Sweden is often commended for the inclusion of home languages in the formal education system: both mother tongue instruction (where a pupil's home language is taught as an optional school subject) and study guidance (where a pupil is given content support in their home language or prior language of schooling) are offered. Still, while many…

This comparative curricular study examines the educational functions of the Swedish Sámi nomad school curricula before and after a central school reform in the 1960s. Due to the reform, the nomad school, a boarding school system for the Indigenous Sámi people in Sweden, was formed to bring about systemic changes in the education of Sámi children,…

This article aims to explore and clarify how students' use of first and second languages in a translanguaging science classroom (TSC) may affect the continuity of learning in science. In a TSC, participants can use all available language resources, in all meaning-making situations. An ethnographic data collection and research design is used to…

This article investigates mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Sweden and Denmark in a historical, comparative perspective, with a view to accounting for key differences in language policy enacted in educational fields. Whereas in Sweden, MTI is offered to linguistic minority children irrespective of their linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, in…

Purpose: The aim is to analyse linguistic aspects of education in Social Sciences for L2 students. Method: Linguistic ethnography is used for studying the hybridity of Social Sciences with material from nine lesson observations and interviews with three teachers. Findings: Findings showed that students' earlier experiences, knowledge, and…

This article is aimed to demonstrate how language policy at the local school level may create space for translanguaging. Focus is on a Mother Tongue (MT) classroom for Somali in a primary school in Sweden by way of an analysis of layers of language policy, with focus on spatial aspects. The empirical material consists of policy documents,…

This article concerns how teachers can use physical artefacts as mediating means to support emergent bilingual students' learning in science class. The data consist of non-participant observations in a Swedish 3rd grade (9-10 years old) class working with electricity. All students were bilingual, but in different minority languages and the teacher…

The research question of the present paper is the following: to what degree (if any) is gender relevant as an explanatory factor in, firstly, the process of assimilation and later, the process of (re)vitalisation of indigenous and minority languages in northern Fenno-Scandia (the North Calotte)? The assimilation of the ethnic groups in question…

Conceptualizations of English as standard, as a lingua franca, or as part of translingual practice form part of the discourses surrounding its use in EMI. While researchers generally agree that the 'E' in EMI should not stand for native varieties of standard English, the stakeholders' perceptions of English call for further research. This paper…

Both Sweden and Finland have education systems promoting equity and equality. However, recent societal and political changes linked to increased immigration have created new challenges in efforts to support linguistic diversity. This paper aims to explore how multilingualism is represented in the national compulsory school curricula in the two…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise description of the European minority language, Sámi in Sweden, in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools,…

The overarching aim of this article is to investigate perceptions regarding linguistic potential and language competence in relation to translanguaging strategies. The data presented consists of classroom activities, texts, and pictures produced by eleven-year-old pupils and their teacher in a multilingual classroom context. The pupils have…

In 2015, approximately 70,000 children and young people immigrated to Sweden, including 35,000 unaccompanied minors who arrived without any legal guardian. The huge influx of young people has been a challenge for the Swedish school system. Newly arrived immigrant students are a diverse group, and their educational backgrounds vary. Those actively…

This study investigates if participation in mother tongue instruction (henceforth MTI) impacts the biliteracy proficiency of young bilinguals, drawing on examples from Somali-Swedish bilinguals and Somali MTI in a Swedish school context. In the study, biliteracy was operationalized as reading proficiency and vocabulary knowledge in two languages,…

This article examines multilingual interactions in an upper secondary Language Introduction Programme (LIP) classroom in Sweden. The LIPs, highly affected by both glocal linguistic and cultural diversity and the monolingual-monocultural habitus of the surrounding society, offer recently arrived immigrant youth (ages 16-19) education where emphasis…