'You don't need to know the Turkish word'

Immigrant minority language teaching policies and practice in the Netherlands

Abstract

This paper discusses recent developments in policies and practices of immigrant minority language teaching in the Netherlands. It focuses on the realisation of this provision as ‘language support'. Within this arrangement, an immigrant minority language is used as a medium of instruction for parts of the regular primary school curriculum. Following Goodlad et al. (1979), we identify different versions of the language support curriculum on the basis of in-depth analyses of policy documents from the national and local government (the formal curriculum), and the National Educational Innovation Centre for Primary Education and the Inspectorate of Education (the ideological curriculum). In addition, we analyse policies and practices with respect to language support at a multicultural primary school on the basis of observations, interviews, and school documents (the perceived, operational and experiential curriculum). The analyses reveal how policy makers, practitioners, and pupils differ in their understanding of the notion of language support. They also show how inaccurate assumptions with respect to the pupils' relative command in Dutch and the minority language impact on actual practices of language support.