Search

English-medium instruction (EMI) is increasingly common in educational contexts today, especially in higher education institutions (HEIs). The focus of EMI is primarily on the disciplinary content in courses rather than on the English language as a subject. HEIs choose to offer EMI for reasons such as internationalization and marketing, as well as providing students with exposure to the English language, although explicit language goals are not often articulated. In this chapter, EMI in relation to language ideologies, policy, student and teacher perspectives, and multilingualism is presented. Using the twin lenses of “parallelingualism” and “translanguaging,” the possible challenges to linguistic hierarchies and ideologies underlying EMI in Swedish HEIs are considered. The conclusion is that giving implementational and ideological space to languages that are currently not visible – including multiple local languages – may be a move beyond the binaries implied by a call for parallelingualism in the Nordic EMI context.

English-medium instruction, or EMI, may be defined as the “use of the English language toteach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions where the firstlanguage of the majority of the population is not English” (Macaro 2018, p. 1). EMI programmesoften simply involve the practice of using English to teach academic subjects, withlittle or no attention paid to linguistic issues (e.g. Yoxsimer Paulsrud 2014; Toth and Paulsrud2017). However, recent research suggests that students in EMI programmes may benefit fromthe opportunity to use all of their linguistic resources, through pedagogical translanguaging(e.g. Toth and Paulsrud 2017; Toth 2018). Pedagogical translanguaging may include “differenttypes of pedagogical strategies that soften boundaries between languages . . . such as usinginput and output in different languages, translation, comparison of language structures, or theuse of cognates” (Cenoz and Gorter 2017, p. 314). The use of students’ full range of linguisticresources through translanguaging pedagogy may have implications for students’ contentlearning as well as language development, making this a matter of interest for researchers andteachers alike. In the present chapter, we explore the potential role of translanguaging in EMIprogrammes, focusing specifically on the use of translation as part of a translanguaging theoryand pedagogy.

Pre-primary and primary educational settings are changing because of increased mobility, with the resulting classroom heterogeneity posing immense challenges to teachers. Teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and knowledge (ABK) of multilingualism are critical factors in efforts to provide inclusive education for all children. This is corroborated by Borg’s (2003, 2006) discussion of teacher cognition, which addresses the interplay between teachers’ ABK and the pedagogical and language developing practices in schools and classrooms. Four major factors have been identified to interactively shape and be shaped by teacher cognition: teachers’ own schooling experience, teacher education, contextual factors such as the organization of education, and classroom practices. Against this theoretical backdrop, our study investigates Swedish teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and knowledge on multilingualism, an issue of heightened importance in the nation’s current context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with pre-primary and primary teachers from varied school demographics in Sweden. These interviews form part of the first data collection phase of a larger international project, which aims at studying what shapes teachers’ ABK on multilingualism across countries. Interview data collection in four Swedish regions (Dalarna, Småland, Stockholm, Värmland) were transcribed and analysed in Atlas.ti using appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005; White 2015). Results indicate that teachers have positive attitudes and beliefs towards multilingualism. Yet, while educational advantages of mastering more than one language and students’ traditions are highlighted, greater issues of students’ identity appear to play a minor role in teachers’ perspectives. In the school context, Swedish is seen as more important than students’ additional languages, which are often merely seen as an added value not directly relevant to the daily activities in the Swedish school system. Moreover, the findings p

