Page 213 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

General discussion and conclusions 213 beginning there is faster growth that eventually levels off over the two-and-a-half year period. Besides information on the second language development of newly arrived migrant pupils as a group, we were interested in the differences in development between pupils from DL2-schools and Mainstream schools. There were no differences in receptive vocabulary development between pupils from DL2-schools and Mainstream schools when the general variable Educational Facility was taken into account. The only difference in narrative ability development between the two school types was found for NDW. The effect of Educational Facility was stronger on lexical diversity for younger pupils compared to older pupils, although we refrain from interpreting this interaction effect due to large standard errors. When we looked closer at the characteristics of the learning environment we found several differences in the learning environment between the two school types, DL2-schools and Mainstream schools. All in all, it could be stated that the pedagogical practices at DL2- schools were more teacher-centered compared to Mainstream Schools. The activities were more teachers-led and therefore the interactions in the class were more between teacher and pupils than among peers. At Mainstream schools the pedagogical practices were more pupil-centered with higher scores on taking into account students perspectives and initiatives and more interaction among peers. Some of the differences between the two school types had an effect on the second language development of newly arrived migrant pupils. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to say whether it is better for a newly arrived migrant kindergartener to enter one school type over the other, since some favorable pedagogical practices for language development were more present at one school type and other favorable pedagogical practices were more present at the other school type. Likewise, schools of one type exhibited differences among them with regard to pedagogical practices, yet schools of different types showed similarities. Finally, due to large standard errors, we did not interpret some of the interaction effects since this would make the interpretations unreliable. These effects need to be confirmed with a larger sample. In the next Section we will discuss these outcomes more thoroughly. 9.3 General discussion This chapter continues with a general discussion of the results. The main goal of this dissertation was to answer the following research question: To what extent do pedagogical practices contribute to the second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners in the first two-and-a-half years after arrival in the Netherlands?