Ed Elbers
Abstract
Thinking Together in culturally diverse classrooms in the Netherlands
Dutch primary schools have on average 15% of pupils from families with a migration background; this percentage is above 50% in the big cities. Dutch educational statistics show that pupils with a migration background do not achieve at the same level as their native Dutch peers. Over the last decades, progress has been made in migrant pupils' achievements in mathematics, but their competence in Dutch (the language of instruction in Dutch schools) poses a continuous problem. We made observations of peer collaboration during mathematics lessons in grades 5 and 6 of a multi-ethnic primary school. The school's team of teachers organized collaborative work in the classroom as a cognitive challenge, but also as a means to foster a multicultural spirit in this school. We found that the quality of collaboration was not high, partly because of language problems and cultural differences. In order to raise the level of collaborative work and to stimulate exploratory talk, we introduced the Thinking Together program (Dawes, Mercer & Wegerif, 2002). For applying the program in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, we made a number of additions and changes. Recently, we started using the program in three schools (grades 5 and 6). In this presentation I will relate in which respects and how we adapted the program, taking cultural and linguistic diversity into consideration. I will present some first results of conversations by pupils about the ground rules of collaboration and talking together, and ask if these conversations reflect cultural diversity. I will discuss to what extent these conversations can be a starting point for developing the social as well as the talking and thinking skills of these pupils.
Profile
Ed Elbers (E.Elbers@uu.nl) is a professor of communication, cognition and culture at the Department of Pedagogical and Educational Sciences of Utrecht University. His research is on learning and social interaction in classrooms, in particular in culturally diverse classrooms. He is coordinator (together with Guida de Abreu) of the Special Interest Group on Learning and Teaching in Culturally Diverse Settings of the European Association of Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI). He is a guest at Cambridge University during the Easter Term 2009 as a visiting fellow of the Centre for Research on the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).