Pre-primary and primary educational settings are changing because of increased migration and mobility, with many classrooms characterized by considerable linguistic diversity. This heterogeneity poses challenges in particular to inclusive education: that is, the aim of offering quality education for all while also respecting diversity as well as different needs, abilities, characteristics and learning expectations. Pre-primary and primary teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and knowledge (ABK) of multilingualism are critical factors to achieving inclusive education. Teacher cognition addresses the interplay between teachers’ ABK and the pedagogical and language developing practices in schools and classrooms. Four major factors have previously been identified to interactively shape and be shaped by teacher cognition: teachers’ own schooling experience, teacher education, contextual factors such as the organization of education, and classroom practices. With these factors in mind, our study addresses multilingualism, teacher cognition and inclusive education in Sweden, offering an empirical investigation of pre-primary and primary teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of multilingualism. We employ a mixed-methods approach (semi-structured interviews and large-scale online survey), studying which factors correlate with these. In this presentation, we offer an overview of our larger ongoing project, before moving to preliminary results from the first interviews with pre-primary and primary teachers from varied school demographics. Our focus is on their experiences with multilingualism in the classroom as well as their insights from their own backgrounds and teacher training. Our results are expected to generate new understandings of teachers’ perceptions of classroom diversity and of children who speak languages in addition to Swedish, as well as how these perceptions are shaped and how they influence classroom practices. Thus, our study will contribute to the theoretical

Swedish schools are experiencing new challenges due to increased mobility and linguistic diversity. Efforts to achieve inclusive education for all are dependent upon teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and knowledge (ABK) of multilingualism. The interplay between teachers’ ABK and the pedagogical and language-developing practices in schools is defined by four major factors interactively shaping and being shaped by teacher cognition: teachers’ own schooling experience, teacher education, contextual factors (e.g. the organization of education), and classroom practices (Borg 2003, 2006). Against this theoretical backdrop, our study investigates the ABK of multilingualism of Swedish teachers, a key issue in the nation today, as part of a larger international project that investigates what shapes teachers’ ABK of multilingualism across countries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with pre-primary and primary teachers from five Swedish regions (Dalarna, Småland, Stockholm, Värmland, and Västerbotten), representing varied school demographics. These interviews were transcribed and analysed using appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005; White 2015). Early results indicate that while teachers generally express positive views on multilingualism, echoes of a monolingual mindset are quite strong (“the language” equated with Swedish; “home country” for children born in Sweden; descriptions of a “monolingual” school as the “perfect school”). Teachers with training in language-developing practices acknowledge that mother tongue instruction supports the majority language development as well as students’ overall academic performance. Nonetheless, using all linguistic resources and acknowledging students’ multilingual identities are not common pedagogical strategies. In the school context, Swedish is considered as more important than students’ additional languages, which are often merely seen as an added value not directly relevant to the daily activities in the Swedish school sys, Ej belagd 220510

Begreppet transspråkande är användbart för att analysera språkande där en mångfald av språkliga resurser ingår. Transspråkande som pedagogik utmanar traditionella förhållningssätt och arbetssätt till förmån för sådana där elevernas språkliga repertoarer erkänns och används i lärprocesser. Transspråkande som praktik innebär därmed att man i den pedagogiska verksamheten utgår från flerspråkighet som norm för människors sätt att vara i och använda språk. Författarna i denna antologi utforskar transspråkande i svensk utbildningskontext från förskola till högre utbildning och i relation till svenska styrdokument och rådande pedagogiska villkor. Syftet är att studera och synliggöra språkideologiska, teoretiska och pedagogiska perspektiv på transspråkande, bland annat som resurs för elevers utveckling och lärande, i förhållande till digitala medier, som meningsskapande praktik, som norm och ideologi samt som rum för transspråkande. Boken aktualiserar på så sätt frågor som många lärare brukar ställa om hur en transspråkande undervisning kan se ut och vad teoretiska och ideologiska reflektioner kring den kan innebära för den dagliga praktiken. Transspråkande i svenska utbildningssammanhang vänder sig främst till lärarstuderande, verksamma lärare och andra med intresse för flerspråkighet och lärande.

