36–55. https://doi.org/10.29366/2019tlc.3.3.3