Een Taalportfolio Voor Docenten In Het Basisonderwijs

This article focuses on the development of a language portfolio for teachers in primaty education. Portfolios are being used more and more in education, particularly in higher education. But also in primary education, a language portfolio for pupils (which has been accredited by the European Council) has been introduced and turned out to be useful, especially in schools with a multicultural population. Following the same guidelines as in the pupil's portfolio, a language portfolio for teachers has been developed. The first version of this portfolio has been used in a small-scale evaluation. It turned out that the language portfolio for teachers can function as an instrument for the evaluation and documentation of the language, didactic and cultural knowledge, and skills of teachers. Teachers can use the portfolio to assess their own proficiencies and to collect and store documentation of their proficiencies. Major differences were foundin the views of language teachers in primary schools (teachers of Turkish and Arabic) and those of general teachers. The latter group expressed their doubts about the usefulness of the language portfolio in their teaching situation, as teaching language (meaning: teaching English) is only a small part of their task. Recent developments in primary education, however, seem to point to a growing importance of languages in this type of education. In this case, language portfolios could prove to be useful instruments.