Session Information
WERA SES 07 D, A Global Perspective on Multiple Languages in the Classroom
Paper Session
Contribution
Overview
As in many nations, globalization and recent immigration flows are drastically changing the linguistic and educational landscape of Sweden. In 2014, twenty percent of Sweden's school-age population was either born outside of Sweden, or are children of immigrants who speak a language other than Swedish at home (Statistiska Centralbyrån 2014). The most widely spoken heritage languages (HLs) in Sweden include Arabic, Bosnian/Croatian, Spanish, Somali, Kurdish, Persian, and Polish. Since 1977, Swedish educational policy has guaranteed HL instruction (modersmålundervisning) for students in primary and secondary schools with a home language other than Swedish (Hyltenstam and Milani 2012). With the principal of freedom of choice, immigrant parents can decide the extent to which their children maintain and preserve their cultural and linguistic identities through HL instruction in school.
In contrast, as in much of Europe, radical anti-immigrant sentiment is increasing vertiginously in Sweden. This research centers on how HL teachers and students position themselves and are positioned in relation to political discourse and policies regarding HL instruction at a Oak Tree Elementary School (pseudonyms are used throughout this proposal), located in a marginalized immigrant neighborhood in one of the countrie’s major industrial cities. Three key questions guided this study:
- How do HL teachers perceive of their roles within school?
- What are HL students’ perspectives on HL learning?
- How are teachers’ and students’ ideologies toward HL enacted in the HL classroom?
Theoretical Framework
An ecology of language perspective was adopted in order to examine how language learning functions in relation to sociopolitical, demographic, and educational contexts (Hornberger 2006, Ricento 2000, Skutnabb-Kangas 1996, Van Lier 2004). An ecology of language framework focuses on the power relations undergirding language planning and use, and rests on the premise that policies of language of instruction for one language necessarily impacts planning and outcomes for other languages. Inherent within this framework is the idea that to understand learning, one must observe a learner’s verbal and nonverbal interaction in their learning environment, and a teacher’s perspectives within the context of their teaching.
Language policies are influenced by beliefs about language, and language has long been regarded as a component of membership equated with patriotism, national identity, and a rightful place in society (Blommaert and Rampton 2011; Grosjean 2010). While a tool for recognition, language can also be seen as a proxy through which inequality is legitimated and reproduced (Hornberger 2009; Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson 2000). The distinction between additive and subtractive bilingualism is also important to this study. Additive bilingual education refers to programs in which the first language continues to be developed along with the second language. In subtractive bilingual education, learning the second language restricts first-language development, potentially resulting in language loss (Roberts 1995). Ultimately, the ways in which schools promote or prohibit HL proficiency are inherently tied to broader ideologies regarding membership and integration. These perspectives help to situate heritage language instruction and learning within Sweden’s changing social and political landscape.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Blommaert, J., and Rampton, B. 2011. “Language and superdiversity.” Diversities, 13(2). 1-22. García, O. 2014. "Countering the dual: Transglossia, dynamic bilingualism and translanguaging in education." In R. Rubdy & L. Alsagoff (eds.), The global-local interface, language choice and hybridity (pp. 100-118). Bristol, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters. Gutiérrez, K. D., & Rogoff, B. 2003. “Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice”. Educational Researcher, 32(5), 19-25. Hornberger, N. H. 2009. “Multilingual Education Policy and Practice: Ten Certainties (grounded in indigenous experience).” Language Teaching 42(2): 197-211. Lainio, J. 2013. “Modersmåls erkända och negligerade roller” [The Acknowledged and Neglected Roles of Mother Tongues]. In Symposium 2012: Lärarrollen i svenska som andraspråk [Symposium 2012: The Teacher Role in Swedish as a Second Language], edited by M. Olofsson, 6696. Stockholm: Stockholms universitets förlag. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. 2009. The stakes: Linguistic diversity, linguistic human rights and mother¬tongue¬based multilingual education ¬ or linguistic genocide, crimes against humanity and an even faster destruction of biodiversity and our planet. http://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/pdf/Tove_Skutnabb_Kangas_Keynote_presentation_at_Bamako_International_Forum_on_Multilingualism_Bamako_Mali_19_21_Jan_2009.pdf Skutnabb-Kangas, T. & Phillipson, R. 2000. “The world came to Sweden, but did language rights?” Current issues in language and society, 7 (1). 70-86. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. 1996. Educational language choice - multilingual diversity or monolingual reductionism? In Hellinger, Marlis & Ammon, Ulrich (Eds.) Contrastive Sociolinguistics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 175-204. Valdés, G. 2005. “Bilingualism, heritage language learners, and SLA research: Opportunities lost or seized?” The Modern Language Journal, 89(3), 410-426. Van Lier, L. 2004. The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Wiley, T.G., Garcia, D.R., Danzig, A.B. and Stigler, M.L. 2014. “Language Policy, Politics, and Diversity in Education.” Review of Research in Education, 38: vii-xxiii.
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