Introductory classes for newcomer primary school students in Sweden: Pedagogical principles and emotional understanding

ABSTRACT

Through the study of pedagogic discourse and practice in introductory classes (ICs) aimed at new migrant students at a linguistically diverse primary school in Sweden, we discuss pedagogic principles and power dynamics, drawing on Bernstein’s conceptual frame. Our ethnographic data consist of teacher interviews and observational fieldnotes. A compound set of pedagogic principles was found, where the acknowledgement of the students’ prior languages differs from previous research. Furthermore, the teachers’ accommodations to the students’ needs through a collaborative practice of care formed an important part of the inner logic of discourse and practice. We find this multilingual and emotional support to be contingent upon the IC teachers’ multilingual competencies and long-term experience with ICs, multilingualism and migration, and support from school management. We welcome interrelated discussions of underpinning logics based on research within different educational contexts comprising migrant students.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional understanding
• interactional practices
• introductory class
• migration
• multilingualism
• teacher adaptation

Introductory Classes for Migrant Students in Sweden

This paper focuses on local education policy in relation to recently arrived migrant students in so-called introductory classes (ICs) at Chestnut,¹ a linguistically and culturally diverse primary school in Sweden, from a teacher perspective.² According to The Swedish National Agency for Education (2015a), recently arrived migrant students in elementary school should, after initial assessments of their literacy and previous schooling (Chrystal, 2016), be placed in a regular class, which, in practice, usually means a class of their own age. This does not exclude ICs, which are arranged in some schools as a transitional space for a maximum of two years, where the students learn Swedish, ³often taught by teachers in Swedish as a Second Language (see below). The two-year limit of ICs (or “preparatory classes”) was introduced in 2017, reflecting a concern of students being confined for too long a time in ICs, outside of the regular curriculum (The Swedish Education Act, 2015). However, the potential affordances and constraints of ICs have not been investigated in depth, and ethnographic research on local education policies of recently arrived students in ICs and mainstream classrooms is warranted, not least, since increasing numbers of people have migrated to Sweden during the last decade. Ethnographic approaches may address ideologies underpinning language policy for migrant students as well as the pedagogic practice in situ in more depth. As a first step, we believe it important for such studies to be based in educational settings with substantial experience with new migrant students, as such sites serve as the initial socialization in the context of education in the new country (cf. Åkerblom & Harju, 2019). Our conviction is that analyses of experienced teachers’ practices in one diverse setting may be relevant in others, even outside of Sweden.

The current study focuses on two teachers of Swedish as a Second Language (SSL) responsible for ICs at Chestnut and one Mother Tongue (MT) teacher of Arabic with extensive experience teaching recently arrived migrant students (see below). The study also includes perspectives from the school’s principal, since we assume the support of school management to be important for any teacher practice (cf. Devine & McGillicuddy, 2016).

The overarching aim of the study is to gain insight into the pedagogic discourse and practice of these ICs. We draw on Bernstein’s conceptual frame for pinning down the “inner logic” of these practices (Bernstein, 2000, p. 18), here referring to the power dynamics of the interactants in a classroom and how pedagogical content is selected and taught (cf. Bernstein, 1990). More specifically, the study is guided by the following research questions:

1. What are the perceived affordances and challenges of ICs from a teacher perspective?

2. What are the main goals of IC teachers and school principals for the learning of students, including their notions of desired content?

3. What main teaching approaches of the prioritized content can be discerned from IC teaching practices?

4. Are students’ and teachers’ multilingual repertoires acknowledged, i.e., the repertoire of languages they speak? And, if so, how? Are these repertoires and the experiences of learning languages as migrants drawn upon in pedagogical practices?

5. How are challenges counteracted, if they are, in terms of teacher adaptability?

The aim and research questions are built on the assumption that the accumulated educational experiences at Chestnut, with its long-term encounters with migrant students of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, are worth exploring further and, as stated earlier, may be of interest to those teaching in or researching other contexts as well.

Previous Research on Introductory Classes in the Primary School in Sweden

As ICs lack a national syllabus, little is known about their content and pedagogic practices, and research on ICs has been scarce. A previous project involving two introductory primary school settings (e.g., Cekaite & Björk-Willén, 2013; Cekaite & Evaldsson, 2008; Evaldsson & Cekaite, 2010), resulted, however, in detailed accounts of student interaction, displaying how these settings were guided by a monolingual Swedish language norm. This was also confirmed by a study from a preschool³ setting (Åkerblom & Harju, 2019), which may be indicative of how educational institutions at large tend to be guided by a monolingual habitus (Gogolin, 1994; cf. Jaspers, 2015). Åkerblom and Harju (2019) found that the migrant students were fostered “to become ‘Swedish’ on the basis of ‘an everyday nationalism”’ (p. 1), and that the prevailing pedagogy was aiming to “compensate for something perceived as lacking” (p. 1). Obondo’s (2018) interview study of IC teachers in both primary and secondary schools provides additional examples from this pedagogical practice, where teachers reported a focus on teaching basic knowledge of Swedish language and culture. The study also revealed exceptional conditions with high student mobility, resulting in “constant arrival of new pupils demanding the building of new groups and reorganization of the existing ones” (Obondo, 2018, p. 117; see also Obondo et al., 2016).

Other studies highlight the vulnerable situation of many students in forced migration in general, and the greater risk for posttraumatic stress disorders among these students (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010; see Bal & Perzigian, 2013, p. 6). A complex interaction of individual and structural factors has been found to affect their educational opportunities (Bal & Perzigian, 2013, p. 7), where one important individual factor is the quality of the migrant students’ prior educational experiences, or lack thereof. As pointed out by Bal and Perzigian (2013, p. 6), it is also important how these experiences interconnect with social and educational opportunities in the new country.