This article examines how students' cultural identities are discursively constructed in the Finnish and Swedish national curricula for the compulsory school. The aim is to illuminate the manifold discourses on cultural identity which prevail within Nordic educational policy. The study employs a critical multicultural education and postcolonial perspective with a particular focus on essentialist and non-essentialist views of identity in the curricular discourses. Through discourse analysis, key terms such as 'cultural identity' and 'multicultural identity' as well as different aspects of cultural identities such as language, gender and religion are investigated. The results show diverging discourses, with distinct differences in their explicitness and implicitness in the two countries. A clear effort to see all students as having multi-layered and multicultural identities is evident in the Finnish curricular discourse whereas a more essentializing discourse emerges in the Swedish curriculum. We conclude with a discussion on the importance of addressing policy discourses on students' cultural identities in order to ensure non-essentialist and socially just teaching and educational practice.

The colloquium “Translanguaging and Education: New perspectives from the field” is comprised of recent research that is included in the forthcoming volume with the same name (Multilingual Matters). While studies of translanguaging in bilingual, immersion, heritage, and minority education have become more widespread in recent years, much of the current research centers on contexts in which one of the languages is English and the others are minority or heritage languages. This colloquium, however, contributes to an understanding of diversity in European schools, in which languages other than English are in focus. We include three of the eleven empirical studies in the volume from diverse European school settings (France, Belgium, and Sweden), allowing for an exploration of multilingual educational issues of today. With an aim to stimulate an active discussion on the notion of translanguaging as applied in current educational research, the emphasis will be on the possibilities the concept offers as both a theoretical lens for educational research and as a pedagogy in the classroom, as seen in the three papers. The first paper presents a study of how a French pre-school teacher creates safe spaces through translanguaging with emergent bilingual learners in a multilingual classroom of three- and four-year-old children. The second paper offers comparative case studies from two diverse elementary school classrooms in Belgium, with an investigation into how translanguaging practices may provide pedagogical scaffolding for learning. The third paper presents a comparative study of language practices in Swedish mother tongue instruction (state-funded teaching of minority languages) and the ideologies expressed by the mother tongue teachers, offering a discussion of pedagogical translanguaging. To conclude the colloquium, we will open the floor for a discussion of the applicability of the concept of translanguaging in educational research in diverse settings., Colloquium organised and chaired by Jenny Rosén and BethAnne Paulsrud with Latisha Mary, University of Lorraine, and Andrea Young, University of Strasbourg; Kirsten Rosiers, Ghent University; and Natalia Ganuza, Stockholm University, and Christina Hedman, Stockholm University.

Sweden is a multilingual country: in 2014, 23.8% of students in compulsory schools spoke languages in addition to Swedish. Over 160,000 individuals applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015 many of them children aged 7-16 with the right to education during the asylum-seeking process (Swedish Migration Agency, 2016). While Sweden has educational policies and programs in place to meet the needs of multilingual students, the exceptional numbers of recent arrivals has been a challenge to the educational system. In view of the changing linguistic landscape in educational settings, the aim of this colloquium is to critically analyze how new speakers in a range of educational contexts in Sweden are constructed in policy and practice. To frame the four studies, the colloquium begins with a presentation of language and education in the Swedish context. Following this, the first paper examines compulsory school teacher education, specifically researching how teachers are prepared to meet increasingly diverse student populations. The study considers the perspectives of teacher educators and pre-service teachers in order to understand the ideological and implementational spaces afforded multilingualism in teacher training policies. The second paper explores tensions between conceptualizations and regulations framing languages as "mother tongues" and approaches to teaching Kurdish through the subject of mother tongue instruction to children in lower secondary school. The findings contribute to understandings of the new and traditional speaker dichotomy—a relevant issue in research on heritage or multilingual language education in all contexts. The third paper focuses on other new speakers in a Swedish primary school, namely language minority students enrolled in an English-Swedish bilingual program. As new speakers of both languages of instruction, these students may encounter particular challenges with academic content learning. However, results reveal how students resist language s, Part of the colloquium "New speakers in a multilingual Sweden: Policy in practice".Organised by Jenny Rosén and BethAnne Paulsrud. Additional presenters: Anne Reath Warren and Jeanette Toth (Stockholm University). Discussant: Professor Jeanette King (University of Canterbury, New Zealand).

