Page 293 - Karmen Pižorn, Alja Lipavic Oštir in Janja Žmavc, ur. • Obrazi več-/raznojezičnosti. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut, 2022. Digitalna knjižnica, Dissertationes 44
P. 293
rethinking language teaching: the theory and practice of plurilingual education
hide your language or doesn’t want you to speak out loud you
should be courageous and just say that you want to speak it.
2.3.6 Standardized tests
Scoil Bhríde performs above the national average in the standardized tests
of English and Maths that pupils take each year from First to Sixth Class.
What is more, the test results reflect a fully integrated pupil population:
English-speaking and EAL pupils do not constitute clearly identifiable sub-
groups.
3. Explaining Scoil Bhríde’s success
Having described Scoil Bhríde’s approach in broad outline and given a
summary account of its success, we now explore its main features in greater
detail. We begin with the learner-centredness of the Primary School Cur-
riculum, which provided the basic justification for Scoil Bhríde’s approach.
3.1 The implications of a learner-centred curriculum
Developed through the 1990s, the Primary School Curriculum (Govern-
ment of Ireland, 1999) is strongly learner-centred. Its principal goal is to en-
able pupils to realize their full potential as unique individuals (p. 7); it rec-
ognizes that “the child’s existing knowledge and experience form the basis
for learning” (p. 8) and that “the child is an active agent in his or her learn-
ing” (p. 8); and it stresses the importance of the life of the home, acknowl-
edging that in the primary years parents are the child’s principal educators
(p. 24). The curriculum’s overarching goal and guiding principles imply a
version of the broadly constructivist psychology of learning that has been
current in the anglophone world for more than half a century. The central
claim of this psychology is that we can acquire new knowledge only on the
basis of and in relation to the knowledge we already possess. One influen-
tial elaboration of the consequences of this claim was provided by Doug-
las Barnes in his book From Communication to Curriculum (Barnes, 1976),
according to which education is a matter of bringing “school knowledge”
(curriculum content) into fruitful interaction with learners’ “action knowl-
edge” (the complex of experiential knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs
that shapes their daily lives outside school). Now, the “action knowledge”
of Scoil Bhríde’s EAL pupils has mostly been acquired in a language that is
not a variety of the language of schooling, and it almost certainly includes
293
hide your language or doesn’t want you to speak out loud you
should be courageous and just say that you want to speak it.
2.3.6 Standardized tests
Scoil Bhríde performs above the national average in the standardized tests
of English and Maths that pupils take each year from First to Sixth Class.
What is more, the test results reflect a fully integrated pupil population:
English-speaking and EAL pupils do not constitute clearly identifiable sub-
groups.
3. Explaining Scoil Bhríde’s success
Having described Scoil Bhríde’s approach in broad outline and given a
summary account of its success, we now explore its main features in greater
detail. We begin with the learner-centredness of the Primary School Cur-
riculum, which provided the basic justification for Scoil Bhríde’s approach.
3.1 The implications of a learner-centred curriculum
Developed through the 1990s, the Primary School Curriculum (Govern-
ment of Ireland, 1999) is strongly learner-centred. Its principal goal is to en-
able pupils to realize their full potential as unique individuals (p. 7); it rec-
ognizes that “the child’s existing knowledge and experience form the basis
for learning” (p. 8) and that “the child is an active agent in his or her learn-
ing” (p. 8); and it stresses the importance of the life of the home, acknowl-
edging that in the primary years parents are the child’s principal educators
(p. 24). The curriculum’s overarching goal and guiding principles imply a
version of the broadly constructivist psychology of learning that has been
current in the anglophone world for more than half a century. The central
claim of this psychology is that we can acquire new knowledge only on the
basis of and in relation to the knowledge we already possess. One influen-
tial elaboration of the consequences of this claim was provided by Doug-
las Barnes in his book From Communication to Curriculum (Barnes, 1976),
according to which education is a matter of bringing “school knowledge”
(curriculum content) into fruitful interaction with learners’ “action knowl-
edge” (the complex of experiential knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs
that shapes their daily lives outside school). Now, the “action knowledge”
of Scoil Bhríde’s EAL pupils has mostly been acquired in a language that is
not a variety of the language of schooling, and it almost certainly includes
293