Educational Provisions for Multilingual Students

As stated, this study focuses on teachers in SSL and MT, which are two language subjects within the Swedish curriculum, from primary to upper secondary levels, aimed at multilingual students. Students are entitled to study the non-mandatory MT subject on the conditions that at least one caregiver has a “mother tongue” other than Swedish; the language is spoken in the home on a daily basis; and the student has basic knowledge in that language (The Swedish Education Act, 2010). In practice, this typically means one lesson per week. MT teachers are often not locally employed by the schools, but by municipal special units, and as they tend to ambulate between several schools, their ability to integrate with the schools’ other subjects is often constrained (see Ganuza & Hedman, 2015). At present, teacher education for MT teachers is restricted mainly to the national minority languages in Sweden.

The SSL subject, also aimed for multilingual students, replaces the core subject Swedish (cf. English Liberal Arts) for these students. A certified SSL teacher in primary school needs 30 ECTS credits, at the tertiary level in addition to teacher education. SSL will, however, not be described in detail, as ICs are not governed by the SSL syllabus.

Furthermore, multilingual students “who cannot follow the teaching in Swedish” (The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2015b) are entitled to study guidance in their “strongest language” (ibid.) to scaffold learning in various school subjects. This language- and subject-learning support tends to be offered by MT teachers.

Theoretical Points of Departure

The Inner Logic of Classroom Practices

This paper draws on Bernstein’s conceptual frame for researching pedagogical settings. Through schooling, students are socialized into the “organizing principles of knowledge” (Bernstein, 1975, p. 81) and language registers of the educational institution. Such principles also shape a certain educational identity and “specific skills […] clearly marked and bounded” (Bernstein, 1975, p. 81). This knowledge is transferred via pedagogic and specialized communication (Bernstein, 1990; Bernstein, 2000), a type of pedagogic discourse through which power relations, or symbolic control, are established. A set of principles or “rules” identified by Bernstein (1990, p. 63f.) constitutes the inner logic of pedagogies that governs any pedagogic practice. These rules of practices are hierarchical rules between interactants, rules regulating the sequencing and pace of the transmission of contents, and criterial rules (ibid.), including “what counts as a legitimate or illegitimate communication, social relation, or position” (Bernstein, 1990, p. 66). In the current paper, we thus draw on such rules or principles when investigating and discussing the inner logic of ICs regarding prioritized content and the practices through which this content is taught. Regarding teaching practices, we also draw on the notion of framing (e.g., Bernstein, 1975) as constitutive of this logic, including who is exercising control and in relation to what. The notion of framing also includes locational dimensions, such as regulation of physical space and its objects (Singh, 2002).

Teacher Adaptability and Practices of Care

In challenging educational settings, teachers need to adapt more or less constantly and adjust to shifting situations and needs. We believe the challenges in ICs, which have been characterized as fluid and ever-shifting (cf. Obondo, 2018), to be exceptional conditions, and therefore teachers’ adaptability and capacity to continually handle change to be particularly important. As observed by Gitomer and Bell (2016, p. 9), teaching is an “interpretive, situated act” that “requires adaptability and judgment”. In the current paper, we thus consider how teachers modify the pace of and activities in lessons as a way of adapting to ‘the different and changing needs of students’ (Collie & Martin, 2016, p. 30), which are aspects allied to the inner logic of pedagogic practices, as proposed by Bernstein (see above).

In line with other researchers, we also find that emotional aspects are embedded parts of teacher adaptability, since it is difficult to continually handle and accommodate to change in successful ways without “emotional understanding” (Hargreaves, 2001). Therefore, we also analyse how emotions may be addressed and monitored for pedagogical purposes, and how teachers’ emotional support forms part of their interactions with migrant students and their families, which require the ability to relate to the experience of others (Denzin, 1984). McGovern and Devine (2016) illustrate the importance of “practices of love and care” (p. 37) among migrant families in which the children’s emotional reality is accounted for, and how such emotional support may be offered by both teachers and peers. Likewise, Zembylas (2007) shows how classroom work on emotions may lead to common emotional and behavioural norms, and stronger relations between students and teachers. We assume emotional aspects of classroom interaction and teaching to be particularly pertinent in a context like IC, where students are potentially vulnerable, considering the above-mentioned higher rates of being at-risk for posttraumatic stress disorders among migrant children and high student mobility (Obondo, 2018), which is reflective of unstable living conditions. Importantly, emotions in a classroom may not merely be the property of subjects (Hickey-Moody & Malins, 2007), but a “relational space” (Youdell & Armstrong, 2011, p. 145), building on a view of emotions as spatial and non-inherent (cf. the notion of emotional geographies, Zembylas, 2007; also Ahmed, 2004). We take this as a proposal to analyse emotions not only as bound to specific individuals, but as flows and events between people.

In sum, we thus combine a framework for analysing pedagogic discourse and practice, formulated by Bernstein (1990, 2000), with a frame for interpreting the emotional aspects of the classroom practice (e.g., Hargreaves, 2001; Youdell & Armstrong, 2011). We thus find these frames to be complementary and believe that together they may deepen our understanding of teachers’ rationales in this specific context. In the methodology section, we account for the application of the concepts in the analysis.

Methodology

The paper builds on an ethnographic study at Chestnut Primary School (preschool–grade 6, ages 6–12). First, we carried out fieldwork in the ICs, and thereafter, in the MT classes. We also interviewed the teachers and the school principal. Over the course of our fieldwork of 2.5 years, we became acquainted with other staff as well as students. This study focuses specifically on our fieldwork with the SSL teachers in the ICs and one MT teacher.

