Proud to be tvmbo - Kortlopend Onderwijsonderzoek

Proud to be tvmbo
Teaching in bilingual junior secondary vocational education or bilingual
tvmbo is special. This research project aims to look at good practice
in tvmbo and is written for schools which have just started or which
are considering starting a tvmbo. After an initial literature survey,
interviews, observations and online surveys were used to fi nd out what
teachers, bilingual coordinators and students in tvmbo consider to be
good practice.
From our literature study we see that bilingual education can be suitable
for vmbo students, under certain circumstances. We can predict that
their academic performance in English will probably be better than
their peers in regular vmbo and that their academic performance in
Dutch will probably not be negatively affected. However, schools need
to pay close attention to both Dutch and English language development
and to the development of their teachers as language teachers.
Our study showed that there are different reasons why students
choose tvmbo and that it is motivating for both tvmbo students and
their teachers. Moreover, there are many advantages of CLIL (content
and language integrated learning) for bilingual tvmbo. We discovered
that there are many classroom strategies which are relevant for tvmbo
students Particularly relevant are a cross-curricular approach, effective
collaboration between subject and language teachers and a relevant
internationalization programme.
This report also provides recommendations for school policy for
tvmbo, for European and international orientation (EIO), for teachers
in the classroom, for in-service training and for further research.
The study shows that bilingual vmbo is very feasible, that it motivates
students and improves their self-image. It has also revealed some useful
teaching and learning strategies and described good practice for tvmbo,
for EIO and for in-service training.
IVLOS en Onderwijskunde