Page 52 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

52 Chapter 2 support by practitioners” (Kutnick et al., 2007, p. 402). These group settings, in which children play and collaborate with peers, may offer children multiple opportunities to develop their social skills and cognitive skills (Diamond & Lee, 2011; Elias & Berk, 2002; Howes et al., 2011). In addition to which activities the pupils are engaged in, the interactions (and following from that the language use in the classroom), are also of interest. According to Rydland, Grøver, and Lawrence (2014), “differences in vocabulary development can to some extent be attributed to variability in the talk offered to young children” (Rydland et al., 2014, p. 214). Note that having interaction with teachers or peers does not necessarily imply that languages being used or words are being learned. Blum-Kulka and Grobett (2014) report on the longitudinal observation of young migrant pupils in the age of 3 to 7 years old and show that in the first months in school there were actually limited conversations, with mainly non-verbal interactions. It is expected that in the beginning the interactions between second language learners and their peers might be of limited help for language learning. According to Cekaite and Aronsson (2014), migrant pupils need to first learn a certain amount of communicative behavior before entering into verbal interactions with linguistically competent peers. Before that threshold is reached, interaction mainly consists of playful keying (using simple words or gestures in their play to get attention) and ranging from light teasing to ceremonial verbal rituals in their play (Cekaite & Aronsson, 2014; Tabors & Snow, 1994). Blum-Kulka and Snow (2004) summarize research on peer learning as follows: “Thus, while peers can be powerful sources of language input and information, they are not helpful to learners in the earliest stages of acquiring the target language. Some social engineering, both of the peer capacities and of the newcomer’s communicative attempts, is necessary to ensure optimal effectiveness” (Blum-Kulka & Snow, 2004, p. 296) Mashburn, Justice, Downer, and Pianta (2009) found that pupils’ development of receptive and expressive language during pre-kindergarten was stronger in a classroom with high peer expressive language abilities (see also Justice, Petscher, Schatschneider, & Mashburn, 2011). However, they also found that initial level of language skills and better classroom management influenced this effect and thus emphasized the importance of investigating language development in a more ecological way. 2.7.4 Pedagogical practices in the Netherlands The general pedagogical practices in the Dutch educational setting have been studied extensively. De Haan, Elbers, Hoofs, and Leseman (2013) investigated whether class composition and teacher-managed activities had an effect on disadvantaged children’s emergent academic literacy and mathematical skills. These disadvantaged children came from ethnic-minority families where at least one of the parents had a weak educational background or these children were from Dutch families where both parents had a weak