The School

Chestnut Primary School is located in a migrant-dense socioeconomically vulnerable area. According to the definitions used in Swedish school statistics, approximately 90% of the Chestnut students in 2018 had a “foreign background”, i.e., they or their parents were born abroad, and 100% were entitled to MT tuition (The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2019). Our fieldwork began in 2016, a year after Sweden peaked in number of asylum-seeking migrants. Chestnut has a tradition of catering to migrant students (since the 1990s, approximately 35–100% of the Chestnut students have had a “foreign background”; The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2019). The experience of receiving newcomer migrant students thus was not new.

The Participants

The participants were two SSL teachers, Kamilla and Maria, who had taught SSL for 10–25 years. Both Kamilla and Maria were qualified to teach SSL at the elementary level. Kamilla’s first learned language was an eastern European language, and she had also worked as an MT teacher for several years. Maria also taught mainstream SSL classes. A third participant, Omid, was a permanently employed MT teacher of Arabic who had worked at Chestnut for about 20 years. Omid had a degree in education, was “a first teacher” (a head pedagogical coach in a school subject) and was the coordinator of the Chestnut MT teachers. Omid was also involved in the reception and inclusion of recently arrived students at Chestnut. As Omid collaborated with the SSL teachers in the ICs, all three teachers, Kamilla, Maria and Omid, are included when referring to “the IC teachers” in this article.

As compared to what is often the case, the Chestnut MT teachers had a relatively strong position, as some of them had permanent employment at the school, reflecting a positive view of the MT subject for multilingual development. There were, in addition, many ambulating MT teachers (between 25 and 30). The locally employed MT teachers also carried out the initial assessments of the migrant students in the ICs, as well as study guidance to support subject learning through students’ first languages. Additionally, the MT teachers arranged an annual celebration of International Mother Language Day for everybody at the school, which we believe signalled the school’s overt valuation of linguistic diversity.

The students’ caregivers were informed about the study in a meeting at Chestnut with the SSL teachers and interpreters, where the caregivers filled out consent forms. Omid and Maria helped us to collect informed consent from parents who were not present at this particular meeting. The students were initially informed by the SSL teachers about the study and were also informed about our presence and purpose each time we arrived in class.

Classroom Observations and Interviews

Classrooms observations were carried out by both researchers in the ICs taught by Kamilla and Maria (about 15 lessons of 2–3 hours during one term, mainly, with additional initial visits before and follow-up visits after). Although we primarily sat at the back of the classroom and took observational fieldnotes, we could also help or interact with individual children when they wanted us to, which happened regularly. Further, we often had the opportunity to talk to the teachers in the breaks between and after the lessons, and we had lunch with the teachers and the students.

We conducted audio-recorded interviews with each of the above-mentioned teachers as well as with the principal. The interviews typically lasted 1–1.5 hours.

Analytical Procedures

Both researchers participated in the interviews and in the majority of the classroom observations, and discussed impressions continuously. In the analyses of the inner logic of discourse and practice, as outlined above, we attended to possible pedagogic rules (Bernstein, 1990) or essential “organizing principles of knowledge” that we assume regulate the pedagogic practice (Bernstein, 1975, p. 81). This inner logic and the goals of the IC practices were disentangled through the guiding research questions:

Research question 1 – what the affordances and challenges of IC were, according to the teachers and the principal – was analysed on the basis of teacher interviews, in relation to which the classroom observations served as a background. This analysis thus targeted the teachers’ and principal’s explicit statements on perceived personal gains from working in ICs and perceived organizational affordances and constraints with this particular teaching practice.

Research question 2 – what the IC teachers’ and school principal’s main goals were for students’ learning – was mainly extracted as answers to a direct interview question.

Research question 3 – what main teaching approaches of the prioritized content could be discerned – was analysed on the basis of fieldnotes and interviews. Thus, we both analysed what the teachers said about important content and rendered the typical content of classes that we observed. Through the concept of inner logic, we attended to prioritized content as a result of the teachers’ criteria for selection (Bernstein, 1990). We also focused on how teacher discourse was enacted in the classrooms, and how the interaction around teaching content was organized. In our analyses, these enactments included aspects of the sequencing and pace of the transmission of content, in line with Bernstein’s rules (ibid.), as well as framing, specifically regarding the control exercised in the classroom, which we exemplify both in instances when order was maintained and when it was disrupted.

Research question 4 – if and how students’ and teachers’ multilingual repertoires were acknowledged – was addressed by identifying possible multilingual practices on the basis of fieldnotes and interview data, such as the attitudes teachers expressed concerning the use of different languages, as well as instances when students’ and teachers’ multilingual resources were used in the classroom. We assumed that these aspects of classroom interaction related to both legitimate communication (cf. criterial rules above) and hierarchies between interactants as part of the pedagogic rules (Bernstein, 1990).

Research question 5 – how challenges were counteracted in terms of teacher adaptability – was answered through analyses of both data sets regarding how the teachers responded to the needs of the students and how they adapted to “cope with unexpected situations in classroom management” (Collie & Martin, 2016, p. 30). Apart from focusing on the teachers’ own narrations of challenging situations and how they coped with these, we paid attention to instances in our classroom data where teachers handled misunderstandings or unruly situations. In these analyses, we attended to whether and how the teachers managed their students’ emotions, or emotive events, in class, thus addressing potential recognition of students’ experiences and emotional realities (cf. Hargreaves, 2001; McGovern & Devine, 2016).

