Title of proposal

In between the fields of research of special educational needs and multilingual education – Mother tongue teachers’ narratives on working with multilingual students in need of special educational support

General description on research questions, objectives, and theoretical framework

For most multilingual students, knowledge and language development takes place without major difficulties. However, if the development deviates from what is expected the difficulties need to be investigated and support measures put in place. Complex causes interact when multilingual students need special support. Especially the discovery of underlying causes of school difficulties concerning newly arrived students, seems difficult. For these students, mother tongue teachers and multilingual study guidance tutors constitute an important link between Swedish school culture and home culture (Rosén et al., 2020; Vuorenpää et al., 2020).

Therefore, through the narratives of mother tongue teachers, this study aims to illustrate the pedagogical work with multilingual students with special educational needs. The research questions are

1. How do mother tongue teachers characterize multilingual students in need of special educational support?
2. Which underlying reasons and explanations hindering the learning and developing of multilingual students are described by mother tongue teachers?
3. How do mother tongue teachers describe their working with students in need of special educational support?

By dint of a communicative relationship-oriented perspective, KoRP (Ahlberg, Målqvist et al., 2005), the present study examines how mother tongue teachers characterize their pedagogical work with multilingual students in need of special support and how the underlying causes of the need for support are described.

In Swedish compulsory school several measures are provided to support the students´ multilingual literacy development, including mother tongue instruction and multilingual study guidance. Mother tongue instruction is a non-mandatory subject and is graded according to the subject’s syllabus (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2019). Multilingual study guidance, on the other hand, is not a subject per se, but a short-term, state-financed support, helping multilingual students to reach the learning objectives of subjects according to the different subjects’ curricula within the frame of the mainstream classroom.

When identifying and diagnosing multilingual students’ special educational needs, complex networks of influencing factors interact (Choo & Smith, 2020), external and contextual factors, such as complex linguistic environments, limited access to competent second language speakers or inadequate second language exposure (Marinova-Todd et al., 2016; Salameh, 2020) as well as biological, emotional, psychosocial factors or linguistic, neuro psychiatric or intellectual disabilities (Salameh, 2003). Both research fields of multilingual education and of special educational needs must be taken in consideration. Unfortunately, because of the gap between those two fields, many multilingual students in need of special educational support fall between cracks (Cioè-Peña, 2017, Howard et al., 2021; Lopes-Murphy, 2020; Martínez-Álvarez, 2019). Therefore, this study contributes with important knowledge about the characterization and instruction of multilingual students in need of special educational support. 

Methods/methodology The present study is based on qualitative methods for collecting and analyzing data. For sampling an electronic, closed-formed, and user-friendly questionnaire (Perry, 2011:132) was distributed to all the mother tongue teachers working in one middle-sized Swedish municipality. After a purposeful selection, 13 individual, thematical open-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted. The aim was to obtain a “maximum variation” through “purposeful sampling” to gather in-depth information (Perry, 2011:59). By gathering information from “a cross section of cases representing a wide spectrum” (ibid.) and by choosing one teacher or tutor from each linguistic group, the highest possible representativeness was obtained. The qualitative approach enables the exploration of lived experiences of the interviewees (Obondo, Lahdenperä & Sandevärn, 2016). Open-structured interviews and an interview guide were used in order to let the interviewees develop their story about their work life at their own pace (Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995; Perry, 2011). The interview guide has been thematically constructed and covered several areas of a teacher’s working life (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2014). To ensure ethical standards, and according to the WMA declaration of Helsinki, all the teachers were informed of the voluntariness of participation and the de-identification of their own names, schools and pupils mentioned during the interviews (Swedish Research Council, 2011). The interviews took place during the spring 2020 and were all audio recorded. To reduce possible power asymmetries during the interviews the interviewer described herself as a humble apprentice visiting their reality and learning from their experiences. Directly after every interview the recordings were labeled with the date and the participant’s alias, saved in a safe archive, and deleted from the recording device. To achieve a sense of the data set as a whole, the interviews were listened to several times in their entirety. Thereafter a meticulous, thematical summary was made for each interview and all the passages concerning special educational needs were transcribed. Through inductive analysis all the responses concerning special educational needs were coded, and patterns were identified (Reath Warren, 2013). Since the analysis of the data did not indicate a necessity to reveal either the individual’s ethnicity, sex or age, those facts are not described. However, to show the representation of a wider spectrum, the different languages, backgrounds, and educational levels are mentioned (Swedish Ethical Review Authority, 2021).

The mother tongue teachers characterize multilingual students whose behavior or language development deviates from the norm in need of special educational support, such as students who cannot read or write, students with diagnoses or disabilities, and students who due to the consequences of migration feel unwell. The underlying causes hindering the learning and developing of multilingual students are described as very complex interacting networks. Individual factors, such as psychological, social, and medical explanations as well as socio-cultural, communicative, socio-emotional, and physical aspects are mentioned. Migration experiences and war trauma, previous schooling experiences, psychosocial and motivational factors as well as biological barriers such as linguistic, neuropsychiatric, or cognitive disabilities are discussed. External factors such as the socio-cultural context, complex linguistic environments, parental background, and socio-economic status are also addressed. When it comes to working with students in need of special educational support the following support measures: individualization and variation of methods inspired by their own background and proven experience, interdisciplinary cooperation with teachers, special educators, and school psychologists, trying to ease differences between home culture and Swedish school culture. However, the mother tongue teachers’ descriptions of the deviant, the underlying causes and how certain phenomena are interpreted are strongly dependent on their personal experiences, backgrounds, and levels of education, and thus the support measures vary to a great extent. To meet the multilingual students' special educational needs in a more scientifically based approach and a more holistic way, the study discusses the need of structural changes facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, a more uniform educational path for mother tongue teachers as well as better information to teachers and special needs teachers about the roles and tasks of mother tongue teachers. In conclusion, the gap between the research fields of multilingual students' learning and special education needs to be tightened.

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