This paper discusses disadvantaging situations that deaf students encounter in higher education in Sweden. We report two recent cases of deaf students' academic welfare being put at risk. We foreground in these cases the 'odd situations' that arise when provisions that fail to access the particular nature of deaf experience also fail to secure…

The paper builds on ethnographic fieldwork in a Language Introduction program for recently arrived students in an upper secondary school in Sweden. In a short period of time, this program prepares students for using Swedish as an academic language, in order to enter a national program. One response to this challenge is that schools allocate the…

Career guidance and counselling (CGC) plays an important role in the 'egalitarian tradition' of the Nordic countries' perspective of education, since it aims to support all students in developing skills and knowledge to access further education and the labour market. Inspired by the critical institutionalism approach and focusing on education…

This article explores students' perspectives on English language learning in relation to the Language Introduction Programme in Sweden, which is an individual transitional programme for newly arrived immigrants and seeks to quickly transition adolescents into further education or the job market. High proficiency in English is vital in Swedish…

In this chapter, I explore the digital literacy practices of an adult migrant in Sweden, and the digital literacy practices that are part of the curriculum of the Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) programme in which she takes part. The data on which the study is based were collected using an ethnographic methodology, including classroom observations…

The Scandinavian countries currently face their largest ever wave of immigration. The immigration wave increases the need for immigrants to learn the host language to be able to participate in work life and become a citizen of the host country. Yet, the language training programmes -- 'Swedish for Immigrants' in Sweden have come under great…

Teachers play one of the most important roles in reaching learning objectives. The qualifications of teachers in an education system reflect the potential of that system and directly influence the learners' achievement. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare Danish and Swedish English teacher training programs with that of Turkey and…

Using a multiple case study approach across seven schools in the United States and Sweden that serve newcomer students exceptionally well, we identified the strategies they implemented across sites that served to meet the educational needs of these students. We found that these schools provided a comprehensive approach to support the…

This study builds upon work in task-based language teaching and literary studies to explore the use of fan fiction as a pedagogical tool in a technology-enhanced university foreign language class. A task-based fan fiction project, The Blogging Hobbit, modelled on blog-based role-play storytelling found in online media fandoms, was carried out in a…

The study presented in this paper focuses upon conceptualisations of language and identity in the institutionalised arena that emerged in the post-Second World War period with the specific intention of teaching Swedish to adult immigrants in the nation-state of Sweden. Our analysis focuses upon the development of the educational programme…

This article presents some aspects of multilingualism and multilingual education in the Nordic countries, drawing upon experiences from the project "Network for Researchers of Multilingualism and Multilingual Education, RoMME" (2011-2013), where Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are represented. The aim is to briefly present and…

This article presents a case study of a student involved in language learning at a work placement, as part of the basic Swedish language programme for adult immigrants, Svenska for invandrare (Sfi), in Gothenburg, Sweden. In accordance with the predominant economic agenda, this system is assumed to accelerate labour market entrance as well as…

Emerging social writing platforms offer possibilities for language learners to collaborate around joint assignments. One such environment is the wiki, generally hosting two prominent modes of usage, web pages and discussion forums. This study investigates software engineering students' use of a wiki as an integrated tool within the frames of a…

This paper presents a field study carried out with learners who used a grammar checker in real writing tasks in an advanced course at a Swedish university. The objective of the study was to investigate how students made use of the grammar checker in their writing while learning Swedish as a second language. Sixteen students with different…