Netherlands: Teachers’ perspectives and practices in Chinese and Polish language and culture teaching

The Netherlands has a long history of immigration. One of the oldest groups are the Chinese and one of the most recent ones are migrants from Poland. Both groups have created clear infrastructures for functioning in the Netherlands. One element thereof are complementary schools, i.e., community run schools that teach Chinese/Polish language and culture to Chinese/Polish students with a migration background, mainly on Saturdays. The teachers in these schools are generally community members who are not necessarily qualified as language or culture teachers. An ethnographic approach to these teachers’ classroom practices and perspectives shows that their professional practical knowledge as reflected in the operational and perceived curriculum domain are oriented more toward highlighting and promoting their home country’s national history, identity, ideology and values than to preparing their students for living in the superdiverse society of the Netherlands in which Dutch language and culture, also for many Chinese-Dutch and Polish-Dutch students are dominant.