Audio-recorded interview data were transcribed, and we shared our respective fieldnotes in Word files. Both researchers read the data and then discussed them jointly. Analysis moved from an initial inductive process with several readings – when the themes of perceived affordances and constraints, goals, content, pedagogical practice, multilingual practices, and teacher adaptability were determined and extracted – to a more deductive process, building on the theoretical frames presented above. The identification of themes in the initial readings of data also built further on continuous discussions of our impressions during fieldwork. Findings were translated from Swedish to English by the researchers.

Findings

This section first outlines an analysis of Perceived affordances and challenges, beginning with a contextualization of the ICs. Thereafter, answers to the remaining research questions are discussed under the following headings: Expressed main goals of ICs; Enactments of prioritized content; Multilingual practices; and Accommodating to students’ needs with emotional understanding. The findings section ends with a Concluding discussion.

Perceived Affordances and Challenges

The ICs at Chestnut were marked by high mobility at different levels. An acute housing shortage in the city in general, in combination with the fact that newly arrived families were referred to temporary housing for their first years in Sweden, created high mobility in the area, with students continuously leaving the school for other districts. As in Obondo’s study (Obondo, 2018), the introductory class itself was a place also characterized by transition, visible during the school day. Students not only started ICs continuously during the school year when admitted to Chestnut, but they also left them continuously. This happened gradually, so that some students left the IC, e.g., for mathematics, physical education or science during a given day, and then returned. Apart from these individual schedules, the students’ MT classes and study guidance were also scheduled at different times outside of the ICs. Each student thus had their own schedule at the entrance of the IC classroom. The teaching in ICs was divided into the slots between the students’ entrances and exits from the classroom, and the person responsible for remembering the schedules for each student was the IC teacher.

At the beginning of our fieldwork, the school provided ICs for migrant students from grades 1–6. When we did follow-up visits in ICs one year later, students in grades 1–3 were not offered ICs, which were, however, reintroduced again. In the interview, the principal said he had found that the youngest children had not seemed to fare well in immediate mainstream classes: “I wasn’t sure they were doing well. I felt like the [mainstream classroom] context was a bit too big for them”. The decision was made, despite his perception, for the national policy to abolish ICs, indicating a general ambivalence towards ICs.

Regarding perceived affordances and challenges in ICs, Maria said that she was most inspired by seeing her students’ development, and she also noted the drawbacks with the constant flux of students, affecting her opportunities for long-term planning (excerpt 1).

Excerpt 1: Teacher Maria (interview).

Researcher:

What would you say inspire you most in the teaching [in the ICs]?

Maria:

Um the students’ development of knowledge, how they grow, understand, and can enjoy what they have learned.

[…]

Researcher:

But now, do you feel that, do you find the introductory classes most rewarding […] or Swedish as a second language [the regular subject]?

Maria:

Well both are fun but in different ways.

Researcher:

How?

Maria:

I think that language introduction gives you more personally and relationally, I think um but pedagogically it might be more rewarding with SSL. It’s easier to get ideas there, to have an established group. In language introduction, the students come and go, and it’s difficult to find teaching approaches that are long-term.

A perceived affordance of being an IC teacher was thus personal and relational (excerpt 1), pointing to emotional aspects (see Zembylas, 2007, cf. excerpt 12). The ICs were also discussed in relation to other possible educational organizations of newcomer migrant students, as all three IC teachers had experienced other systems, such as early mainstream inclusion. Maria did not think that they had come up with an ideal system, with regard to the organization of IC, nor the transition to mainstream classes. She did, however, express skepticism towards early mainstream inclusion of the youngest migrant students, and jokingly suggested that such direct integration may be built upon the assumption of (linguistic) “osmosis” in young children (interview). On the contrary, she emphasized the need to not “leave the students alone” with their Swedish learning, and that “you don’t think that words will explain themselves, but you need to work with them”. Kamilla expressed that the social belonging of ICs afforded the student a safe space and relaxation, which was an advantage, but which could also lead to unruliness (excerpt 2).

Excerpt 2. Teacher Kamilla (interview).

Researcher:

So, these [the classroom rules] are about, well, to learn to go to school in Sweden so to speak, would that be correctly put?

Kamilla:

Yes yes, and they [the students] see them [the rules] in their regular classes too, because there it’s more well routinized, and there they have, most of the students who attend them [some regular classes] um often they are much calmer there in the regular class […] Here [in ICs] they feel freer since their peers also come from other countries and haven’t been so long in Sweden. And there, in the regular class, they must adapt to the majority, they become a minority there […] But here, they are all of a sudden the majority [small laughter] so they feel freer and that has both its positive and negative side. Well, the negative could be that they feel freer to do as they, well not really as they like, but to express their emotions in a completely different manner than they would do in the regular class.

In the following, we further discuss the main expressed goals of ICs including desired content as “organizing principles of knowledge”, in line with Bernstein (1975, p. 81), and how these regulate the overall goals of pedagogic practice.

Expressed Main Goals of ICs

According to the SSL teachers and the school principal, the main goal was to afford the IC students basic communicative skills in Swedish, the motivation for which is expressed in excerpts 3–5.

Excerpt 3: Teacher Kamilla (interview).

Researcher:

What do you think is most important regarding beginner learners?

Kamilla:

Well, that they learn words so that they can communicate with others, that they can describe their surroundings, that they can write in Swedish, words and simple sentences. They should be able to express themselves in a simple way.

Researcher:

Do you have any course goals as a point of departure, or is it experience that says what is important?

Kamilla:

Well, there is the curriculum [the main curriculum for primary school], but then there is also experience, what you know [soft giggle]. Well you have the gut feeling of what they need in order to be able to proceed, to understand their surroundings, to be able to communicate in a simple way in the beginning.

Excerpt 4: Teacher Maria (interview)

Researcher:

What do you think is most important for the students to learn?