In the Swedish compulsory school today, at least 140 languages are spoken by students—a situation entailing both challenges and opportunities for teachers. This paper presents an investigation of how teachers are prepared to meet these students, who may be either newly arrived and fairly new speakers of Swedish or students born in Sweden with other languages at home. The focus is on how ideological and implementational spaces for supporting linguistic diversity in the classroom are created and accessed in pre-service teacher training. First, the national curriculum for the compulsory school as well as the education plans and syllabi of obligatory pre-service teacher training courses were analysed, with an aim to identity spaces for multilingualism in these educational policies. Second, a study of teacher educators and pre-service teachers from four national universities was conducted, with semi-structured interviews to elicit their perspectives and experiences. The results reveal a lack of explicit emphasis in the national curriculum on students as a diverse population, with ideological spaces for multilingualism only implicit. Likewise, teacher educators and pre-service teachers generally feel that preparation for how to support linguistic diversity in the mainstream classroom is deficient in teacher education and could be afforded greater attention. With a lack of clear directives in policy and a lack of focus in pre-service training, there are risks of inconsistent interpretation and implementation of practices supporting linguistic diversity in the compulsory school., Part of the colloquium "New speakers in a multilingual Sweden: Policy in practice"Organised by Jenny Rosén and BethAnne Paulsrud. Additional presenters: Anne Reath Warren and Jeanette Toth (Stockholm University). Discussant: Professor Jeanette King (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)

This presentation addresses language alternation in English-medium instruction (EMI) lessons as related to the concept of translanguaging, with a focus on the practices and perspectives of teachers and students in two Swedish schools offering EMI. The research questions were as follows: 1) What patterns of language alternation can be found in the EMI classroom? 2) What are the functions of language alternation in the EMI classroom? 3) How do teachers and students view the use of English and Swedish in these classrooms? The studies, based in linguistic ethnography, included classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students in one elementary school classroom and one high school classroom, as well as the collection of artifacts (e.g. lesson plans). In the thematic analysis of the rich data, key concepts emerged, including the notions of affordances and constraints, agency and translanguaging. The results indicate that language alternation is viewed as an affordance, allowing access to subject content and subject-specific language. Additionally, language choices reveal teacher and student agency in the EMI lessons. Teachers and students may use Swedish and English based on school policy as well as de facto classroom policies, although perspectives on language choice vary. In the elementary school, peer collaboration in Swedish provides support for comprehension and facilitates communication. Use of Swedish is, however, seen by the teacher as a constraint when it resists classroom policies. In the high school, the practice of translanguaging is not explicitly promoted, but is nonetheless a strategic feature of EMI. While this multiple case study may not be generalizable to all EMI, the results suggest broader implications in terms of how both implicit and explicit language policies are implemented in classrooms. Awareness of the possibilities presented by the process of translanguaging may provide educators with a meaningful tool for the development of bi

This article presents a multi-site and multi-method doctoral dissertation study of English-medium instruction (EMI) in the Swedish context, focusing on perspectives and practices in two upper secondary schools. The research explores the status of EMI, reasons schools offer EMI, beliefs about EMI, and implementation of EMI in classrooms. The educational context is studied from an ecological perspective using methods based in linguistic ethnography. The results indicate that the few Swedish schools teaching content through another language tend to offer EMI — not content and language integrated learning (CLIL). Neither language learning nor 100% English instruction are the main goals of the schools.Translanguaging is abundant, affording both pedagogic and non-pedagogic functions. The study concludes that a development of definitions and practices of both EMI and CLIL in Sweden is needed, especially in relation to language policy and language hierarchy.

