Research Findings: The parental role in supporting young children's oral language development at home is crucial for children's language and literacy development. However, there is limited expertise in how teachers can support lower-educated parents effectively to enhance their interactions with their children and stimulate the use of language.…

Data from whole-class discussions in Dutch upper primary school show that teachers occasionally explicitly take downgraded epistemic stances through epistemic disclaimers such as 'ik weet het niet' (English: "I don't know (it)"), which contrasts with their institutionally assigned epistemic authority. In the current study, we have…

This chapter presents how I integrated Virtual Exchange (VE) programmes delivered by Soliya in two courses at an international undergraduate liberal arts and sciences college. In both cases the VE programme was fully integrated in the courses as a graded element. The students of beginner Italian participated in the four-week long Connect Express.…

In CLIL contexts, school subjects are taught in an additional language, allowing learners to acquire the target language through meaningful use. This places language teachers in an ambiguous position. What is their role in this context? On the one hand, language teachers are expected to collaborate with subject teacher colleagues; on the other…

This study aims to explore Chinese students' experiences in the Dutch higher education system with a focus on classroom pedagogy. Based on interviews with 28 Chinese students from eight higher education institutions, it analyses Chinese students' understanding and reflections of teaching and learning practices, and the challenges they encounter.…

The role that teachers have in assessing student coursework is crucial. Their "determination" that a particular piece of student's work is "acceptable" has many serious consequences. With a lack of debate surrounding assessment, practices may become mired in conventions and disconnected from issues such as knowledge, power and…

This article presents an overview of a newly designed course in materials development at a teacher education institute in the Netherlands. It also includes an evaluation of the course by its participants, student teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Dutch secondary schools. The course overview describes the aims and objectives of the…

Background: The gender gap in education in favour of girls is a widely known phenomenon. Boys generally have higher dropout rates, obtain lower grades, and show lower engagement. Insight into factors related to these academic outcomes could help to address the gender gap. Aims: This study investigated, for Dutch language classes, (1) how boys and…

This article describes a collaborative self-study undertaken by two teacher educators who sought to examine the impact of writing reflective journals and sharing them with students in their foreign language methodology classes. The study documents the process of undertaking the typical student assignment of keeping a reflective journal and making…

In the project "Learning for Life" we developed a hermeneutical--communicative model for worldview education that answers the European challenges of worldview diversity and worldview illiteracy. We implemented the model in a participatory action research project at nine schools for primary education in the Netherlands and monitored the…

Every now and then the feminisation of the teaching force is put forth as a barrier to reduce educational equality between the sexes. The feminisation of education is supposed to have a negative impact on boys' achievement, causing educational as well as behavioural problems. It is not just boys who allegedly suffer; over the years, the…

Dutch prevocational secondary schools are reforming their educational programmes to make them more competence-based. This reform has substantial implications for the roles played by teachers. Yet, little empirical research has been conducted on teachers' processes of competence development in vocational settings. This study explores teachers'…

In the light of recent trends in educational assessment, language testing and the pedagogical discussion about new teacher roles, this article focuses on the skills and abilities required of a language teacher wishing to respond to these developments, with specific reference to the primary (elementary) foreign language classroom. A new concept is…

The concerns, problems, mood, and directions of foreign language education in Holland are described. One-year "bridge classes" were established by a bill in 1958 to span the gap between the six years of elementary school and the beginning of higher-level education. The basic conflicts within the system and the society that have prevented…

This article presents the Let's Talk project as a different approach to oral language development. This approach was based on observations of classrooms in the Netherlands where children talked at large tables while playing with miniature figures representing people and objects they were familiar with in their daily lives. It was also influenced…