Many pupils in the Netherlands lack a sense of belonging to their school. This applies not only to pupils who were not born in the Netherlands, but also to pupils with parents of which at least one was born outside the Netherlands (Andriessen et.al. 2020; Dagevos et.al., 2022). At the same time, concepts such as ‘cultural awareness’ and ‘cultural reflexivity’ have become increasingly prominent in educational and didactic discourse in the Netherlands, and particularly so in the reform of the Dutch modern foreign language curricula (see e.g. Krijnen 2024, SLO 2024). Here, diversity, equality, inclusion and participation are shared values expressed through language during the learning process. Thanks to initiatives such as DUDOC-alfa, there is an increasing interest in academic research on language and cultural awareness in the Netherlands. What has hardly been researched yet, however, is the question of what role the school as a context plays in relation to language and cultural awareness. This notwithstanding the fact that every school in the Netherlands is legally obliged to ensure a school culture that promotes social cohesion (Wet voortgezet onderwijs 2020, artikel 2.2). The aim of this research project is to gain more knowledge about the role of the school context in connection with the development of cultural reflexivity in the German foreign language classroom. The results will contribute to the field of modern foreign languages didactics in the Netherlands and school practice, as a whole. The envisaged outcome of this project consists of four scientific publications and an advisory report for the government, school boards and teachers. The results will also contribute to a vision on multilingualism and pluriculturalism desired by many schools.
We study the impact of school context on cultural awareness and reflexivity through the school subject of German. First, because there has been interest in cultural awareness and cultural reflexive learning especially in the research on German as a foreign/second language for many years (Koreik/Fornoff, 2021; Schweiger, 2021). Second, by virtue of the geographical proximity to German-speaking countries, German is an important school subject in the Netherlands, with school-exchange often on the agenda. However, it is also a subject perceived by many students as 'not interesting' and 'not necessarily useful' but often mostly 'neutral' (van Dée et. al., 2017, p. 66). Due to this ambiguous position of the German classroom in the Netherlands, it lends itself as a subject of research from the perspective of cultural reflexivity. Although there is more expertise in the field of culture-reflexive learning in German-speaking countries, it is noticeable that less attention has been paid to the school as a context, too. This is remarkable because the school environment is the primary context for learning a new language for almost all learners regardless of their background.
The project involves secondary schools with all educational levels (vmbo, havo and vwo). The project is operationalized in four sub-studies:
- Which theoretical concepts are related to the concepts of 'school culture' and 'development of cultural reflexivity’ in the context of foreign language education?
- In what way is multilingualism and pluriculturalism operationalized in school policy?
- To what extent is school culture perceived as multilingual and pluricultural in practice?
Which characteristics of the school culture promote culturally reflexive learning in the German classroom?
Literature
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