This study responds to calls for more research on motivations for learning languages other than English (LOTEs) in the new era dominated by global English. In particular, it focuses on the role of societal contextual factors surrounding the status of English and the status of the LOTE as an L2/L3, as factors which may offer a more nuanced…

26% of the students in Swedish compulsory school have an immigrant background. To support the simultaneous development of their language proficiency as well as their academic skills and knowledge, several measures may be implemented by schools. This study focuses on one of those measures, namely multilingual study guidance, and illustrates the…

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 qualitative study, we draw on theory and practice in relation to the concepts of "fixity" and "fluidity" in language education (i.e. the simultaneity of bounded, named languages; and the need to transcend language boundaries). We use data from focus group interviews to investigate the entangled ideological dilemmas…

Drawing on experiences from a large-scale Nordic co-design research project, this paper explores the development of cross-border blended education with the aim to strengthen students' Nordic identity and knowledge of neighboring Nordic languages illuminating the flow of didactical designs students were offered to engage in, i.e. the knowledge…

In Arabic literacy education in Europe, whether within mainstream education or in supplementary schools, instruction is a translocal endeavour at its core. The socio-historical conditions and ways of knowing embedded in traditional ways of teaching Arabic literacy are still deeply intertwined with the teaching of Arabic literacy in the diaspora.…

This paper builds on a collaborative pilot project on "Critical Multilingual Language Awareness" (CMLA) in a linguistically diverse Preparatory Class with migrant adolescents in Sweden. Importantly, the approach involved Multilingual Study Mentors (MSMs), whose role normally is to provide scaffolding in the strongest language of recently…

Studies have found that bilinguals respond differently to personality measures in their two languages, indicating that bilinguals change their personality as they switch between their two languages and/or cultures. Across two experiments, we attempted to investigate the effect of language and culture separately on how bilingual speakers rate…

This article focuses on the instruction of recently immigrated adolescents with limited educational backgrounds who are developing emergent literacy. It is based on an ethnographic study conducted in a public Swedish language introductory class in 2017/2018. Its purpose is to investigate how the students engaged in literacy practices during the…

The aim of this article is to examine contemporary conceptualizations of cultural and linguistic diversity in the Swedish policy for early childhood education and care (ECEC). The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with high-level policy actors and the analysis of documentary material. Using the concepts of interculturality and hybridity as…

This study emerged from the abrupt shift to online distance teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic and reports of "Mother Tongue Instruction" (MTI) in Sweden, where online distance teaching was initially introduced in MTI only. In Sweden, MTI is offered to students whose parents/caregivers speak languages other than Swedish on a daily…

The aim of this study is to investigate multilingual students' identity constructions in their participation in different digital literacy practices. Theoretically, we depart from a translanguaging perspective and a social understanding of literacy from the field of New Literacy Studies. The data was constructed through qualitative interviews with…

This study explores how bilingual teachers with an immigrant background construct professional identity in the context of initial literacy and second language teaching of adults. Specifically, the study seeks to understand what the teachers' membership of different work-related communities means for their professional identity and what capital the…

This article provides an overview of the research on morpho-syntactic challenges in Swedish-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD), compared with typically developing (TD) children learning Swedish as their first and second language (L1/L2). Children with DLD show vulnerabilities with verb finiteness, the possessive…

This study describes multilingual students' authentic use of their first and second languages in a "translanguaging science classroom," from a sociocultural perspective. The study is ethnographic, and has followed some lessons each month in a translanguaging science classroom at a primary school for three years. The observed lessons were…