Åsa Wedin

A restricted curriculum for second language learners – a self-fulfilling teacher strategy?

The focus of this article is on relations between classroom interaction, curricular knowledge and student engagement in diverse classrooms. It is based on a study with ethnographic perspective in which two primary school classes in Sweden were followed for three years. The analysis draws on Hallidays Systemic Functional Linguistics. The results indicate that language use in the classrooms is on a basic everyday level and that high teacher control results in low-demanding tasks and low engagement among students. Interaction in the classrooms mainly consists of short talk-turns with fragmented language, frequent repairs and interruptions, while writing and reading consists of single words and short sentences. Although the classroom atmosphere is friendly and inclusive, second language students are denied necessary opportunities to develop curricular knowledge and Swedish at the advanced level, which they will need higher up in the school system. The restricted curriculum that these students are offered in school thus restricts their opportunities to school success. Thus, I argue for a more reflective and critical approach regarding language use in classrooms.

Literacy Practices in Rural Tanzania: The Case of Karagwe

In this paper I argue that literacy, as an aspect of language, is closely related to power. With the example of Karagwe, I show that different literacy practices relate differently to power. In Karagwe dominant literacies that are officially prescribed and standardised have a main function to sort people and maintain authority. As they are spread through schools, schooled literacies are very much geared at sorting pupils. Dominated literacy practices often have decorative and cultural functions and often do not follow standard norms, for example in spelling. In some cases there are local norms. Dominated literacies are more or less stigmatised. A third group of literacy practices, semi-dominant, are spread mainly through seminars and development agencies, such as different nongovernmental organisations. These literacy practices, which are important for the improvement of daily life and economic conditions, focus both on formal features and on the content in the texts. I argue that literacy in Karagwe is an important tool for maintaining authority while it is at the same time a tool for people to contest and resist authority.

Narration in Swedish pre- and primary school: a resource for language development and multilingualism

Increased immigration in Europe and worldwide has led to more pre- and primary school students being educated through the medium of a second language, and there is considerable research, much of it coming from Australia, to suggest that in order to cope with this situation, children will need to begin to acquire, from their earliest years in pre-school, a variety of knowledge-based language skills that will be sufficient to carry them through the subject-based education they will encounter in their subsequent schooling. This is particularly important for L2-students who are less likely to meet academic language outside the school. In this paper, based on transcripts of oral interactions in the classroom, it is argued that conversational and story-telling skills, oral and written, provide a rich environment for the development of academic school language, while at the same time promoting and making good use of the cultural diversity that is increasingly a feature of pre-primary and primary classrooms.

New Perspectives on Translanguaging and Education.

Agency and Affordance in Translanguaging for Learning : Case Studies from English-medium Instruction in Swedish SchoolsTranslanguaging space and spaces for translanguaging : A case study of a finnish-language pre-school in Sweden

Perspectives on translanguaging in education

Agency and Affordance in Translanguaging for Learning : Case Studies from English-medium Instruction in Swedish SchoolsTranslanguaging space and spaces for translanguaging : A case study of a finnish-language pre-school in Sweden

Same but different. Negotiating diversity in Swedish pre-school teacher training

ABSTRACT Due to migration, Swedish pre-schools are linguistically and culturally diverse settings where approximately one in five children is bi-/multilingual. Hence, pre-school teachers work in a diverse landscape in which they are expected to support the multilingual and multicultural development of the children. The aim of this article is to analyze the discourses of diversity in Swedish pre-school teacher training and, more specifically, how students are positioned and position themselves in relation to such discourses. The article takes its point of departure in an ethnographic four-year project that studied a group of students recruited to the pre-school teacher training by a municipality because of their migration background. The material analyzed consists of interviews and observations during the four years that the students participated in the program. Using the framework of nexus analysis, it reveals an ambivalence in attitudes in relation to diversity and in the positioning of certain students as other. Due to their historical bodies, the students are expected to add value to the pre-school teacher training program, but at the same time, they are expected to perform like everyone else in the program, reproducing a discourse of diversity as a positive asset.

Translanguaging and social justice : The case of education for immigrant persons who are deaf or hard of hearing

Agency and Affordance in Translanguaging for Learning : Case Studies from English-medium Instruction in Swedish SchoolsTranslanguaging space and spaces for translanguaging : A case study of a finnish-language pre-school in Sweden

Analyzing literacy education: the Scandinavian scene

The Scandinavian countries are historically and culturally closely connected, and share an international image as democratic welfare states in which everyone has equal access to education and participation in society. Compulsory schooling was introduced quite early in the Scandinavian countries: in Denmark in 1814, in Sweden in 1842 and in Norway in 1889, and since then literacy has been highly valued in these societies and has been considered important for providing access to education, the labor market and citizenship. The similarities between the countries also relate to an intensive and widespread use of modern information technology throughout their societies, that seems to produce a situation in which ‘the world on paper’ (Olson 1994) is supplemented and partly replaced by ‘a world on screen’ (Snyder 2001), and to a growing influx of migrants and refugees which has transformed the countries into more complex multicultural and multilingual societies. Against this background, the purpose of this special issue is to examine the ways in which various analytic perspectives on literacy practices create a potential for insights that may advance our understanding of literacy in contemporary educational settings in which diversity and multiplicity have become key features. There is no simplistic, homogeneous conceptualization of literacy that may describe the diversity of literacy practices existing in educational settings of the twenty-first century. These practices are embedded in an increasing variety of modalities and processes and, thus, are blurred and complex. A media-filled world folds and unfolds experiences, tools and discourses around, for instance, moving pictures, screen-based and print-based texts, computer games, and adventure or popular media genres. Also, diversities regarding social, political, economic and religious circumstances are embedded in contemporary literacy practices. As such, literacy practices in educational settings are continuously transforming, variable and fluid. On the other hand, these literacy practices are under increasing pressure from transnational edu-political discourses calling for accountability, best practice, efficiency and quantitative comparisons between nation states. Within this discourse, an image of homogeneity and stability is produced that tends to over-determine literacy practices based on a small set of idealized objects, perceived as mutually exclusive and binary. When these contradicting movements are localized in educational settings, tensions are created between

Letters, authority and secrecy: the case of Karagwe in Tanzania

This paper aims to show how letters, as a genre of literacy, are used in Karagwe in Tanzania, in relation to authority and secrecy. It is shown that literacy, in the form of letters, plays an important role in the negotiation of authority. Authorities as well as ordinary people use letters according to official norms to claim or manifest authority, while grassroots forms of literacy, dominated forms, are used to resist authorities. Through secret messages and letters people find opportunities to resist that are less dangerous than open rebellion, although the effects may be limited because of the secrecy. It is also shown how children are socialized into this pattern of secrecies through literacy as they are used as messengers. When delivering secret letters and messages, they may be said to exercise a passive voice through literacy.

Bilingualism and Bilingual Education in a Complex Context.

This article is based on results from a baseline study for an intended intervention project in bilingual-intercultural education in the Municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, in the Department of San Marcos, Guatemala. To a great extent the article deals with issues of bilingual education from the perspective of social justice. It analyses the various components underpinning attempts to develop comprehensive bilingual and intercultural education in this specific context. The article is exploratory in character, as it intends to develop lines of analysis useful in discussing challenges faced by bilingualism and multilingualism in contexts where the factors involved are complex and of an extremely varied nature. Central to the analysis is the assumption that historical factors and social justice have a key role in bilingual and intercultural education.