Promoting primary school pupils’ language achievement: investigating the impact of school-based language policies

ABSTRACT

School-based language policies (SLP) are expected to have a positive effect on student achievement. To date, few studies have empirically examined the impact of such policies on student outcomes. This study investigates to what extent SLPs are related to pupils’ reading performance from an educational effectiveness perspective. In addition, the study investigates whether SLPs have differential effects for pupils at risk of underachievement. Data from a cross-sectional study involving 3,000 pupils in the first, third, and sixth grades of 28 elementary schools in Flanders, the northern Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, were analyzed using multivariate multilevel modeling. Results indicate that one SLP component, team reflective capacity for language instruction, positively affects students’ decoding skills in reading. No differential effects for low- versus high-risk pupils were found.

KEYWORDS:

• School effectiveness
• reading
• primary education
• language education policy
• school policy

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Sven De Maeyer and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive and very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We checked whether both home language and SES could be included in our analyses. Both student characteristics are associated to some extent (Kramer’s V = .34, p < .001), but there is no risk of multicollinearity.

2 Presence of an SLP plan and team are moderately related: Cramer’s V = .39, p < .05.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by SONO (Flemish Ministry of Education) under Grant number ZKD1468.

Notes on contributors

Marieke Vanbuel

Marieke Vanbuel is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Language and Education at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on the implementation of school language policies as a means to improve language and literacy education in primary schools.

Kris Van den Branden

Kris Van den Branden is a professor of Linguistics at the University of Leuven, where he is also head of the Language Teacher Education Department, and the academic promoter of the Centre for Language and Education. His research interests include task-based language education, the role of the teacher in language education, and the innovation of language education. He is one of the editors of TASK, and of the volume series Task-Based Language Teaching: Issues, Research and Practice.