Teaching for a monolingual school? (In)visibility of multilingual perspectives in Swedish teacher education

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the knowledge about linguistic and cultural diversity that is delineated in the syllabi of teacher education programmes for pre-, primary and secondary schools at two Swedish universities. A quantitative search for 14 chosen keywords preceded a closer analysis of the concepts *language* and *cultur*, when using truncation, in 192 syllabi. This showed that linguistic diversity was to a certain extent evident, mainly through the subjects Swedish and English, while for one university cultural diversity was mainly identified in the syllabi of Educational Work and English. If knowledge about linguistic and cultural diversity is limited to language subjects, and to some extent to pre-school and earlier school years, the risk is high that student teachers are not prepared to support equity in education for multilingual and non-dominant groups. Thus, we find that students studying the current Swedish teacher education programme are unlikely to be well equipped to meet the challenges related to creating equal educational opportunities for students in situations of linguistic and cultural diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• multilingualism
• Sweden
• linguistic diversity
• cultural diversity

Disclosure statement

For this article there are no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Notes

1. Adult immigrants (16 years and older) who have received residency in Sweden but lack skills in Swedish, have the possibility study Swedish through the program Swedish for Immigrants (SFI), provided by municipal adult education. According to the syllabus ”[m]unicipal adult education in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) is an advanced language instruction that is intended to give adult immigrants a basic knowledge of the Swedish language. This tuition gives students with a mother tongue other than Swedish the opportunity to learn and develop a functional knowledge of a second language”. (SNAE, 2012)

Additional information

Funding

This research was not supported by any research grants.

Notes on contributors

Carina Hermansson

Carina Hermansson holds a PhD in educational work and is associate professor in language education at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research focuses how teaching and learning are construed in classroom interaction with a specific interest in students’ literacy learning. She has twenty years of teaching experience of higher education with the teacher preparation program related to literacy development, language arts instruction, qualitative research methods and educational inquiry.

Annika Norlund Shaswar

Annika Norlund Shaswar holds a PhD in linguistics. She is a senior lecturer in Language Language Teaching and Learning at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research centres on multilingual literacy, basic literacy education in linguistically heterogeneous contexts and second language development of adults.

Jenny Rosén

Jenny Rosén holds a PhD in Education and is an associate professor in Swedish as a second language at the Department of Language Education at Stockholm University. Her main research areas are multilingualism, literacy and diversity in educational contexts, especially adult education in Swedish tuition for immigrants.

Åsa Wedin

Åsa Wedin holds a PhD in linguistics and is a professor in educational work at Dalarna University, Sweden. With a background as a primary school teacher, Wedin’s main research interests are in multilingualism and literacy in education. Her research is ethnographically inspired, particularly using linguistic ethnography and theoretical perspectives where languaging is studied as social and cultural practices and where opportunities for learning are related to questions of power.