Maria:

[long pause] I think that all the frustration that you carry within is often that you can’t say what you think, like or want, and this, I think, is the most important thing to help them with.

Researcher:

Mm.

Maria:

Apart from all the basics that all people need in order to cope, well, to greet each other, well, to have a conversation and ask for things, that is, I believe, important, very important.

Researcher:

Yes.

Excerpt 5: The school’s principal (interview)

Researcher:

Is it going well? [regarding the organization of ICs, here, early mainstream integration]

Principal:

Well, it works very differently. For some students [in early mainstream integration] it works rather well […]

Now I have decided, although the IC teachers have a lot to do that also new [newly arrived migrant] students from the preschool class to grade two may begin in the introductory class.

Researcher:

Mm.

Principal:

And then they may be there for about two to four weeks fulltime.

Researcher:

Mm.

Principal:

And I think that’s good, because then, then I think they get a kind of introduction.

Researcher:

Mm.

Principal:

They get some everyday language and some language of schooling, they learn the basics, how should I put it, common phrases, they have their safe place, so to speak.

The main rationale for the uncontested organizing pedagogic principle of knowledge, (Bernstein, 1975, p. 81), i.e., to achieve basic communicative skills in Swedish, was to afford the students opportunities to express themselves, their thoughts and needs (excerpts 3 and 4). In doing so, the teachers wanted to reduce frustration and enhance feelings of safety, indicating a priority of meeting emotional needs (cf. McGovern & Devine, 2016). Kamilla pointed out that this goal was based both on the curriculum and on her own teacher experience (excerpt 3). Another important goal, as expressed by Kamilla, that was also apparent in our fieldwork was that the students should become knowledgeable about classroom and school rules as a form of symbolic control (Bernstein, 1990), as illustrated in excerpt 6.

Excerpt 6: Teacher Kamilla (interview).

Researcher:

Um are there any other goals than these language-based ones?

Kamilla:

Yes, to be well-integrated into the school, into society, um to be integrated into the democratic values that we have in Sweden, to learn respect. Because there are, well, there are many clashes, cultural clashes here, as you have seen, that the students may insult, judge each other, well, say bad things about each other, and so forth. So, it is a very very important goal to learn, that they should learn respect, to be able to wait, not to laugh when others say something incorrectly, not to be scorned […] This is to know the rules, the classroom rules and school rules. Where you should sit, that you raise your hand when you answer, well that’s also important.

Researcher:

Mm.

Kamilla:

So that we also do.

Through long-term fieldwork and conversations with Kamilla, over time, we found that she often referred to some of her students’ negative previous school experiences in their countries of origin, as some had suffered from physical and psychological abuse from their former teachers (cf. Bal & Perzigian, 2013, on the importance of previous schooling). Kamilla thus found it highly important to show – through role modelling – how order could be kept in class by means other than violence, with a focus on respect. This also means that she did not find that all the students needed to learn her notion of respect in the classroom.

Enactments of Prioritized Content

As a manifestation of the inner logic and the criteria for content selection (Bernstein, 1990), we considered main teaching approaches of prioritized content. Both Kamilla and Maria were confident and experienced teachers, and Kamilla expressed that “I know what they need to learn” (interview). Activities were either framed within teacher-fronted whole classroom interaction, group work or individual work. Teacher-fronted interaction, following an Initiate-Response-Evaluate pattern, was mainly used in instructions, literacy tasks on the smartboard, or in various classroom routines. In excerpt 7, one classroom routine consisted of establishing the agenda for the day. Kamilla let the students utter the requested words orally, after which she wrote them on the smartboard, as a way to scaffold the students’ own writing of the concepts. This was a recurrent procedure in the ICs.

Excerpt 7: From teacher-student classroom interaction with teacher Kamilla (fieldnotes).

Kamilla:

Then I wait until it gets quiet in here, and we’re going to listen to [name of student, X].

[Kamilla directs toward the student] Can you tell what day it is today?

Student X:

It’s Monday, the sixteenth of May 2016.

Kamilla:

If you look out of the window: What’s the weather today?

Student X:

Rainy.

Kamilla:

Yes it’s raining today. Is it warm or cold?

Student X:

Cold.

Student Y:

It was three degrees today.

Kamilla:

At my place it was only five degrees. Tomorrow, it’ll be much warmer, maybe fourteen degrees. Now, we do like this, I’ll write in the diary, but first we’ll rehearse what day it is today.

[Kamilla writes on the board Monday 16 May 2016 and says the different ways to pronounce 2016]

Kamilla:

Now you can fetch your diaries.

[The children fetch red diaries, a type of notebook, and pens from cupboards at the back and the sides of the classroom]

Kamilla:

Do you all have pens?

[A student asks for a pen and an eraser, and gets a ruler from Kamilla. A boy says that he does not know what they are supposed to do. Kamilla says that she has not yet explained that. She takes a seat at the computer located in the front of the class and starts writing on the smartboard so that everybody can see what she writes.]

In excerpt 7, the focus on everyday language is prominent in the focus on weekdays, dates and weather terms (cf. excerpt 8 on words related to food).

In addition, the selection of content centred around literacy in a broad sense, with a focus on oral interaction around written text and writing tasks that included frequent use of workbooks, worksheets and digital tools. On the basis of our fieldwork, we found that Kamilla extended this general literacy content to also encompass thematic work that would prepare the students for learning in other subjects. In the interview, she said that she wanted the students to have their “luggage” filled with Swedish words from social science and science subjects, as well as basic concepts in maths in Swedish, when they left the language class for regular subjects. In class, we observed, for example, a theme on spring that included names of flowers and specific terminology on the parts of the plants (as taught in biology). In this endeavour, Kamilla tried to diminish the boundaries of the “physical location” (Bernstein, 1990, p. 34) regarding the IC framing in relation to the mainstream classes.

