Proud to be tvmbo - Kortlopend Onderwijsonderzoek

2 Background literature related to bilingual
junior secondary vocational education
(tvmbo)
2.1 Introduction
Chapter 2 summarizes findings from the short literature review done for the project.
The literature review for this research project aimed to discover examples of and suggestions
for good practice in tvmbo. The literature search does not, however, claim to
be exhaustive, and it is mostly limited to recent literature. Nonetheless, there are some
useful conclusions that we can draw for bilingual junior secondary vocational education
(tvmbo) from studies about learning in a second language around the world.
2.2 Experiences with bilingual junior secondary vocational
education (tvmbo)
The situation in the Netherlands is exceptional: we are one of the few countries in the
world with junior secondary vocational education, although, of course, many countries
start vocational education at a later stage in students’ schooling. We can learn from
other countries’ experiences with teaching content in another language to students at
all levels - from immersion programmes (such as French immersion in Canada), from
work with students who are learning content in their second language (such as Spanish
or Chinese speakers learning in English at school in the USA) and from education systems
where CLIL has been implemented (such as Spain, Finland or Malaysia).
2.3 Reasons for introducing CLIL
The many advantages of CLIL have been well-documented. They are briefly summarized
here from Coyle et al, 2010: 17.
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