Swedish education ideology is captured in the motto: One school for all. However, growing numbers of multilingual pupils from diverse cultural backgrounds in the Swedish school system are presenting new challenges to both teacher educators and teacher students. With approximately 20% of Sweden’s population comprised of immigrants and at least 140 languages spoken by pupils in the compulsory school system, questions of affordances and constraints for multilingualism in the school are highly relevant today. While the official response to linguistic diversity is positive, with provisions for both mother tongue tuition and minority language instruction, the question is how spaces for multilingualism are being created in general policy and practice. The present research is part of an ongoing project investigating multilingualism and interculturality in the Swedish compulsory school, through analyses of the discourse of education policy and selected teacher training programs, together with semi-structured interviews with teacher educators, student teachers in pre-service training and working teachers. The triangulation of methods allows for a deeper understanding of how the concepts multilingualism and interculturality are represented: on the one hand, explicitly and implicitly in teacher education in relation to national policy, and on the other hand, in the attitudes of individual teachers and students in response to the multilingual and multicultural classroom. This paper will present two aspects of the current study of ideological and implementational spaces for multilingual education. The first part is an analysis of the development of the national curricula from 1994 to 2011 (with addenda 2015), focusing on the implicit and explicit conceptualizations of multilingualism in the texts; and the second part is an exploration of educators’ perspectives on spaces for multilingualism in their own teacher training programs. The affordances or constraints these spaces offer

While Finland and Sweden are internationally known for having education systems promoting equity and equality, recent societal and political changes linked to increased immigration have created new challenges in efforts to support diversity in these contexts. Concepts such as multilingual education and intercultural education commonly aim to promote equality in education and are well established in the Nordic educational field. However, these concepts have been subject to constant re-conceptualizations and shown to be vague both in theoretical and practical use. The present study aims at clarifying the conceptual frameworks in the two countries, with a focus on the discourses on multilingual education in the respective national curricula. This study represents one part of the larger research project, MINTED (Multilingual and Intercultural Education in Sweden and Finland), investigating national policies, teacher training and teaching practice. The comprehensive school curricula from Finland (2014) and Sweden (2011), together with other selected relevant policy documents, were analyzed using discourse analysis. In the Finnish curricula there is an explicit discourse of a pluralist-oriented education, which places multilingual education and social justice issues at the forefront. While language is key in the Swedish curricula, multilingual and intercultural education are not explicitly covered, but may be gleaned from the focus on human rights and democracy. Thus, the analyzed education policies create different implementational and ideological spaces for multilingual education. These spaces are key to our possibilities as educators to promote linguistic diversity and social justice in the schools of today’s global societies. Therefore, the next step in the MINTED project will be an ethnographic study of classroom practices, investigating how teachers re-contextualize current national policies in diverse education settings., MINTED Multilingual and Intercultural Education in Sweden and Finland

Swedish education ideology is summarized in the motto: One school for all. The growing number of multilingual pupils from diverse cultural backgrounds in the Swedish school system is, however, presenting new challenges, giving intercultural competence as a specific skill for teachers increasing importance. The present research is part of an ongoing project investigating the relationship between Swedish education policy and teacher training programs, focusing on the concept of intercultural competence, especially in relation to multilingualism and the notion of pluralism. The examination of the connection between official policies at a macro level and the perspectives of teacher trainers and teacher students at a micro level is accomplished through three sub-studies: 1) an analysis of the discourse of Swedish education policy; 2) an analysis of selected teacher training programs at Swedish universities; and 3) semi-structured interviews at the same universities with teacher educators, student teachers in pre-service training and mentor teachers who guide the student teachers during their practical work experience in the classroom. The first sub-study concentrates on the Swedish school law from 2010 (Skollagen, updated 2015) and the Swedish national curriculum from 2011, the unifying legal documents by which all schools must abide. The second sub-study targets teacher education at both a large university with a broad national intake of students and a smaller university with a primarily regional intake. In the third sub-study, the three informant groups offer views on whether the concept of intercultural competence is apparent throughout each step of the process from the university classroom to the student perspective to the compulsory school classroom. Of special interest are the approaches employed by teacher educators in equipping teacher students with skills to effectively meet potential challenges and the practices promoted as appropriate for the classroom by the