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Attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of teachers on multilingualism – the view from Sweden
Dalarna University, School of Humanities and Media Studies, English. (Utbildning och Lärande)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9024-330X
Linnaeus University.
Karlstad University.
Umeå University.
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2019 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Swedish schools are experiencing new challenges due to increased mobility and linguistic diversity. Efforts to achieve inclusive education for all are dependent upon teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and knowledge (ABK) of multilingualism. The interplay between teachers’ ABK and the pedagogical and language-developing practices in schools is defined by four major factors interactively shaping and being shaped by teacher cognition: teachers’ own schooling experience, teacher education, contextual factors (e.g. the organization of education), and classroom practices (Borg 2003, 2006). Against this theoretical backdrop, our study investigates the ABK of multilingualism of Swedish teachers, a key issue in the nation today, as part of a larger international project that investigates what shapes teachers’ ABK of multilingualism across countries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with pre-primary and primary teachers from five Swedish regions (Dalarna, Småland, Stockholm, Värmland, and Västerbotten), representing varied school demographics. These interviews were transcribed and analysed using appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005; White 2015). Early results indicate that while teachers generally express positive views on multilingualism, echoes of a monolingual mindset are quite strong (“the language” equated with Swedish; “home country” for children born in Sweden; descriptions of a “monolingual” school as the “perfect school”). Teachers with training in language-developing practices acknowledge that mother tongue instruction supports the majority language development as well as students’ overall academic performance. Nonetheless, using all linguistic resources and acknowledging students’ multilingual identities are not common pedagogical strategies. In the school context, Swedish is considered as more important than students’ additional languages, which are often merely seen as an added value not directly relevant to the daily activities in the Swedish school system. Moreover, the findings point to a need for more extensive pre-service teacher education and professional development of teachers, on multilingualism more generally, and on related classroom practices more specifically.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2019.
Keywords [en]
multilingualism, teacher attitudes beliefs and knowledge, appraisal theory teacher cognition
National Category
Educational Sciences
Research subject
Research Profiles 2009-2020, Education and Learning
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-31488OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-31488DiVA, id: diva2:1381881
Conference
2019 Research Network Conference: Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development (HOLM 2019), 9 September 2019
Available from: 2019-12-29 Created: 2019-12-29 Last updated: 2021-11-12Bibliographically approved

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https://www.languageathome.info/event/303/2019-research-network-conference-social-and-affective-factors-home-language-maintenance

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Paulsrud, BethAnne

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
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  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
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  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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  • text
  • asciidoc
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