Proud to be tvmbo - Kortlopend Onderwijsonderzoek

sidering CLIL methodology training and some have made a tentative start, but believe
that improving English is the initial priority. CLIL methodology will come at a later
stage. This links nicely to the literature study, which also indicates that teachers’ language
skills development should be a first priority, before CLIL methodology training.
Extra hours
Some schools provide their teachers with extra hours if they are working in the bilingual
stream in their first year of being a CLIL teacher, since it is considered more demanding
than teaching in the regular stream.
CLIL methodology and professional development
In response to the question about how schools are working on CLIL methodology and
professional development, the answer from all schools was that this aspect of tvmbo
was not yet applicable. Schools embarking on tvmbo consider the English of their
teachers to be more important at the moment than professional development in terms
of methodology. Schools do have plans for CLIL methodology improvement in the
future. Some schools do send teachers on CLIL courses in the UK, for example at Pilgrims
in Canterbury (http://www.pilgrims.co.uk), or on a study tour abroad with the
European Platform. This motivates the teachers immensely.
Teacher selection
The coordinators were questioned about how teachers are selected to work in tvmbo.
There are several different responses to this question. At one school, all the teachers
are required to teach in tvmbo, since the school policy is that projects in English form
part of the whole vmbo curriculum. At another school, teachers volunteer to teach in
tvmbo and are then tested to see if their English level demonstrates that they are capable
of teaching in English.
Some schools choose to invite experienced tvwo teachers to work in tvmbo; others
choose consciously not to do so, since they feel that tvmbo teachers should be those
who know how to deal with this particular kind of student. The main advantage of
having experienced tvwo teachers work in tvmbo is that their English is already more
fluent.
5.3.2 Parents’ role
We also asked the coordinators about the role of parents in making tvmbo a success.
At the moment, only some of the schools work with parents in tvmbo. One school has
a committee of parents for tvmbo which meets three times a year. These parents are
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