Dealing with Multilingualism in Education: A Case Study of a Dutch Primary School Classroom. Jeff Bezemer. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Aksant Academic Publishers, 2003. 222 pp. ISBN 9052601259

JIM CUMMINS

University of Toronto, Ontario

As the title implies, this book focuses on how teachers adjust their instructional practices to the reality of multilingualism in their classrooms. It adopts as a central conceptual organizer the notion of “teachers’ practical knowledge” viewed as a broad pool of knowledge and beliefs about teaching that partly is unique to each teacher based on his or her experience and partly shared with other teachers who have been socialized in similar educational contexts.

The study focuses on one class of seven-year-old students (grade 4 in the Dutch context) and the data are derived from extensive observation of instructional practices over the course of a school year (1999–2000) together with interviews with the main classroom teacher, the Dutch-as-a-second-language teacher, and the language-support teachers. The latter two teachers were involved in “withdrawal teaching” of students perceived as in need of Dutch language support. Students were withdrawn from the mainstream classroom four times a week for half-hour sessions of language support. Two of these sessions were focused on teaching Dutch-as-a-second language with instruction conducted exclusively in Dutch. The other two were taught by teachers fluent in Turkish or Moroccan-Arabic, respectively, and were intended primarily to help students acquire Dutch vocabulary by means of mother tongue instruction. In practice, instruction involved “Dutch vocabulary lessons from a Dutch language arts textbook in Turkish and Moroccan-Arabic” (p. 196).

The author points to inconsistencies in the rationale and implementation of these immigrant minority language-support classes. For example, a number of the students in the Moroccan-Arabic classes spoke Berber rather than Arabic at home with the result that they were receiving Dutch-language support through a language in which their proficiency was likely minimal or nonexistent. Furthermore, research conducted in the Netherlands suggests that by grade 4 (age 7) proficiency in Dutch may have begun to surpass proficiency in the mother tongue for many students. In addition, teachers seemed unsure at times as to the appropriate emphasis to place on Dutch, the mother tongue, or a combination of the two. These classes were abolished by the Dutch government in 2002 on the grounds that “priority should be given to Dutch” (p. 50).

The book includes a concise but useful review of recent research in European multilingual classrooms. This research highlights two types of homogenization with respect to language practices. In the first place, a “monolingual habitus” was typically established by focusing only on teaching the dominant societal language and discouraging use of students’ home languages within the school. In the second place, these studies illustrate how monolingualism was presupposed in instructional practices in ways that ignored gaps in minority students’ knowledge of the dominant school language.

Both of these trends also emerged in the present study. Linguistic homogenization was evident despite the fact that the school was committed to principles of intercultural education. The official school policy articulated a very positive orientation to diversity, describing the school as “a multicultural society in miniature” and promoting intercultural cooperation and understanding between students of all cultural and religious backgrounds. In addition, efforts were made to increase parental involvement and immigrant minority-language classes were integrated into the school program, albeit as noted above, with a primary focus on the teaching of Dutch.

However, the positive intercultural orientation to which the school aspired did not extend to the multilingual reality of the student body, 39 percent of whom spoke a language other than Dutch at home. As summarized by Bezemer:

In other words, the practical knowledge of teachers in the school included the assumption that exposure to Dutch should be maximized and that students’ mother tongues were largely irrelevant to their overall education in Dutch schools.

Contradictions emerged in the classroom teacher’s orientation to minority students’ proficiency in Dutch. On the one hand, he perceived considerable weakness in students’ vocabulary and focused much of his instructional efforts on extending their vocabulary knowledge, primarily through drill-based teacher-centered instruction. However, in teaching math he assumed that his students’ Dutch proficiency was sufficient to understand his mathematical instructions. Consequently, he did not perceive or respond to potential gaps in students’ knowledge of Dutch, for example, their ability to distinguish between subtle nuances in temporal marking.

In conclusion, this book describes a well-executed ethnographic study; it is clearly written and organized and makes a useful contribution in highlighting gaps between the rhetoric of intercultural education and the reality of linguistic homogenization. The title, Dealing with Multilingualism in Education, may express more than the author intended in view of the fact that we typically “deal with” problems rather than resources. Clearly, there is little evidence that minority students’ languages and cultures were seen as significant educational resources in the school context investigated.

©2004 American Anthropological Association. This review is cited and indexed in the December 2004 issue (35:4) of Anthropology & Education Quarterly.