Jean-Pol Martin (born 1943, Paris, France) studied teacher education for foreign language teachers in Germany, and developed a teaching method called learning by teaching. He spent most of his career at Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and was a Professor there when he retired in 2008.

Biography

Martin was born in 1943 in Paris and went to Germany in 1968. He studied German and French in order to become a teacher at a German grammar school, and also became an instructor in teacher education at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Bavaria) in 1980. He earned his undergraduate degree at Paris Nanterre University in 1969, then studied German and Romance languages at University of Erlangen–Nuremberg from 1969 to 1975, then worked as a trainee teacher in French language from 1975 to 1977 at Albrecht Dürer Gymnasium in Nürnberg. He then taught French and German at the Gymnasium Höchstadt/Aisch from 1977 to 1980. In 1980 he started working at Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, training French teachers. Simultaneously he studied language acquisition and pedagogy at Justus Liebig University Giessen, and earned his Ph.D. there in 1985. His thesis on "Didactics of the French Language and Literature" was accepted in 1985. In 1994, after his Habilitation, he was appointed Privatdozent at Catholic University of Eichstätt and in 2000 he was appointed Professor.

Learning by teaching (LdL)

Martin established the learning by teaching method for students to learn by teaching their peers. The method became widely used in Germany in secondary education, and in the 1990s it was further formalized and began to be used in universities as well, and has spread to other disciplines and other countries worldwide. Martin has World Rank #7 in pedagogy. By 2008 Martin had retired, and although he remained active Joachim Grzega, Isabelle Schuhladen and Simon Wilhelm Kolbe took the lead in developing and promulgating LdL.

New human rights (NMR)

Since 2016, Martin has endeavoured to establish human rights without metaphysical reference and to orient them towards needs. The "New Human Rights" contain an anthropological, an ethical and a political part, based on the following needs: 1. thinking, 2. health, 3. security, 4. social inclusion, 5. self-fulfilment and participation, 6. meaning. In this way, greater operationalisability is achieved. An empirical basis is being developed by Nicole Kern, founder of the NMR agency. Furthermore, Martin is endeavouring to empirically test the effectiveness of NMR in the context of local politics. Finally, Simon Wilhelm Kolbe has founded a series "New Human Rights" in the Gabriele Schäfer Verlag, which already comprises several volumes.

Books