Pre-service English teachers’ understanding of multilingualism in the Swedish classroom
Pre-service teachers today face challenges and opportunities in the increasingly linguistically diverse Swedish school. The aim of the present study is to understand how pre-service English teachers of Years 4-6 (ages 10-12) understand linguistic diversity and how they plan lessons accordingly. The focus is on pre-service teachers studying a course, English Language Learning and Teaching, with an analysis of their lesson unit portfolio assignment, focusing on how they plan to work with multilingualism. Ruiz’s (1984) language orientations (language-as-right, language-as-problem, and language-as-resource) inform the study. An ecological perspective (van Lier, 2004) is also utilized, focusing on perceived affordances and constraints in lesson planning, as well as how contextual layers (e.g., the national curriculum or course syllabus) may affect their planning. New knowledge of how and why pre-service teachers understand multilingualism, as well as how they then plan lessons for English as a foreign language, can be of value to all teacher educators.
Ruiz, R. (1984). Orientations in language planning. NABE Journal, 8(2), 15–34.
van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic.