Transcript Intergovernmental Conference Languages of Schooling: towards a Framework for Europe Strasbourg 16-18 October 2006 SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED LEARNERS AND LANGUAGE(S) OF EDUCATION. THE CASE OF FLANDERS PIET.

Intergovernmental Conference
Languages of Schooling: towards a Framework for Europe
Strasbourg 16-18 October 2006
SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED LEARNERS
AND LANGUAGE(S) OF EDUCATION.
THE CASE OF FLANDERS
PIET VAN AVERMAET
CENTRE FOR DIVERSITY AND LEARNING
UNIVERSITY OF GHENT, BELGIUM
[email protected]
The role of school?
• One of main tasks of education: provide skills needed to
function in society.
• School is not the only actor, also parents and broader
environment.
• More knowledge, skills and attitudes can be developed in
certain social environments than in others.
• Compensating for this inequality is a specific emancipatory
task of education.
• Education has to try to ensure that the position that
someone achieves in society does not depend solely on the
opportunities offered by the home context.
Only migrants?
• ‘Migrant children’ are often seen as a category that has
(language) learning problems at school and thus has less
chance of school success.
• Not all migrant children have language and/or learning
problems at school, whereas some so-called autochthonous
children do have language and/or learning problems at
school.
• Unequal opportunities in education and differences in school
success cannot simply be explained in ethnic terms.
• School success is not simply related to a level of language
proficiency, but rather to the way knowledge, skills and
attitudes are communicated and conceptualised at school
and in different social environments.
Equal opportunities in education?
•
•
•
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Children with fewer opportunities have major difficulties in using
education to catch up. Often during education the gap increases. It
cannot be the task of a school to reproduce social inequality.
When success or failure in learning is systematic there is a problem.
In many European countries the number of children with a low SES
is over-represented in the group of low achievers.
For some children, the input they get during the stage of primary
socialisation is not adapted to the norms, interaction patterns,
communication modes and language codes that are taken for
granted in schools today. We observe a mismatch.
Two options for education.
1. No discussion about norms, modes and codes used at school.
‘Prepare’ children through preschool programmes at home or
remedial programmes before entering the mainstream
curriculum. Then education is actually giving its basic function
back to society.
2. The norms, modes and codes at school are negotiable. School
adapts its teaching methods to the observed diversity so that
they can compensate for the children’s differences at the outset
of their school career.
Does language play a role?
• Language is an important element in redressing social
inequality.
• Language is one of the basic instruments for societal
functioning.
• The school’s task is to compensate for language arrears, not to
delegate its task to society by asking it to provide these
children with the necessary language skills before they enter
the school.
• The acquisition of the relevant language skills is inextricably
bound up with learning to carry out a set of cognitive actions
that a socially disadvantaged child does not have to carry out –
and thus does not acquire – in his own social environment.
• The mismatch between the school context and the home
context should not be seen as a deficit or deficiency for the
people belonging to that social group.
• It is simply a difference, one – as has already been stated –
that education has to take into account in its attempt to teach
the language skills that children need to function in society.
Language at school and at home
• ‘Migrant children’ and their ‘language deficit’ are seen as one of
the main problems in (language) education. The fact that they do
not use the ‘target language’ at home is often seen as one of the
major causal factors of their ‘language problems’ and their lack of
success at school. The discourse is often negative and
stigmatising.
• However, it is clear that there are ‘non-native speakers’ who have
no language deficit at school and ‘native speakers’ who do have
such a ‘deficit’.
• Given the fact that it is not just in the case of ‘non-native
speakers’ or migrant children that a gap can be observed, the
question arises whether we are faced with a problem relating to
the children or a problem relating to the school.
• It is also clear from the above that the so-called ‘language
problem’ of ‘migrant children’ is not just a problem of ‘level of
language proficiency’. It is the socio-cultural determined
differences that often explain school success.
• Differences in communication/interaction need to be taken into
account at school and in the classroom.
To remedy or to deal with diversity?
• The school needs to ask how it will deal with the diversity of sociocultural and socio-economic backgrounds so that all children can
acquire the school language.
• Homogenisation can potentially lead to negative effects in terms of
equal opportunities for learning. In ‘lower’ classes, there is a more
limited academic focus, poor use of instructional time and a
reduced opportunity to learn.
• Dealing with socially disadvantaged learners essentially means
being able to deal with diversity and heterogeneity in mainstream
classrooms. Putting socially disadvantaged children in “pull-out
classes” and providing separate curricula and tests reverts to a
purely psychological approach to (language) learning: the
individual child who has a language deficit and who will be better
of if we treat him separately in a homogeneous group of children
with the same “problem”. We then neglect the social cultural
differences and cognitive advantages of learning in heterogeneous
groups.
Multilingual policy at school
• One of the topics that occupy the minds of schoolteachers and
principals – and society at large – is the multilingual context of the
school/class. Many schools seem to struggle with the multicultural
and multilingual nature on the one hand, and societal pressure for
teaching the standard language of the country on the other.
• Schools teach foreign languages. Plurilingualism is strongly
promoted at most schools. Knowing more than one language is
seen as an asset, as something good, as having added value.
When it comes to the languages of migrant children at school,
however, their plurilingualism is seen as a handicap, sometimes as
something bad even.
• In classrooms we observe a diversity of languages and language
varieties. If we restrict ourselves to the standard language only as
a medium of communication, or only allow children to use the
standard language to solve problems, to fulfil tasks in the
classroom, and do not make use of different communication
modes and codes, we miss many kinds of opportunities for the
development of children’s competencies.
