Page 58 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

58 Chapter 3 3.1 Introduction The main research question of this dissertation is: 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? The present chapter will introduce the extended research questions based on the theoretical background of Chapter 2 (Section 3.2). Furthermore, in the current chapter the methodology of the dissertation as a whole will be discussed (Section 3.3). Finally the participating schools, teachers, and pupils will be introduced (Section 3.4). The participants will be introduced in this chapter because they the same pupils participated in all four sub-studies of this dissertation. Therefore, in Chapter 3 the participating schools, teachers, and pupils will be described in detail, and in the subsequent chapters they will only be briefly discussed with specific tables summarizing the necessary descriptive statistics for that particular chapter. 3.2 Extended research questions Considering the theoretical background of Chapter 2, this dissertation intends to describe multiple aspects of the second language development of 42 newly arrived migrant pupils, aged 4 to 6, in two different school contexts: a) Separate Dutch as Second Language schools (DL2-schools) and b) Mainstream schools. First, because there is not much information about the language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners. Second, even though there seems to be clear organizational and logistical issues between schools that provide separate schooling or not, the pedagogical practices have not yet been thoroughly investigated and compared. Third, there is need for research on the relation between the school learning environment of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners and their second language development. This is the gap of knowledge this dissertation wants to fill. In this dissertation both a linguistic and a pedagogical perspective were adopted. By means of assessments of their second language development linguistic data was gathered and an overview of the pupils’ second language development could be provided. Additionally, two observation instruments were used to investigate the pedagogical approaches in the educational facilities these pupils visit. Those two separate data collections were brought together by investigating the relationship between the educational setting and the second language development of the newly arrived migrant pupils. The second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners was investigated by taking into account the influence of child characteristics as well as the characteristics of the school learning environment. The three major aims were: (1) to gain insights into the second language development of newly arrived kindergarteners; (2) to gain insights into the pedagogical differences and similarities of the different types of schooling for newly arrived migrant pupils; and (3) to investigate to what respect these differences in