Integrating Social Perspective Taking through Social Media in English Class

Abstract

Inspired by a nation-wide project in the Netherlands which started as Onderwijs2032 and now continues as Curriculum.nu, this master thesis investigates how English teachers can develop the curriculum of their schools to help students work towards skills they will need in the future. Given the focus on, among other areas, citizenship education, English and digital literacy skills, this design research project asks what design principles and learning objectives can be gathered through a literature review and teacher interviews for the proposal of a social perspective taking (SPT) and English integrated lesson series in year 5, pre-academic education (VWO 5). This resulted in a list of 10 design principles and five summative learning goals based on which a proposal for an SPT and English integrated lesson series was designed and evaluated during a second set of teacher interviews, which suggests ways in which the design can be further improved for implementation. The proposal is an example of a way English teachers can use the design principles and learning goals to teach a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) lesson series which not only focuses on developing their students’ English-speaking skills, but also helps them become aware of, and further develop, their SPT skills which can aid in their development as critical citizens. In this manner, English teachers can help strengthen the horizontal coherence of the parts of the curriculum at their schools pertaining to digital literacy and citizenship education, which is especially relevant given the Onderwijs2032/Curriculum.nu project.