Maria taught IC students at a slightly more advanced level of Swedish and emphasized that she selected texts that were “fun” in order to motivate the students (interview), and in which Swedish lexicogrammar (Halliday, 1994) came as part and parcel. She was opposed to “somewhat boring texts” from textbooks, where the aim was to practice a certain grammar structure out of context. Kamilla, who catered to students at the beginner level, often ended her lessons with interactive games based on digital tools, as evident from our fieldwork, to do something “fun”, thus acknowledging that the language tasks at this level could be perceived as tedious and exhaustive. The underlying principle that teaching should ideally be motivating (fun) and meaningful was thus emphasized as both important and challenging.

The interactional practices of the ICs included, additionally, aspects of pace, i.e., to speak slowly or to repeat explanations and instructions. In particular, Kamilla, in working with beginner-level students, tended to speak at a relatively slow and steady pace. Maria said in the interview that she had learned that “you shouldn’t be afraid to let some things take time”. She emphasized that this type of sequencing and pacing of the teaching content (Bernstein, 1990, p. 63) in fact enhanced in-depth learning, which she thought she had learned from her teacher experiences at Chestnut. Accommodation of pace was thus found to be crucial in ICs as part of the language learning process.

Nevertheless, the whole-class interaction framed by the teachers in the beginner groups often broke down due to misunderstandings and various conflicts among the students (cf. excerpt 2 regarding how constrained possibilities for expressing oneself may cause frustration among students). Excerpt 8, from a lesson at the beginner level, shows how the interaction centred around classroom management. Kamilla is at the smartboard showing pictures of food with written labels for the students to read out loud, one by one.

Excerpt 8: From teacher-student classroom interaction with teacher Kamilla (fieldnotes).

Kamilla:

You can read this then.

[A boy student, X, reads “beef stew” then “red cabbage”.]

Student Y:

Oh shit, are we supposed to drink red cabbage?

[It becomes quite noisy. Kamilla approaches student Y and says that “I want it to be quieter here”. Student X is asked to continue to read.]

Boy Z:

What the hell is beef stew?

Kamilla:

You will very soon see what it looks like. If you want to read, you raise your hand.

[Another student, A, is helped by Kamilla to read aloud the first part of the word. Another student, B, makes a loud noise, and a student sitting nearby, C, says angrily “that’s enough”.]

Kamilla:

Then, let’s see what beef stew is. [Kamilla shows a picture on the screen.]

Student D:

That is disgusting.

Kamilla:

You know what? You can say what you like, but not all at the same time. What is this?

Student E:

Potato.

Kamilla:

Cooked potatoes, they have cooked the potatoes. What is this? This is the one called beet root.

What is this called?

Student F:

Meatballs.

Kamilla:

It’s not meat [she wants two students to stop playing with their pens, and says in a calm voice that “if you want to learn new Swedish words, you must put the pens down”. [The boys fetch their pens that had dropped on the floor and put them back on their benches.]

[The conversation continues.]

In excerpt 8, Kamilla’s teacher discourse reflects classroom rules based on principles of turn-taking, listening attentively to the teacher and not disturbing others. An expressed rationale for these rules was to enhance learning: “if you want to learn new Swedish words” (excerpt 8). Although Kamilla lost the attention of some of her students, her voice remained calm, and while clarifying the principles of turn-taking, and not disturbing others (by playing with pens), she also introduced a democratic principle of their right to voice opinions: “that you can say what you like”, i.e., as part of the interactional practice in class (excerpt 8).

On one of our final visits, some of the whole-class interaction took place with the students seated on a carpet in a circle as opposed to being seated on benches in rows facing the teacher. Kamilla found that this seating, where everyone could see each other and were sitting closer together, tended to enhance student engagement and influence the classroom communication positively. This is in line with how “collectivities in movement” (Youdell & Armstrong, 2011, p. 146) and the regulation of physical space (as part of Bernstein’s notion of framing) relate to power dynamics and that the collective seating may per se facilitate a more informal student-centred interaction.

Multilingual Practices

It was clear that both Kamilla and Maria wanted their students to interact orally in class, and one approach was, according to Kamilla, to include the students’ own experiences and languages, which we relate to the criterial rules of the classroom (cf. above). On the basis of our fieldwork, we found that the students’ languages were used as a resource in individual work, for example, through digital tools, as in excerpt 9, where Maria helped a student with a computer programme on Swedish vocabulary.

Excerpt 9. Teacher-student interaction (fieldnotes).

 

Maria helps one student to create a login for a computer programme. It is the first time he is using this programme and Maria asks whether he wants to choose Arabic or Swedish. The student says Swedish, as he does not think he knows Arabic that well, but Maria recommends that he initially choose Arabic to scaffold the vocabulary learning in Swedish.

As outlined above, at Chestnut, a majority of the students and several teachers, such as Kamilla and Omid, were multilingual. Even though the teachers expressed Swedish language learning goals, they also acknowledged the students’ multilingualism (see excerpts 10–11).

Excerpt 10: Teacher Kamilla (interview).

Researcher:

I think it seems like they [the students] often, like today too, that they happily say well “this is what it’s like in Arabic” um is this something you open up for a bit?

Kamilla:

Yes.

Researcher:

That they feel that they, it’s ok to do that?

Kamilla:

Yes, sure, it’s a nice ingredient, I think, if they can talk in their language… and that it means that they have understood and that um it’s okay to have another language, that it’s okay to have another identity, that you come from another country, so that they can affirm themselves through this too.

