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L1 grammar teaching worldwide often takes the form of traditional grammar teaching with decontextualized parsing exercises and rules of thumb. Some researchers have proposed enriching such forms of grammar teaching by relating traditional grammatical concepts to underlying metaconcepts from linguistic theory. The merits of such an approach have become apparent in recent intervention studies, but the question remains how teachers perceive such forms of grammar teaching, which is of particular importance for curriculum development. The present study investigated Dutch teachers' beliefs in focus groups and a national survey (N = 127). It is found that Dutch language teachers see important benefits of a metaconceptual approach to grammar teaching, particularly as a means to improve students' grammatical understanding. However, results also indicate that while teachers may see clear pedagogical and conceptual advantages of working based on underlying metaconcepts, their own teaching practice appears to be much more traditional. This discrepancy is explained by assuming that contextual factors have a restraining effect on what teachers can or want to do in reality. Once such contextual factors no longer play a part, teachers' views tend to be much more geared towards a metaconceptual approach. The paper concludes with some implications for future research.

L1 grammar education is internationally criticised because of its pedagogy and its curriculum content. There is a gap between linguistic theory and school grammar in which the latter rarely makes use of possibly relevant insights from the former. At the same time, linguistics itself has never seriously undertaken attempts to identify the fundamental, theory-neutral conceptual knowledge of the field. Instead, most linguists spend time on defining the boundaries between different linguistic theories, making it harder for language teachers to take advantage of insights that linguistics has to offer. This paper, therefore, aims (1) to establish a theory-neutral foundation for sentential syntax and semantics and (2) to explore the role this foundation should play in language education according to linguists. The experts were asked to articulate the most important linguistic concepts for both the domain of linguistic theory and the domain of grammar education. Twenty-six concepts were identified and ranked in a Delphi study for relative importance in both domains. The importance of the concepts correlated strongly for both domains, making it feasible to bridge the gap between linguistics and school grammar. The Dutch context is taken as a frame of reference, although the study's relevance is likely to be broader.

L1 grammar teaching worldwide often takes the form of traditional grammar teaching with decontextualized parsing exercises and rules of thumb. Some researchers have proposed enriching such forms of grammar teaching by relating traditional grammatical concepts to underlying metaconcepts from linguistic theory. The merits of such an approach have become apparent in recent intervention studies, but the question remains how teachers perceive such forms of grammar teaching, which is of particular importance for curriculum development. The present study investigated Dutch teachers' beliefs in focus groups and a national survey (N = 127). It is found that Dutch language teachers see important benefits of a metaconceptual approach to grammar teaching, particularly as a means to improve students' grammatical understanding. However, results also indicate that while teachers may see clear pedagogical and conceptual advantages of working based on underlying metaconcepts, their own teaching practice appears to be much more traditional. This discrepancy is explained by assuming that contextual factors have a restraining effect on what teachers can or want to do in reality. Once such contextual factors no longer play a part, teachers' views tend to be much more geared towards a metaconceptual approach. The paper concludes with some implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Teachers focus on students' cognitive thinking about language issues. • Teachers misunderstand reflective thinking about language as cognitive thinking. • Teachers try to solve students' uncertainty by taking more control. • Cognitive friction about language fosters linguistic reflective thinking. • Consulting linguistic sources may give rise to reflective thinking. To stimulate their linguistic awareness, students should be encouraged to think critically and creatively. This requires a reflective thinking attitude, which can be fostered by confronting students with language problems without an indisputable solution. However, the absence of an unambiguous answer can lead to uncertainty among students. Little is known about how language teachers respond to this type of uncertainty. In this qualitative study, we examined how teachers (n = 5) responded to and evaluated lessons in which students (n = 78, ages 15–18) were confronted with an ill-structured language problem. Teachers designed and redesigned the lesson over two iterations. Afterwards the final design was tested and students' behavior was analyzed qualitatively. Results show that teachers strongly focused on students' cognitive thinking performance, argued for a need of control, and, although realizing the necessity of epistemic doubt for epistemic development, possibly misunderstood reflective thinking as just thinking about language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Dutch language student teachers have difficulty reasoning about grammar. • Student teachers do not outperform 14 year old pre-university students on grammatical reasoning. • Student teachers show several signs of conceptual confusion for basic grammatical categories. • Student teachers' level of grammatical understanding can predict their reasoning ability. • The elaborateness of their reasoning also predicts their reasoning ability. Grammatical knowledge is an important part of L1 language education. Nevertheless, teachers find it challenging to convey an in-depth understanding of grammar to their students. Previous research suggests that understanding might be stimulated by focusing on grammatical reasoning. The current mixed-methods study explores the grammatical reasoning of 108 Dutch L1 student teachers' in odd one out tasks, showing that student teachers struggle with such reasoning tasks. A multilevel regression analysis indicates that their level of grammatical understanding as measured by a Test of Grammatical Understanding (TGU) and the elaborateness of student teachers' argumentation significantly predict the quality of their grammatical reasoning. Student teachers' performances were also compared to 14 year old pre-university students' performances (N = 120). Contrary to what was hypothesized, senior student teachers did not manage to outperform junior student teachers, nor did student teachers outperform pre-university students. The paper discusses plausible reasons for these findings and explores how teacher education might need to shift focus to better develop student teachers' grammatical reasoning skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]