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Janneke Stuulen, Renske Bouwer en Huub van den Bergh onderzochten hoe leerlingen peerfeedback gaven met verschillende beoordelingsmethoden, en hoe zij deze peerfeedback gebruikten voor het reviseren van hun eigen tekst. De ene groep leerlingen gaf feedback aan de hand van paarsgewijs vergelijken, de andere groep gaf feedback met behulp van een analytisch beoordelingsformulier. De resultaten laten zien dat leerlingen uit de conditie met het beoordelingsformulier meer feedback gaven op inhoudelijke aspecten dan leerlingen uit de conditie paarsgewijs vergelijken, en dat zij deze feedback ook vaker verwerkten. Er is echter geen effect van peerfeedbackconditie op tekstkwaliteit: in beide condities was de tekstkwaliteit na het herschrijven in dezelfde mate verbeterd.

Het gaat niet goed met het tekstbegrip van de Nederlandse middelbare scholier. Eén waarschijnlijke verklaring hiervoor is dat het Nederlandse leesonderwijs vanuit wetenschappelijk oogpunt nogal verouderd is.

De didactisch-inhoudelijke aanpak van leestaken in leergangen is nogal verouderd. Welke alternatieven zijn er?

Observerend leren heeft vrij breed ingang gevonden in het schrijfonderwijs in het schoolvak Nederlands. In het leesonderwijs gebeurt het via modellen op expert-niveau: een docent doet leerlingen voor hoe hij een tekst al lezend begrijpt. Modellen op peerniveau, via het leesgedrag van leerlingen, lijkt nog sporadisch te gebeuren. In onze studie hebben we bij vwo-leerlingen onderzocht in hoeverre het proces achter diep tekstbegrip effectief kan worden onderwezen via oogbewegingsfilmpjes (EMME’s) van lezende leerlingen, teneinde het tekstbegrip te bevorderen. De deelnemers aan de EMME-lessenserie geven achteraf meer van diep begrip blijk dan de leerlingen die zelf teksten lazen en vragen maakten.

There are currently many concerns about the declining reading comprehension of Dutch pupils. According to critics, this is partly because teachers often use ‘texts-with-questions’ in reading comprehension lessons. Indeed, these assignments do not teach pupils to read independently. Teachers should use realistic, purposeful reading assignments and reflect with pupils on how to approach these assignments. In the first part of this book, reading comprehension is analysed in pre-university pupils dealing with ‘texts-with-questions’. These relatively skilled readers read superficially; pre-reading and answering questions about a text are, mostly, separate thinking processes. For a correct answer it does not matter if pupils pre-read texts intensively. It does, however, matter if they can consult texts when answering questions. As such, pupils seem to practice how to answer comprehension questions rather than how to study texts independently. In the second part, an alternative lesson series on ‘deep comprehension’ is designed, based on recent international research. This series focuses on reading independently, realistically and purposefully; pre-university pupils reflect extensively on approaching challenging reading tasks. The lesson series is effective, provided that teachers actively manage reflective discussions. Then, pre-university pupils afterwards show a better understanding of texts and self-reportedly have altered their reading behaviour. The dissertation concludes with eleven recommendations to make reading comprehension lessons for the school subject Dutch more meaningful, up to date and reflective.

There are many concerns in the Netherlands about the level of writing skills of students in higher general secondary education, Dutch havo. That is why five studies were conducted in order to answer our research question: is a writing course that combines several evidence based learning activities effective in the upper havo levels? The studies were intended to tie in with the results of previous research in writing didactics within varied target groups in primary and secondary education in the area of strategy instruction, peer interaction and observational learning. It appears that learning activities that reduce the cognitive load of the working memory are especially effective in writing classes, e.g. through dividing the process of learning to write into different steps and through separating learning to write from writing itself. Based on previous research and the opinion of experienced teachers of Dutch, learning needs that are regularly found in the upper havo levels were taken into account: a need for communication, a need for concrete examples and a need for help with maintaining an overview of learning goals. In view of the advantages that digital and online writing courses offer over writing classes with pen and paper, the design of the writing course included the use of educational software. Results show that digital writing education in which upper level havo students learn strategies in steps by frequently exchanging reader reactions with classmates and by observing and evaluating recordings of the approaches of others has a positive effect on text quality.

