Within the Netherlands, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in foreign language teaching can be considered a sibling of 'Language Oriented Content Teaching' (LOCT), a pedagogy in mainstream classes with second language learners of Dutch, where Dutch is used as language of instruction. This article characterizes two decades of research on LOCT through Dutch in multilingual schools and discusses its relevance for CLIL development.
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In this epilogue, I take a teaching practice and teacher education perspective on complexity in Instructed Second Language Acquisition. I take the stance that it is essential to understand if and how linguistic complexity relates to learning challenges, what the implications are for language pedagogy, and how this challenges the role of the teacher. Research shows that differences in task complexity may lead to differences in linguistic complexity in language learners’ speech or writing. Different tasks (e.g. descriptive vs narrative) and different modes (oral vs written) may lead to different types and levels of complexity in language use. On the one hand, this is a challenge for language assessment, as complexity in language performance may be affected by task characteristics. On the other hand, it is an opportunity for language teaching: using a diversity of tasks, modes and text types may evoke and stretch lexically and syntactically complex language use. I maintain that it is essential for teachers to understand that it is at least as important to aim for development in complexity as it is to aim for development in accuracy. Namely, that ‘errors’ in language learning are part of the deal: complex tasks lead to complex language use, including lexical and syntactical errors, but they are a necessary prerequisite for language development.
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This small-scale observational study explores how Dutch bilingual education history teachers (BHTs) focus on the L2 component in their CLIL-lessons. We observed and rated eight BHTs on five language teaching categories. Results show that Dutch BHTs focus more strongly on using the L2 to teach subject content and that they tend to be less engaged in teaching specific second language topics, such as focus on form or language learning strategies. Further results and suggestions for improving the BHTs’ L2 focus are discussed together with a plea for a CLIL definition that is more in line with the everyday reality of the CLIL classroom.
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Brains and gender, separately and in their interrelatedness, are hot items today in popular journals and academic literature. It is in particular the complexity of the interdependence of physical-, psychological-, and contextual-related developments of feminization in education that we focus on these contributions. We argue that a combination of recent findings of brain research and Marcia's psychological model of identity development in a “provocative pedagogy”—combining youngsters’ (boys and girls) need for exploration, console, and support—is a promising “stepped care” strategy for religious development of youngsters in a multicultural and multireligious context.
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Worldwide, pupils with migrant backgrounds do not participate in school STEM subjects as successfully as their peers. Migrant pupils’ subject-specific language proficiency lags behind, which hinders participation and learning. Primary teachers experience difficulty in teaching STEM as well as promoting required language development. This study investigates how a professional development program (PDP) focusing on inclusive STEM teaching can promote teacher learning of language-promoting strategies (promoting interaction, scaffolding language and using multilingual resources). Participants were five case study teachers in multilingual schools in the Netherlands (N = 2), Sweden (N = 1) and Norway (N = 2), who taught in primary classrooms with migrant pupils. The PDP focused on three STEM units (sound, maintenance, plant growth) and language-promoting strategies. To trace teachers’ learning, three interviews were conducted with each of the five teachers (one after each unit). The teachers also filled in digital logs (one after each unit). The interviews showed positive changes in teachers’ awareness, beliefs and attitudes towards language-supporting strategies. However, changes in practice and intentions for practice were reported to a lesser extent. This study shows that a PDP can be an effective starting point for teacher learning regarding inclusive STEM teaching. It also illuminates possible enablers (e.g., fostering language awareness) or hinderers (e.g., teachers’ limited STEM knowledge) to be considered in future PDP design.
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Explicit language objectives are included in the Swedish national curriculum for mathematics. The curriculum states that students should be given opportunities to develop the ability to formulate problems, use and analyse mathematical concepts and relationships between concepts, show and follow mathematical reasoning, and use mathematical expressions in discussions. Teachers’ competence forms a crucial link to bring an intended curriculum to a curriculum in action. This article investigates a professional development program, ‘Language in Mathematics’, within a national program for mathematics teachers in Sweden that aims at implementing the national curriculum into practice. Two specific aspects are examined: the selection of theoretical notions on language and mathematics and the choice of activities to relate selected theory to practice. From this examination, research on teacher learning in connection to professional development is proposed, which can contribute to a better understanding of teachers’ interpretation of integrated approaches to language and mathematics across national contexts.
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This paper reports on CATS (2006-2007), a project initiated by the Research Centre Teaching in Multicultural Schools, that addresses language related dropout problems of both native and non-native speakers of Dutch in higher education. The projects main objective is to develop a model for the redesign of the curriculum so as to optimize the development of academic and professional language skills. Key pedagogic strategies are the raising of awareness of personal proficiency levels through diagnostic testing, definition of linguistic demands of curriculum tasks, empowerment of student autonomy and peer feedback procedures. More specifically, this paper deals with two key areas of the project. First, it describes the design and development of web-based corpus software tools, aimed at the enhancement of the autonomy of students academic reading and writing skills. Secondly, it describes the design of three pilots, in which the process of a content and language integrated approach - facilitated by the developed web tools - was applied, and these pilots respective evaluations. The paper concludes with a reflection on the project development and the experiences with the pilot implementations.
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The aim of this dissertation is to examine how adult learners with a spoken language background who are acquiring a signed language, learn how to use the space in front of the body to express grammatical and topographical relations. Moreover, it aims at investigating the effectiveness of different types of instruction, in particular instruction that focuses the learner's attention on the agreement verb paradigm. To that end, existing data from a learner corpus (Boers-Visker, Hammer, Deijn, Kielstra & Van den Bogaerde, 2016) were analyzed, and two novel experimental studies were designed and carried out. These studies are described in detail in Chapters 3–6. Each chapter has been submitted to a scientific journal, and accordingly, can be read independently.1 Yet, the order of the chapters follows the chronological order in which the studies were carried out, and the reader will notice that each study served as a basis to inform the next study. As such, some overlap in the sections describing the theoretical background of each study was unavoidable.
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This exploration with ChatGPT underscores two vital lessons for human rights law education. First, the importance of reflective and critical prompting techniques that challenge it to critique its responses. Second, the potential of customizing AI tools like ChatGPT, incorporating diverse scholarly perspectives to foster a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of human rights. It also shows the promise of using collaborative approaches to build tools that help create pluriversal approaches to the study of human rights law.
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Abstract van prestentatie. According to Roy and Napier (2015), the earliest research on sign language interpreting dates to the mid-1970s. More recently we have acknowledged the need for research to be part of sign language interpreter (SLI) education programs (Winston, 2013). At present, educators feel an urgent need to embed research in their SLI programs with two goals: first, to firmly base their teaching in evidencebased practice, and second, to teach future interpreters how to continuously improve their practice
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