Die Effekte von vorschulischen Bildungszentren in den Niederlanden: der Einfluss von organisatorischen Merkmalen und kindlichem Familienhintergrund

"Kinder aus einem bildungsfernen Haushalt und/oder Immigrantenkinder haben eine ungünstige Startposition zu Beginn ihrer Grundschulzeit. Eine der Weisen die Anfangsposition zu verbessern ist eine Stimulierung der Kenntnisse und Fertigkeiten im Vorschulalter. Obwohl vorschulische Bildungszentren eine Verbesserung der Schulkarriere von Risikokindern beabsichtigen, kann angenommen, werden dass Kinder sich darin unterscheiden in welchem Maß sie von einer Teilnahme profitieren. Dieses Paper beschreibt die Resultate einer Untersuchung in den Niederlanden, bei der zwei Variablen untersucht wurden von denen angenommen wird, dass sie die Effektivität von vorschulischen Bildungszentren modifizieren: (i) die (strukturelle und prozessuale) Qualität der Zentren und (ii) der Familienhintergrund der teilnehmenden Kinder. Die Untersuchung ergab, dass Partizipation in vorschulischen Bildungszentren zur frühen Entwicklung des Lesens und Schreibens beiträgt, die Effekte mit der Zeit aber nachlassen. Außerdem zeigte sich, dass die Effektivität der Zentren zum Teil von der Erwachsene-Kind Ratio im Zentrum und, für Immigrantenkinder, von dem Angebot der Niederländischen Sprache zu Hause abhängig ist." (Autorenreferat)"Children from lower-educated and/or immigrant minority families generally start primary school at a deficit. One way of improving these children's initial position is by stimulating the development of relevant knowledge and abilities before the start of formal elementary education, e.g. through participation in centers for preschool education. Although such centers aim to improve the school careers of all children at risk, it can be assumed that children differ in the extent to which they benefit from taking part. This paper describes the results of a study, conducted in the Netherlands, in which two variables were examined that are assumed to moderate the effectiveness of preschool center participation: (i) the (structural and process) quality of centers and (ii) the family backgrounds of articipating children. The study reveals that preschool center participation contributes to children's early literacy development but that effects fade away over time. Furthermore, the study shows that effective-ness is partly dependent on the adult-child ratio and, for children from immigrant minority families, on their home language situation." (author's abstract

Print awareness of adult illiterates: a comparison with young pre-readers and low-educated adult readers

In this study the print awareness of 25 unschooled adult illiterates in the Netherlands was compared with that of 24 pre-reading children and of 23 low-educated literate adults with approximately four years of primary schooling. The illiterates were interviewed about their experiences with writing and all participants completed six assessments of print awareness in the language they preferred (first or second language). The outcomes revealed that the three groups did not differ in distinguishing conventional written signs from other visual signs, that both groups of non-readers differed significantly from low educated readers but not from each other in knowledge of logos, inscriptions and knowledge of the written register, while the adult illiterates performed significantly better than the children on grapheme knowledge. Adult illiterates in literate societies seem to be well informed about the uses and functions of written language and about what writing looks like, but like young children they are not good at reading environmental print out of context and in explaining what exactly is represented in writing. The variation in reactions within the group of illiterate adults could be related to existing models of emergent literacy. Implications for adult literacy education are discussed

Ethnic minorities and ethnic minority languages in dutch primary schools Problems and Challenges

Paper submitted to the 15. seminar on languages and education, Sitges (Spain), 22-24 Nov 1990Available from Centro de Informacion y Documentacion Cientifica CINDOC. Joaquin Costa, 22. 28002 Madrid. SPAIN / CINDOC - Centro de Informaciòn y Documentaciòn CientìficaSIGLEESSpai

Ethnic minorities and ethnic minority languages in dutch primary schools Problems and challenges

Paper submitted to the seminarCentro de Informacion y Documentacion Cientifica (CINDOC). C/Joaquin Costa, 22. 28002 Madrid. SPAIN / CINDOC - Centro de Informaciòn y Documentaciòn CientìficaSIGLEESSpai

Discovering features of language: metalinguisitc awareness of adult illiterates

"What do illiterate adults know about writing and language? Can they recognize environmental print? How do they think about the representational nature of writing? How would they judge word length? Do they know where in a spoken sentence one word ends and the next begins or that the word cat is made up of three speech sounds? Those questions arose after we had been researching the acquisition of reading and writing in a second language of adult illiterates and had been observing the students for about a year (Kurvers & Van der Zouw, 1990). Many observations seemed to suggest that the concepts on language and literacy teachers brought to the classroom often did not match with what the illiterates were thinking. In answering questions about a story they just had been reading, the beginning readers often used their own experience, and not the text. In copying written words, they seemed to use incidental features instead of the distinctive features the teachers were looking at. And in talking about language, words like ‘empty’ or ‘hole’ confused them, because they could not understand how something could be a word, “when there is nothing”