Wiesneus: improving Drents on primary schools

The Dutch society of today is multilingual. Structural attention for different kinds of languages at home and in school is important for the development of the language of a child and its identity. In the Dutch province of Drenthe, different varieties of Drents dialect and German play a vital role in the multilingual surroundings of primary schools. To support teachers of primary schools with promoting multilingualism, the website Wiesneus provides information, teaching materials and tools. What are the needs of parents and teachers concerning this website and how do they differ? MA-student Communication and Information Sciences and new research fellow at NHL Stenden Esma Mousavi Torshezi did her research on this subject.

This research consists of ten in-depth interviews with parents and primary school teachers. These interviews are analysed following the content analyzing method. This method showed that teachers and parents have more common needs and visions on multilingualism than expected. Also they valued the Drents dialect more than they expected of each other. To help bridging this gap, Wiesneus can offer more structural communication to share the different views and common visions via blogs, polls, etc. Teachers also mention the absence of a continuous learning model to help improve Drents on primary schools. This research advises the development of a digital learning method of the Drents language within the Digi+ project.