Keynotes

Nihayra Leona 

CLIL Programs for Students in Dutch Caribbean Schools: History and Future


CLIL programs in secondary education have been widely introduced in western countries, but their popularity is also increasing in non-western countries, and especially on the Dutch Caribbean islands Curaçao and Aruba. Compared to western countries, these multilingual former colonial islands face several limitations and challenges that might complicate the widespread introduction of CLIL programs. However, educators and policy makers have discovered how to make optimal use of the multilingual knowledge of students to enforce CLIL programs. 


This talk will focus on the feasibility and effectiveness of CLIL programs on Curaçao and Aruba. Several schools will be presented as case studies, and special attention will be given to both the history and future of CLIL programs on the islands.


Nihayra Leona is finalizing her PhD research at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are in psycholinguistic research, and multilingual education. Her focus is on the contribution of child-internal and child-external factors to the multilingual development of native Dutch students, students with an immigrant background living in the Netherlands, and Caribbean students. Until recently she was director at the school board for mother tongue-based schools on Curaçao, the Fundashon Skol Humanista na Papiamentu. Since shortly she is director at the Curaçaoan governmental school board for public schools, the Dienst Openbare Scholen (DOS).
Rick de Graaff is professor of foreign language pedagogy and multilingual education at Utrecht University. After receiving his PhD from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, he has worked at Utrecht University as a curriculum development consultant, language teacher educator and foreign language acquisition researcher. He supervises doctoral research by language teachers and teacher educators in designing, improving and evaluating their own teaching practices. Rick de Graaff participates in the Erasmus+ KA2 project One Stop CLIL Europe, on whole-school CLIL approaches, with partners from Belgium, Estonia, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

Rick de Graaff

CLIL in a whole school approach: for any subject, any student, any language

CLIL as a pedagogy aims to promote content learning by providing L2 support, and to promote L2 learning by embedding it in subject contexts. At the same time, it aims to enrich students’ intercultural competence and international orientation. Interestingly, all these are learning goals that do not only apply to students in bilingual education, but are relevant to any learner in any educational setting. Learning always takes place through language, new language is needed and developed in every learning context. 

Schools with experience in bilingual education are becoming aware of the potential of CLIL pedagogy for every learner in every subject, regardless of the language of instruction and learning. But how do they support their teams to apply knowledge and experiences from CLIL settings to other streams, strands or departments? How do they make sound connections between CLIL pedagogy and learners from monolingual or multilingual backgrounds? And how do they encourage and support subject teachers to develop and apply language-sensitive and language-rich content teaching?

Building on practices of secondary schools and teacher education in the Netherlands and several other European countries, I will connect CLIL pedagogy to any subject, any pupil, any language, any teacher, any school. Ambitious? Reality!

Header image by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash