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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Despite the increase in the number of entrepreneurship initiatives and interventions, there is a poor understanding of the range of entrepreneurship programs in secondary education and their learning objectives. This study provides insight into the current supply of entrepreneurship programs and their underlying pedagogy in secondary education in the Netherlands. To examine existing offerings and their underlying pedagogy, we used the 11 design principles of Baggen, Lans, and Gulikers (2021). Data were collected from three different sources for triangulation purposes - data from Vecon Business Schools (VBS) application forms, interviews with VBS schools, and documents and additional information (student ratings, learning goals, missions, and visions). Our findings show that schools offer mostly causation-oriented and traditional entrepreneurship programs, in which there is little room for effectuation-oriented education. Also, due to the lack of a clearly stated mission, vision and learning goals of entrepreneurship education, schools pay little attention to the effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills/intentions. However, we observe that schools acknowledge this and slowly design and offer entrepreneurship programs more consciously.
While Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is recognised as an effective approach worldwide, its implementation in foreign language (FL) classrooms remains difficult. Earlier studies have identified factors impeding CLT implementation, such as a lack of communicative lesson materials or teachers' more traditional views on language learning. In the Netherlands, CLT goals have been formulated at the national level, but are not always reflected in daily FL teaching and assessment practice. As constructive alignment between learning goals, classroom activities and assessments is a precondition for effective teaching, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of the degree of alignment in Dutch FL curricula and the factors influencing it. The current study therefore aims to take a systematic inventory of classroom practices regarding the translation of national CLT goals into learning activities and assessments. Findings revealed that teaching activities and classroom assessments predominantly focused on grammar knowledge and vocabulary out of context and, to a lesser extent, on reading skills. External factors, such as teaching and testing materials available, and conceptual factors, such as teachers' conceptions of language learning, were identified to contribute to the observed lack of alignment. Assessments in particular seem to exert a negative washback effect on CLT implementation.
"My PD-trajectory aims to contribute to knowledge development in the domains of artacademic institutions, the queer/drag/HIV community, and advocacy as context for queer safety. Emphasis will be placed on how to write, document, design, and archive elements in order to shape language to actively comprehend each other’s affinities, aspirations, and propel visibility for emancipatory realities by creating empathy among differences. Incorporating the theorization of new terms such as “gift dragonomy” and “dragging as grafting” based on drag mothering knowledge will play an active role in preserving subcultural language while avoiding ‘representational fixity.”
