13 research outputs found
âWe Learn TogetherââTranslanguaging within a Holistic Approach towards Multilingualism in Education
Within two multilingual education projects in the north of the Netherlands a holistic model for multilingualism in education is being tested. This is done through design-based interventions in which in- and pre-service teachers, teacher trainers and researchers co-develop and evaluate multilingual activities for different school types. Results show that through experimenting in a safe environment teachers gradually embraced their pupilsâ multilingualism. This contradicts earlier findings on teachers strongly favouring monolingual instruction and viewing migrant languages as a deficit.<br/
Mehrsprachigkeit in Hamburg: Ergebnisse einer Sprachenerhebung an den Grundschulen in Hamburg
Mehrsprachigkeit als Kapital â Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Moduls »Deutsch fĂŒr SchĂŒlerinnen und SchĂŒler mit Zuwanderungsgeschichte« in Nordrhein-Westfalen
Migrants' educational success through innovation: The case of the Hamburg bilingual schools
Although Germany has experienced net in-migration for the past five decades, this fact has only recently been officially acknowledged. Furthermore, Germany is marked by a general monolingual self-concept very much attached to the idea of a nation-state with one homogeneous language. However, in large urban areas of Germany about 35 per cent of the population has a migration background, as has almost every second child enrolling in primary school. Hence the country is marked by this dichotomy between a monolingual policy discourse and a multilingual society, manifested in everyday life and, as a consequence, in educational institutions. The fact is that this political attitude towards Germany's own migration history and migrants has led to an educational gap between students with a migration background and their monolingual peers. In 2000, a project was started in Hamburg, aiming to overcome this educational gap and involving the creation of bilingual schools for some of the largest migrant languages. Bilingual classes were thus set up for the following language combinations: German-Portuguese, German-Italian, German-Spanish and German-Turkish, and were evaluated by the University of Hamburg. This paper reports on the model used and the specific school outcomes of the students attending these classes. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V
Migrantsâ educational success through innovation: The case of the Hamburg bilingual schools
Research priorities in the field of multilingualism and language education: a cross-national examination
Due to globalisation and migration, multilingualism has become both a reality and an aim of education systems across Europe, affecting how language education is shaped. To improve the ways in which schools cater for language education in diverse settings, research is required on the potentials of multilingualism in order to design curricula that foster skills in different languages. This paper aims at identifying and explaining research priorities in the field of multilingualism and language education in a cross-national perspective. It draws on data from a survey with 298 expert participants in five European countries (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) who ranked pre-identified research topics in relation to their perceived urgency. Results show that experts identified âeffectiveness of multilingual support in regular lessonsâ, âfeatures of multilingual didacticsâ and âeffectiveness of literacy support in home languages on the development of academic language skills in the majority languageâ as having the highest research priority overall. However, these results vary across national settings investigated. While the German, Dutch and Portuguese respondents attributed urgency to research on academic language skills, other issues were rated higher in the Spanish and Italian research contexts. The advantages and limitations of conducting cross-national research are also addressed