[Kamilla later in the conversation]

Researcher:

This connection to the students’ interests or own experiences, is there some principal around that, that you have in mind or?

Kamilla:

Yes.

Researcher:

Is it something you strive for?

Kamilla:

That appears in various tasks. If we talk about seasons, I ask about that season in your country, tell us about it, write or draw.

[…]

Kamilla:

They happily talk about their [former] time in school or their earlier life in their old home country, so that it’s good fun for the others to listen to. They are very interested in this.

Researcher

Oh yes, they generally are?

Kamilla:

Yes, to talk about their life in the old home country and how they… ‘cause then they feel acknowledged, that “I count, too”, that they aren’t excluded from the fellowship, but that they can feel, well, bicultural. “I have my life from there, which also counts” and that it’s good to remember it and talk about it.

Excerpt 11. Teacher Omid (interview).

Researcher:

What about this that you work both with study guidance and mother tongue instruction. What do you right now find most challenging and interesting with that?

Omid:

What is interesting, and salient [pause] so salient and crucial for the students, for those who know their mother tongue too, well, those who can read and write it. It enables, wow [with emphasis] the students. In other words, if they have a language to relate to, it makes things easier for them.

The interactional classroom practices reported in excerpts 10–11 (cf. Bernstein, 1990, p. 34) reflect principles for learning also built on empowering and motivational purposes, where the students’ background knowledge and languages were acknowledged. Kamilla and Omid shared the experiences of learning Swedish and migrating to Sweden with their students, and on this basis there was an expressed understanding (Hargreaves, 2001), not least of all, related to language practices: “since I originally have another language, then I know more or less what processes you go through” (interview with Kamilla).

In the classroom, we occasionally observed group work where the students used their multilingual repertoires, for example, when students speaking the same language were sitting together, or when children were helping their younger siblings with a certain theme. In this sense, ICs and their teachers were not guided by a univocal monolingual ideology. Although Swedish was unchallenged as the academic language of the school (Jaspers, 2015), students’ multilingual resources were acknowledged, and multilingualism was a shared experience.

Accommodating to Students’ Needs with Emotional Understanding

All IC teachers expressed involvement in the children’s situation, thus illustrating “emotional understanding”, as formulated by Hargreaves (2001). In excerpt 12, Omid described how he adapted to the students’ needs, when he tried to help the recently arrived migrant students by being in the IC, expressing empathy with the child as well as underscoring the importance of cooperating with other teachers and parents. Excerpt 12 builds on a previous discussion on early mainstream inclusion of students (6- to 7-year-olds) who were not placed in ICs at this stage.

Excerpt 12. Teacher Omid (interview).

Researcher:

[…] Have you noticed, you who speak with the students, that there may be some problems coming new to a regular class [at that age]?

Omid:

Um that may work both ways […] but what do we do with the recently arrived in preschool class and grade one? Again, the role of the mother tongue is crucial. It might be that they don’t understand anything and I have actually experienced parents calling me, and there is crying, and a lot in the beginning, there was only crying: “I want to go home because I don’t understand anything”. But with support, that I’m there, and always, once again about collaboration: “Please, Omid, now we have this recently arrived student” [here animating colleagues’ appeal]. “He just cries, he has a stomachache”. This makes us all get a stomachache when we see this student, and this creates worry in the whole class. Then I go there, sit beside the student. But we must also collaborate with the home, we’ll help each other.

The fact that Omid could talk with students and parents in Arabic, and on the basis of his own migration experiences, possibly facilitated an emotional understanding (Hargreaves, 2001). In excerpt 12, Omid acknowledged that emotions related to the class as a whole, thus pointing to emotions as a “relational space” (Youdell & Armstrong, 2011, p. 145) and not simply the property of an individual (Hickey-Moody & Malins, 2007; Zembylas, 2007).

The many conflicts in ICs were primarily solved through teacher interaction (see excerpt 12, as well as 8, 14) and with a “low affective approach” (Kamilla’s expression), which, thus, proved to be a way of adjusting emotions in class. When conflicts got out of hand, Kamilla often called Omid, and the two of them regulated how emotions circulated and were acted out. Omid would enter the class and often calm the situation by interacting with the students in Arabic, or, if they did not speak Arabic, he would draw on other languages in his repertoire, accompanied by body language, including him moving close to the student/s, and, for example, silently showing with his hands that he was asking for silence or for voices to be lowered. The low-affective approach also entailed that the teachers did not raise their voices but were firm and consistent in their behaviour (cf. Hickey-Moody & Malins, 2007, on emotions impacting on what bodies can do). The conflict-solving collaboration also related to Omid’s contact with most of the students’ parents, which seemed to give him unquestionable authority, being the one who would talk to caregivers if he found that the student did not stop misbehaving.

Excerpt 13: From teacher-student classroom interaction with teacher Kamilla (fieldnotes).

[This lesson starts with the delivery of fruit, as part of the daily routine.]

Kamilla:

Now. Let’s be quiet and wait.

[A discussion starts about the number of pieces of fruit you can have. Kamilla says to one of them that “nobody is a police officer”, but that Kamilla herself decides how many. An argument about the fruit begins. Kamilla says that there will be no fruit if the students continue. Maria, the co-teacher, is not present today as she is helping out with the initial assessments of a newcomer student’s literacy. A student does not want to take his seat and runs around. Another boy wants his cell phone, which another student has taken.]

Kamilla:

Let’s wait until it gets quiet here [in a calm tone].

