Anna Kochanova

Anna Kochanova is a Lecturer and Scientific Associate at the Free University of Berlin's Department of Education and Psychology, specializing in Primary School Education and German Didactics with a focus on linguistic and cultural education. She completed her doctorate in Educational Science in July 2025 with a dissertation titled Experiencing Language (Differently): Aesthetic Attention in Elementary School Welcome Classes, earning summa cum laude honors.

Her research interests center on multilingualism and heterogeneity, aesthetic dimensions of language education, literacy acquisition, and ethnographic classroom research. Dr. Kochanova's work challenges conventional approaches in welcome classes for newly arrived immigrant children, arguing against monolingual orientations and functional-reductionist conceptions of language that prioritize formal linguistic aspects over literary-aesthetic dimensions.

Her recent publications and presentations reveal a strong focus on how aesthetic attention emerges through play, storytelling, and imagination as pathways to language experience for children with limited German proficiency. Her research employs ethnographic methods with video-supported classroom observation and reconstructive-interpretive analysis of key incidents in teaching activities.

• Price for excellent teaching 2024 for Primary School Education
• Price for best teaching 2021 for Teaching Degree

Dr. Kochanova is actively involved in the interdisciplinary project IDéAL (since April 2023), funded by the German-French Youth Office, which focuses on learning the language of the other and living together. She has taught numerous courses on multilingualism, aesthetic language dimensions, and literacy acquisition, and regularly presents her research at national conferences including the Symposium on German Didactics and the Austrian Forum for German Didactics.