Page 161 - Getting of the fence

The relevance and usefulness of the Comprehensive Approach
foreign language related content in Dutch secondary education “hardly receives any attention” (de Graaff, 2018, p. 17). That foreign language related content such as literature and foreign language development should be integrated in the foreign language curriculum has become subject of interest in recent curriculum development discussions (e.g. Curriculum.Nu, 2018; Meesterschapsteam MVT, 2018; Schat, de Graaff, & van der Knaap, 2018). The question for future research then remains how both components can be integrated and taught in such a way that they are mutually beneficial in a situation where mutual exclusivity is considered out-dated.
In line with the role and position of content as well as foreign language development within an integrated curriculum, our decision to calculate changes
in the way the eight teachers approached the literary texts needs to be considered.
In section 6.3.3 we mentioned that for the purpose of analysis we assumed an even
distribution between time spent on the four approaches. Although this decision
allowed us to compare any changes between the two years of the eight teachers with
each other, it does raise a few issues. There is no theoretical or empirical justification
for this even distribution, apart from our belief that the four approaches function
as a unified whole and that when addressed in an interrelated way is likely to
support high quality teaching and learning. It could be argued that in a teaching 6 and learning situation where content and language are integrated, the Language
approach should feature a lot more compared to for example the Context approach.
Another argument could be that the balance between approaches should depend
on the learning objectives. For example, when a teacher wants their students to
be able to analyse how the historical, cultural, and social context of the literary
text enhanced their intercultural awareness, one could imagine that the Context
approach would feature often in the lessons. A different scenario could be where a
teacher wants their students to be able to use language from the literary texts their
students studied in their own language production, through for example a writing
task. In such a case, the Language approach would be a more prominent feature.
To summarise, our decision to assume an even distribution enabled our analysis
but should be taken into serious consideration in future research.
How the teachers made sense of the Comprehensive Approach could be connected to the changes the teachers made in terms of time spent on the four approaches. For teachers who experienced a process of accommodation, the time spent on the four approaches changed rather drastically when comparing year 1 and year 2. However, for teachers who experienced a process of assimilation, the
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