About Holi-Frysk
Regional and minority languages, such as Frisian, are growingly coming into contact with migrant languages, as more migrants move to officially bi- or multilingual regions in Europe. Schools, already struggling to meet the standards for the national and foreign languages in the curriculum, are thus faced with the need to update their take on languages. However, how to handle this variety of languages in practice is unknown to many schools and teachers. While some research on holistic approaches (also called plurilingual approaches) for primary education has been carried out, secondary schools still remain under-explored.
The project addresses this issue in the context of secondary education in the bilingual region of Friesland. The aims of the project are:
- To develop an intervention which aims to create more positive attitudes for teachers and pupils towards (learning) the Frisian language and multilingualism. This intervention consists of the development of activities which are based on the specific questions or issues of the participating schools.
- To investigate the effects of this intervention on the attitudes of teachers and pupils, the proficiency of the pupils in Frisian and the multilingual didactics of the teachers.
The project has a bottom-up set-up:
- Question about multilingualism issue from the school
- Activity proposal from the project team by means of a matrix
- Implementation of the activity by the teacher
- Feedback of teacher on activity by means of an evaluation form
- Optimisation of activity for the online toolbox
Holi-Frysk 2.0
Holi-Frysk 1.0
Holi-Frysk 2.0 is the successor of Holi-Frysk 1.0. Holi-Frysk 1.0 showed that using multilingualism in the classroom was of added value to the pupils and their development. The wish to continue this project with more and improved activities, more schools and structured research on the effects of these activities on attitudes, proficiency and didactics, led to Holi-Frysk 2.0.
Holi-Frysk 1.0 resulted in the following developments:
- Content-wise: the first activities for Frisian in language classes and content classes, inquiry-based learning as a principle to involve pupils more in their own learning process.
- Methodologically: a method for working with teachers, also based on questions on multilingualism, top-down and in co-construction: cooperation between teachers and researchers, but also between teachers in one school, and between schools.
- Organizational: school visits, study days for participating schools, presentations at workshops and conferences and a website with the theoretical framework on which the project is based, the developed activities.
Although the results of Holi-Frysk 1.0 were mainly positive, there are a few points which could be improvded, which Holi-Frysk 2.0 will focus on:
- Content-wise: more focus is needed on the connection between the subject Frisian and other subjects, more focus on reading and writing Frisian (in addition to other languages), which makes use of the language necessary, to prevent focusing only on improving attitudes towards Frisian.
- Methodologically: more schools of the same type are needed, which can collaborate more and better. More time should be invested in creating a team on each school to warrant the collaboration and to make the project (and its implementation in the educational system) more sustainable.
- Organizational: the developed activities should be embedded in EduFrysk, to make it accessible for participating schools, supplemented by a platform on EduFrysk where ideas and comments can be exchanged.
Duration
01/01/2019 - 31/12/2020
Funding
Povince of Friesland
Coordinating partner
NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, research group Multilingualism & Literacy
Partners
- The department for secondary educational studies at the NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, to integrate the newfound knowledge in their study programs (for languages and content subjects)
- Afûk for integrating the activities in the digital ;environment EduFrysk;
- Cedin for distribution in (multilingual) secondary education;
- Mercator Kenniscentrum for national and international dissemination;
- Team Kurrikulum.frl for a broader integration and development in the context of the new curriculum for the subject Frisian;
- University of Groningen for the connection with the bachelor’s study program Minorities and Multilingualism and the master’s program Multilingualism.
In the schoolyear 2017-2018 Holi-Frysk 1.0 was conducted, a pilot study which preceded the current project. This project was based at the Mercator European Knowledge Center for Multilingualism and Language Learning (part of the Fryske Akademy). This project investigated a holistic approach to multilingualism on three secondary schools. Three types of schools participated:
- A trilingual school (Dutch, English and Frisian as language of instruction)
- A school in the city with mainly Dutch-speaking pupils
- A school with recently immigrated pupils (international transition class)
In collaboration with these schools, we developed and implemented activities for multilingual education. Subsequently, these activities were evaluated, improved and completed to be part of an online toolbox which can be used by all schools.
De developed activities were promising for the improvement of the position of Frisian in secondary education. The materials were intended to:
- Improve the status of Frisian, and by this, providing a natural place for the language (Frisian on social media, linguistic landscape, new speakers)
- Make the pupils aware of the role of Frisian in a broader context of multilingualism and minority languages (dialects, knowledge on language families, language videos on etymology of Frisian words)
- Combine learning of Frisian with learning of Dutch and modern foreign languages such as German, French and English (metalinguistic activities with affixes, sharing grammars)
- Promote the use of Frisian (and other languages) in content subject, too (geography, economy, mathematics)
Holi-Frysk 1.0 resulted in the following developments:
- Content-wise: the first activities for Frisian in language classes and content classes, inquiry-based learning as a principle to involve pupils more in their own learning process.
- Methodologically: a method for working with teachers, also based on questions on multilingualism, top-down and in co-construction: cooperation between teachers and researchers, but also between teachers in one school, and between schools.
- Organizational: school visits, study days for participating schools, presentations at workshops and conferences and a website with the theoretical framework on which the project is based, the developed activities.
Duration
01/09/2017 - 31/08/2018
Funding
Province of Friesland
Coordinating partner
Mercator European Research Centre
Mercator staff
Cor van der Meer (projectmanager), Joana Duarte (projectleader), Mirjam Günther-van der Meij (researcher), Laura Nap (trainee) and Annika Klein (trainee)
In collaboration with
NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences (Leeuwarden)