Policy in Flanders
Act on Equal Education Opportunities (GOK)
since 2003
• Target population: migrant children AND
autochthonous socially disadvantaged
children
• Aims:
– counteract arrears and exclusion of these
children
– Provide maximal learning and development
opportunities of ALL children
Act on Equal Education Opportunities (GOK)
Three major lines of action:
• The right to enrol your child in a school of
your choice.
• The creation of local consultative bodies
which help implement the GOK policy
locally.
• An integrated support provision.
An integrated support provision
• Inter-university centre GOK (research,
development of teaching material, inservice teacher training)
• Pedagogical counselling GOK
• Local consultative bodies (LOP)
• School internal support structures and
targeted strategies
An integrated approach
• Schools adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach
and a long term and targeted strategy to address
educational disadvantages: Pull-out classes have been
abolished and have made way for additional pupil support
within the mainstream classroom, cooperative learning in
mixed ability groups and contextualized language learning.
• Schools get extra funding for monitoring and support
(priority groups):
– Barge skipper, fairground worker, circus artist, circus manager
or caravan dweller
– Mother does not obtain diploma or certificate of secondary
education
– Child is living temporary or permanently living outside the
family
– Family lives on a replacement income
– Language you speak with your family at home is not Dutch
An integrated approach
• Schools are autonomous in developing an equal education
opportunity plan.
• Plans are developed for a cycle of 3 years.
• Extra funding is provided for a school GOK plan for
recruitment of e.g. additional staff to be used in a
comprehensive approach and not for pull-out classes for
individual remedy programmes for migrant children.
• Second year of cycle schools are obliged to organise selfevaluation.
• At end of cycle external (government) inspection. When
assessment is positive and school still meets criteria
imposed, it can apply for a new 3 year cycle and writes a
new or updated plan.
Six themes
A GOK plan and aims can be developed on
the basis of 6 themes:
– Prevention and remedial programmes
– Language proficiency
– Intercultural education and dealing with
diversity
– Socio-emotional development
– Moving up and school orientation
– Pupil and parent participation
FINAL OBJECTIVES
• No separate curricula for migrant and non-migrant
children.
• Final objectives for language(s) of education are
minimum goals in relation to knowledge, skills and
attitudes.
• Minimum here means that what minimally is needed
(i.e. essential) and for which a societal consensus
exists, to guarantee participation in school and
society. No meritocratic approach.
• Final objectives need to be contextualised (content,
(inter)cultural,…) into curriculum that is relevant for
local situation. Both on the basis of interaction
amongst all actors.
A two way approach
Second or third generation immigrant children
• Regular curriculum from the start (in Flanders from 2,5 years) and
same objectives as non migrants.
‘Newcomers’
• ‘Adapted’ objectives, curriculum and teaching programme. One
year in separate class.
• Newcomers get as far as they can depending different factors
(heterogeneous groups).
• ‘Developmental goals’ instead of ‘final objectives’.
• After one year ‘targeted’ language programme they go to the
regular classroom: still extra scaffolding is given for those classes
or schools (not separating newcomers from the rest of the
classroom at certain moments in time) where these newcomers
are then integrated: learning in functional situations and through
interaction.
‘Newcomers’
• Developmental goals based on real needs of learner:
situations in which he needs the language.
•
Distinction between primary and secondary.
• 15 general objectives
• Made concrete in 4 relevant contexts:
–
–
–
–
Participating at school
Learning at school
Informal contacts in and outside school
Societal participation
Concluding suggestions (part 1)
• Encourage school policies that opt for an inclusive approach
instead of policies of separate homogeneous groups.
• Encourage schools to develop a policy where diversity is
seen as an advantage/surplus for learning.
• Encourage schools to acknowledge social-cultural
differences as a source for learning which is reflected in
their didactical approaches.
• In principle avoid pull-out classes and separate curricula for
different groups of learners as much as possible. Only for
‘newcomer migrants’ and on a temporary basis.
• The gap between home language and school language;
language and learning arrears are not ethnically
determined. SES and social-cultural background often
explain better school success.
Concluding suggestions (part 2)
• Encourage schools to develop a coherent language policy in
which the whole school team takes its responsibility.
• Languages are best learned in context, functionally and in
heterogeneous groups.
• Encourage schools not to delegate its task to society or
home/family to compensate for language arrears before
entering the school.
• ‘Every teacher acting as a language teacher’ is of major
importance for socially disadvantaged students.
• Avoid the implicit message to children that there is ‘good’
and ‘bad’ plurilingualism. Make use of the plurilingual
repertoires of children as an asset for learning.
Intergovernmental Conference
Languages of Schooling: towards a Framework for Europe
Strasbourg 16-18 October 2006
SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED LEARNERS
AND LANGUAGE(S) OF EDUCATION.
THE CASE OF FLANDERS
PIET VAN AVERMAET
CENTRE FOR DIVERSITY AND LEARNING
UNIVERSITY OF GHENT, BELGIUM
[email protected]
NEWCOMERS
Example
General aim:
The students understand a question or
instruction formulated oral or written in
order to (re)act adequately (i.e. Being able
to answer the question or to act according
to the instruction).
NEWCOMERS
Example concrete:
• Participating at school
– The students understand an oral question or instruction from
another student, teacher or coach in relation to class- or school
organisation.
• Learning at school
– The students understand an oral question or instruction from
another student or a teacher in relation to a topic of a teachingleaning activity.
• Informal contacts in and outside school
– The students understand an oral or written informal question or
instruction from a peergroup member or a known adult.
• Societal participation
– The students understand an oral or written informal question or
instruction from a civil servant, an instructor, ... (-)
– The students understand safety instructions, ... (+)