The primary aim of this study is to provide information on how effective institutes for Dutch as a foreign language organise their education. As many teachers still seem to be left to fend for themselves in their efforts to improve their teaching, examples of good practice are provided through six case study descriptions of effective institutes. These descriptions are set into the context of the theoretical approaches concerning Dutch studies and the effectiveness of the institutes. It is hoped that this thesis will give these teachers clues as to how to improve their teaching of Dutch as a foreign language. This curriculum study is based upon five sources used to a different extent during its three phases, namely: an extensive questionnaire filled in at the institutes labelled as effective in teaching Dutch as a foreign language; interviews with teachers; interviews with students; observations of classroom practice, and publications/websites concerning the institutes. Great attention has been paid to the triangulation of the data, i.e. the extent to which information originating from these sources leads to a specific perception of the given area, making the description more complete and objective. The choice of the effective institutes is based upon the results of the lowest level of the Certificate of Dutch as a Foreign Language (CNaVT; A2-level CEFR) examination as the students, typically without any existing knowledge of Dutch, reach this level within the first year of their studies. To describe the video/audio recordings of an “as-normal-as possible” teaching week, an adapted version of the taxonomy of the Dutch Inspectorate for Education is used. In the descriptions short transcriptions of these recordings are provided in order to give as accurate as possible a picture of the lessons that were delivered. In the last chapter the future trends are also described. The pillars of this study are: the didactic preconditions, organisational setting, content of the curriculum, and didactic approach of the teacher. Regardless of the history, size, sort, or specialisation of the institutes, the key to their effectiveness seems to be the combination and the complementary character of these pillars. It was concluded that there are many ways in which an institute can be effective. It can be seen e.g. that the selection of students prior to their study of Dutch plays an important role in five of the institutes and three of the institutes have stringent selection criteria during the study period as well. However, there is still one effective institute for the teaching of Dutch as a foreign language where no explicit selection procedures are applied. The general conclusion reached is, then, that what matters and should be greatly stimulated is the quality of the teachers. Even though they do have their reservations e.g. with regard to making/applying institutional policies, they make a great effort to improve the effectiveness of their teaching. At the end of the day the teachers are the ones in contact with the students and the ones who are (or should be) making sense of the teaching. That is why it is essential to have good and motivated teachers who are able to compensate for the missing or insufficiently realised elements of the teaching programme.

The writing skills of students in primary education show large defects. It has been shown that they do not practice frequently nor are they provided with enough guided instruction in employing writing strategies. In the Netherlands the computer program TiO-schrijven (Bok, 2003) aims to offer this support to pupils in order to enhance their writing performance. It is examined experimentally whether the claims of TiO-schrijven can be empirically supported. With this purpose in mind the writing performance of students of the eighth grade in primary education is compared in three conditions, that differ from each other in intensity of training, with or without a computer and in scaffolded help in all stages of the writing process. By using more writing assignments per measuring moment it is possible to get a better indication of the quality of the writing samples. The texts were assessed by means of a so-called holistic scale scoring, each test has been rated by multiple raters. It has become clear that positive effects are detected when students write weekly using the computer program TiO-schrijven. Unfortunately, this study does not demonstrate whether any of the didactic principles in TiO-schrijven are individually tenable. Global judgments about text quality cannot indicate precisely what features of the writing-process have caused those effects. As part of an analytical assessment an extra condition was added. This was done because data of a national study were available. By reviewing this analytical assessment it could be asserted that the sample is representative of the total population. The measurement of writing is problematic not only due to the variability of writers (i.e. a writer may write a very good text on one occasion, but a poor text at the other occasion), but is also due to the variability of raters. If different raters give different ratings to the same product, not only reliability, but validity issues are at stake as well. Therefore it has been suggested that many of these problems could be circumvented by measuring writing with a multiple choice test. However, such a multiple choice test appears to correlate poorly with observed global writing scores. Hence, we have to conclude that there is serious doubts about the validity of multiple choice tests to evaluate students’ writing ability. The computer program TiO has shown to be an effective approach to the teaching writing. The writing performance of students who have worked with this computer program during one school year is very hopeful. Future research should focus on strengthening the writing pedagogy as well as on the teacher education and training. Given the importance of good writing for students’ school success it is important that future research on designing effective writing lessons will be performed. It is possible that the computer in general and TiO-schrijven in particular can contribute to so-called 'blended learning': the teacher scaffolds the writer in the communicative situation; TiO-schrijven can be employed as a crafty tool to write