This PhD thesis provides valuable insights into the factors that contribute to bilingual development in Dutch-English bilingual primary education. Overall, it can be concluded that bilingual reading development is influenced by a complex interaction of environmental and individual factors. A literate home and classroom environment, parental and teacher expectations, and cognitive skills all contribute to children's early reading development in both their L1 (mother tongue) and L2 (second language). The findings highlight the importance of creating supportive literate environments both at home and in the classroom, setting high expectations for children's language development and promoting the cognitive skills needed for bilingual literacy. This shows that bilingual education programmes need to take a holistic approach to support children's reading development, taking into account both executive functions and cognitive factors.
Hedi has been teaching at the Jena Plan school De Lanteerne (Conexus Foundation) since 2013 and is the coordinator of the bilingual unit there. In this role, she is responsible for developing the curriculum, monitoring and coaching teachers and participating in the national pilot for bilingual primary education. In 2017, she received a PhD grant for teachers from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). She started her PhD project in April that year, dividing her time between teaching (two days a week), bilingual primary education coordination (one day a week) and PhD research (two days a week). In the last year and a half of her project, she resumed her full-time position at De Lanteerne while completing her PhD thesis in her spare time.