Nanke Dokter

Summary 255 skills were correlated with AL input and strategies. Expert opinions were used to categorize five instructional methods (‘explanation’, ‘discussion’, ‘task instruction’, ‘task evaluation’ and ‘organization’) according to opportunities they offer for stimulating students’ AL development. Results showed that the majority of experts agreed with current theories that discussion provides good opportunities for stimulating both AL understanding and AL production by students, that explanation mainly offers opportunities for stimulating AL understanding, and that task instruction and organization did not offer many opportu- nities for stimulating AL. In addition to current theories, task evaluation was considered to offer opportunities for behavior aimed at stimulating AL understanding as well as behavior aimed at triggering AL production by students. Video-observations of mathe- matics instruction of elementary school teachers were analyzed with respect to AL stimulating behavior and instructional methods used. This showed that actual AL stimulating behavior of teachers corresponds to the experts’ opinions, except for behavior shown during task evaluation . Teachers differ in time and frequency of their use of instructional methods and therefore in opportunities for stimulating AL development. Four teaching profiles, reflecting a different AL stimulating potential, were constructed: ‘teacher talking’, ‘balanced use of methods’, ‘getting students to work’ and ‘interactive teaching’. Teachers showed more types of behavior aimed at students’ AL understanding than at AL production. After analyzing the instructional methods used in the mathematics instruction, it became clear that teachers differ in the way they design their instructions. They differ in the time they spend using the instructional methods that offer opportunities for showing AL stimulating behavior and therefore in the chances they create for themselves to use AL stimulating strategies. Teachers’ AL stimulating behavior was investigated in the two instructional methods that showed the best opportunities: discussion and explanation . At first, eight minutes of the AL input of 27 teachers was analyzed. The eleven features of AL, based on theoretical considerations, could be reduced to five main features: ‘lexical diversity’, ‘lexical complexity’, ‘lexical specificity’, ‘grammatical complexity’ and ‘textual com- plexity’. These main features were used in the rest of this research. The results of the AL input analyses showed that teachers varied less in lexical features than in features at the grammatical and textual level. All AL features were used by the teachers and a large variety was found. Overall, teachers more often used AL aimed at content (lexical diversity and lexical specificity) than at complexity (lexical complexity and grammatical complexity). In the textual complexity the variation between the teachers was large. To explain the variation, the found differences were correlated to background characteristics (age, experience, former education) and context (group, class size, instructional method). Age and education showed significant relations with AL input. Older teachers used less textually complex language. Teachers with a higher educa- tional background used more lexically specific language. Grade did also matter: the AL input of teachers in grade 2 was significantly higher than the AL input of grade 1 teachers. Regarding instructional methods, one significant correlation was found: textual complexity was more apparent during discussion than during explanation . Class size and experience showed no relation with AL input. Su