[Kamilla walks out and comes back with Omid. He shows with his hands that the students are supposed to be quiet, and gives a thumbs up when there is silence. A student raises his hand in order to say something, and Omid says, “thank you for raising your hand”. Two of the students explain the situation to Omid in Arabic; one of them is sad and has not yet gotten his cell phone from the other. Omid says something quietly in his ear, and both students sit down. Omid continues to talk to the students in Arabic; the children take their fruit and sit down again. The students take turns telling what has happened. It becomes calmer in the class. Omid says that he will now continue with what he was previously doing, the initial assessments of a newcomer student’s literacy.]

Excerpt 13 exemplifies Omid’s low-affective stance and respectful approach toward the students (“thank you for raising your hand”). When talking with Omid about such classroom events, he stressed the importance of care and affection, which included an interest in the students’ families (cf. McGovern & Devine, 2016). In addition, he stressed the difference between person and deed; while correcting perceived misbehavior, he also told the children that he liked them (see excerpt 14).

Excerpt 14: Teacher Omid (interview).

Researcher:

But am I right that you are the one who has a lot of contact with the parents?

[…]

Omid:

I’ve been sitting with parents, for example, I have an example: I sit with a mum and a dad, and they know, we have created this trustful relationship. Whatever happens, sometimes it’s chaos as you might have noticed [Omid turns to the imagined student]. “Look me in the eyes, please, do you remember what we agreed upon, and yes, you know much better, don’t you think, that’s great”. That is, confirm [pause] talk about that “I see you, I like you, but I don’t like what you are doing”.

The conflict-solving interactional practices and the collaborative handling of emotions and agitated situations of the ICs was thus based on a practice of care (cf. McGovern & Devine, 2016), as a crucial principle when accommodating to the students’ needs.

In sum, the results show that the overarching goals of the ICs at Chestnut involved the learning of Swedish communication skills and to convey a sense of safety and belonging among the students, as well as to maintain classroom management rules. The teaching practices were found to encompass a range of accommodation to the students, the support of their multilingual use included. This accommodation and its emotional aspects will be further discussed below in relation to pedagogic principles.

Concluding Discussion

The findings from this ethnographic fieldwork reflect what may be at stake in the ICs, considering the often uncertain and unstable living conditions of newcomer migrant students. Scrutinizing pedagogic discourse and practice in such a setting is, we believe, particularly important. An underlying principle in the teaching of Swedish language, literacy and subject knowledge (cf. Bernstein, 2000) was the acknowledgement of the students’ previous knowledge and languages as legitimate communication (Bernstein, 1990), which we see as an adjustment to the students’ learning needs as well as power relations. Drawing further on Bernstein (e.g., Bernstein, 1990), we also found that the teachers accommodated to the students’ needs in terms of interactional pace and bodily place when teaching and sequencing content. Most salient in our data was how the IC teachers adapted to the students’ needs through collaborative handling of conflicts based on a practice of care (cf. McGovern & Devine, 2016), reflecting a view of emotions as a “relational space” (Youdell & Armstrong, 2011, p. 145) rather than the mere property of individual students in a classroom. We find this principle of emotional understanding (Hargreaves, 2001) to be vital when exercising control and classroom management.

Although the focus on Swedish language learning and the challenges of ICs are in line with previous research, the current findings form an inner logic of the pedagogic discourse and practice (Bernstein, 1990) that differs considerably from previous results. We find that the observed and recounted multilingual and emotional support – not previously reported on in studies on ICs for young students (e.g., Åkerblom & Harju, 2019; Cekaite & Björk-Willén, 2013; Cekaite & Evaldsson, 2008; Evaldsson & Cekaite, 2010) – was contingent upon the IC teachers’ linguistic, pedagogical, emotional and collaborative competences, as well as their long-term experiences with teaching newcomer migrant students. In addition to these collaborative practice-specific multi-competences, the school’s language ecology afforded the migrant students’ opportunity to draw upon their linguistic resources with peers and teachers, and, importantly, with the support of school management (cf. Devine & McGillicuddy, 2016).

Another contribution to existing research on ICs is the potential affordances of ICs, as expressed by the Chestnut teachers and school management. All actors identified affordances related both to learning and to aspects of inclusion and belonging. Again, we found that an emotional understanding played a role for these insights, building common emotional norms with the potential to reinforce positive student–teacher relations (Zembylas, 2007). In addition, we find that the closeness the IC teachers expressed vis-à-vis their students is worth exploring further. Here, the teachers’ own multilingual repertoire and migrant experiences played a part, but also perceptions of the teaching within ICs as particularly rewarding on a personal and relational level.

The findings show how ethnography in this type of educational setting has the potential to contribute knowledge and understanding of policy enactments in a multifaceted way, although future research needs also to encompass student perspectives. We hope that the close-up analyses in this study may be discussed interrelatedly in research on other diverse educational settings to inform policy-making in any nation welcoming migrant students.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Wellander Foundation.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

The authors have contributed equally to the project and to the paper.

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Erik Wellander Foundation [-].

Notes on contributors

Christina Hedman

Christina Hedman holds a Ph.D. in research on bilingualism and is a Professor in Swedish as a second language at the Department of Language Education, Stockholm University. Hedman’s recent research has focused on multilingual development from education and policy perspectives.

Ulrika Magnusson

Ulrika Magnusson holds a Ph.D. in Swedish as a second language and is a Senior lecturer and Associate Professor at the Department of Language Education, Stockholm University. Her research interests include education and learning from multilingual and second language perspectives.

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms.

2. IC should not be confounded with language introduction programme for newly arrived students aged 16–19 years who need to qualify for a national program in upper secondary school.

3. The preschool curriculum differs from the primary school curriculum, but both curricula provides ideological space for acknowledging the students’ multilingualism.