The implementation of plurilingual language policies in Higher Education – the perspective of language learning students

It is undeniable that English has become the worldwide lingua franca for the academic world. Many countries have therefore opted for Higher Education programmes fully in English, of which the Netherlands is the frontrunner. Language policies that include drawing on students plurilingual repertoires could offer the opportunity to employ several languages in the classroom (Duarte and van der Ploeg 2019). Although the attitudes of lecturers have been studied before, students are often overlooked when creating language policies and in particular students in language-related courses. This mixed-method study aimed to map the affordances and constraints associated with the implementation of a plurilingual policy from the students’ perspective. First, 20 h of classroom observations showed that plurilingual approaches were used when explaining concepts, yet were refrained from when struggling with the language of instruction. Second, a survey with 103 students attending language-related courses showed general positive attitudes towards using plurilingual approaches, in which being proficient in a large number of languages played a significant role. Overall, the affordances of a plurilingual policy, such as new ways of thinking, and the use of a student’s full linguistic repertoire, surpassed the constraints, such as the lack of inclusion, and as a result, the advantage for Dutch students was mentioned

“Global citizenship means different things to different people”:Visions and implementation of global citizenship education in Dutch secondary education

Many countries have recently called for educating global citizens, suggestingthat global citizenship education (GCE) can contribute usefully to individuals and the greater world. However, so far there is no clear definition of how best to teach GCE. Educators in the Netherlands have recently given attention to citizenship education but not to GCE. This article investigates Dutch GCE, regarding the visions schools develop and their translation into pedagogical practice. In a mixed-method design, 15 teachers, 25 coordinators, and 11 school leaders from 47 Dutch secondary schools completed a survey. The results show that Dutch schools mainly operationalized GCE in terms of socialization and cultural GCE. School-level implementation of GCE occurred mostly by integrating it into the teaching of other subjects. Implementation on a class level was mainly focused on group conversations, group assignments, and excursions

“Global citizenship means different things to different people”:Visions and implementation of global citizenship education in Dutch secondary education

Many countries have recently called for educating global citizens, suggestingthat global citizenship education (GCE) can contribute usefully to individuals and the greater world. However, so far there is no clear definition of how best to teach GCE. Educators in the Netherlands have recently given attention to citizenship education but not to GCE. This article investigates Dutch GCE, regarding the visions schools develop and their translation into pedagogical practice. In a mixed-method design, 15 teachers, 25 coordinators, and 11 school leaders from 47 Dutch secondary schools completed a survey. The results show that Dutch schools mainly operationalized GCE in terms of socialization and cultural GCE. School-level implementation of GCE occurred mostly by integrating it into the teaching of other subjects. Implementation on a class level was mainly focused on group conversations, group assignments, and excursions

Professional quality of life in nurses: Contribution for the validation of the Portuguese version of the Professional Quality of Life Scale-5 (ProQOL-5)

Job stress and burnout are highly prevalent in healthcare professionals, and nurses in particular. Given its deleterious consequences not only for professionals’ well-being but also for patients and organizations, it is important to have adequate measures to assess professional quality of life. This study aimed to offer a contribution for the Portuguese validation of the Professional Quality of Life Scale-5. This scale was designed to measure three dimensions of professional quality of life: compassion satisfaction, burnout and compassion fatigue. The sample was composed by 390 burses recruited from five public hospitals from Portugal’s north and center regions. Participants had on average 38.58 years of age (SD = 9.10) and were mainly female, married and practiced nursing in a variety of fields with an average of 15.66 (SD = 9.09) years of practice. Results from the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the original version of the scale had several problematic items and that a revised version showed superior model fit. In addition, we found that female scored higher than men on compassion satisfaction. We also found that nurses working in an oncology hospital had higher scores of compassion fatigue. Finally, higher scores of burnout and compassion fatigue, and lower scores of compassion satisfaction, were associated with greater depression, anxiety and stress symptoms. The ProQOL-5 is thus an adequate instrument to assess professional quality of life in nurses and may be valuable for designing effective interventions to tackle burnout and compassion fatigue

Bilingual Language Proficiency

This book investigates the role native language plays in the process of acquiring a second language within a bilingual educational model. The research presented is based on a 2 year longitudinal study of students in a bilingual school. Particular attention is paid to the development of academic language proficiency. Performance in both languages was compared between two groups of peers learning in submersion classes in Germany and in Portugal. This comparison allows the assessment of effects of a given bilingual education programme. There is a considerable advantage found for the students who learned in the bilingual environment, both in written and in oral samples. These students developed a more proficient bilingual academic discourse ability; socioeconomic status and cognitive abilities were controlled for. When comparing the results with an external measure for school achievement, the advantage was confirmed. The results also hint at didactic factors which seem to contribute to this performance

Translanguaging in the context of mainstream multilingual education

In the context of multilingual education, translanguaging has been put forward as a means of including several languages in education. However, teachers often assess translanguaging-based approaches as being too vague and idealist. This study discusses data from two settings (Luxembourg and Netherlands) in which teachers working in design-based projects operationalised the concept of translanguaging in order to include both migrant and minority languages in mainstream education. Examples from each dataset will be discussed in order to show the different functions of translanguaging in the two settings. Analyses of classroom transcripts provide insights into how official translanguaging can be used as pedagogical strategy to acknowledge migrant languages, achieve less language separation in traditional immersion models and to increase content understanding. Based on teachers’ own reflection on their use of translanguaging and on iterative interpretation of excerpts of the data, the study provides an overview of the functional use of different languages within moments of official translanguaging

Guidelines for introducing linguistic landscapes in (foreign) language learning and teacher education

In this document, we introduce you to the potential and practicalities of using linguistic landscapes (LLs) in education and provide suggestions for integrating LLs in educational settings and in teacher education programmes.Although LLs have been studied for some time now – from inter alia linguistic and political perspectives – classroom studies have been relatively scarce. Knowing that LLs can enhance learning and reflection, we wondered why little pedagogical and didactic attention had been paid to them. Identifying this gap, as well as the desire to address it, was the starting point of the LoCALL project.LoCALL, which stands for Local Linguistic Landscapes for Global Education in the School Context, was an Erasmus+ project that ran from 01.09.2019 to 31.08.2022. The aim of the project was to acknowledge the value of contemporary diversity in language education by mapping local LLs and discussing them collaboratively and comparatively at an international level. A further aim was to tackle the formative needs of teachers to deal with (linguistic) diversity in language education. The approach taken by LoCALL was to propose the LL as an authentic andmultilingual resource in overcoming those needs.The LoCALL team comprised researchers and teachers in the cities of Aveiro, Barcelona, Groningen, Hamburg and Strasbourg