STEM refers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. 

Children, parents, and educators using all the languages they know (no matter their proficiency) to learn. This can be done in many ways, depending on the language skills, available resources, and context. 

Example:  
A teacher explains a science problem in Dutch but uses a bilingual PowerPoint so that their newly arrived Turkish speaking students have some extra language support. After, the students work on the science problem in groups. The Turkish speaking students can work together and can use their Turkish while solving the problem.  

A multilingual person is someone who knows more than one language. For this toolbox, it does not matter how proficient the person is in (speaking, understanding, reading, or writing) those languages, as long as they use them to some extent in their daily lives. 

Example:  
Yasmina’s grandparents moved to the Netherlands from Morocco. Yasmina’s parents speak Berber, Dutch and a bit of Arabic. Yasmina speaks Dutch and also knows some words in Berber. Yasmina is a multilingual child.  

Someone’s linguistic repertoire refers to the languages that they (partially) understand, speak, write, and/or read.  

Example: 
Martyna speaks Dutch at school, Polish with her family and at work, and English with some of her friends. She enjoys watching Korean dramas, and has picked up a few Korean words along the way. Martyna’s linguistic repertoire includes Dutch, Polish, English, and some Korean.  

This is a person, often an adult, who takes care of the child. For example, this can be a parent, grandparent, another relative, or guardian. A child can have multiple caregivers. 

Example: 
Nina (six years old) and her grandmother Aysa live in different towns. Aysa takes care of Nina once a week. Aysa is a caregiver for Nina.  

Following the definition by CBS (2024), A child has a migrant background when at least one of their parents was born abroad (in the context of Multi-STEM: outside of the Netherlands).  

Example: 
Yunus’ parents moved to the Netherlands from Turkey before Yunus was born. Yunus has a migrant background.  

This toolbox considers participation in mathematics and science as a broad concept that includes talking about topics related to mathematics/science, working on these topics (at school, in the museum, or at home), showing interest in these topics, and active listening to others’ discussions on these topics. 

Example:  
A museum guide is explaining an exhibition to a group of children. Maya is one of those children. She is listening to the guide and can follow the guide’s story. When the guide asks a question, Maya starts thinking to come up with an answer. Maya is participating in the guided tour. 

Also called the heritage language, family language, “first” language (L1), minority language, or mother tongue. This refers to the language(s) spoken by a family that is/are different than the national language that is spoken by society. 

Example: 
Muhammad lives in the Netherlands, where Dutch is the national language. He speaks Arabic with his father and Turkish with his mother. Arabic and Turkish are Muhammad’s home languages.  

Did you come across jargon in the toolbox which you didn’t find in this list? Please let us know and e-mail to mutlistem@uu.nl, so we can add it to the list.