Belevingsonderzoek onder leerkrachten Nederlands in de FW-B. Kwalitatieve analyse

Details

Supervisors

Pauline Degrave

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques, à finalité didactique

Abstract

enThe goal of this master’s thesis was to bring a qualitative insight into the professional experience of Dutch teachers in the FW-B education system, i.e. the education system of the French-speaking community of Belgium, in times of critical teacher shortage for this school subject in spite of its growing relevance in the eyes of the government which intends to make the teaching of Dutch compulsory for all French-speaking pupils. To do so 12 teachers with various profiles and teaching in different kinds of schools were interviewed. The research questions aimed at the profile of those teachers and their path to becoming teachers of Dutch, at the way they experience their job mainly in terms of advantages, difficulties and challenges, of social acknowledgement, of material preparation and ways of teaching and of strategies to promote Dutch, which is infamously disliked among French speaking pupils. Finally, a look was taken into their own professional ambitions and into their perception of the evolution of the school subject and the education system. Since it is a piece of qualitative research, it is difficult to draw general conclusions because of the diversity of the realities and opinions represented. However, it is striking that half of the respondents were either Dutch-speaking or bilingual and that most second-career-teachers see their job as a teacher of Dutch in high school as temporary and either intend to change subjects or education level. Most teachers – even those who do not have any pedagogical title – declare having had a dramatically rapid and easy recruitment process and to have become precious in the eyes of school management, which testifies of the shortage of Dutch teachers. Respondents generally affirm to be satisfied with their job, mainly because of the contact with the pupils, although main difficulties are the increasingly difficult class management with more self-confident but also fragile pupils, the lack of societal recognition, which may be also found at parents’ and pupils’ level and the low French level of the pupils overall. The biggest challenge is to motivate the pupils to learn Dutch and particularly to make them speak it, which they most successfully achieve through alternative teaching practices, school trips and exchanges. When it comes to their needs, some mainly wish in-service training about the didactics of Dutch and more videos. As for their future, they do not worry in spite of AI, because they feel assured of finding a job as a teacher of Dutch in Belgium, even more so with the coming obligation of learning Dutch in French-speaking Belgium, though they are sceptical about the implementation of this measure because of the dire teacher shortage.