In Scandinavia, plurilingualism has been embraced as an important goal in language curricula. However, research shows that teachers struggle to understand what plurilingualism is and how it can be implemented. To address this lack of clarity, we analysed the curricula for the three main language subjects of schooling in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden…

This chapter delves into the theoretical underpinnings of praxeological and dialogical research on the emergence of opportunities for learning in teacher-student interactivities. First, I introduce the emergence of objects of learning as a social phenomenon; then I argue for the intersubjective-intercorporeal understanding of those objects as…

The relationship between silence as non-speech and bilingualism in early childhood education is intricate. This article maps this relationship with the help of diverse theoretical entrances to a video-recorded everyday episode from a bilingual (Spanish-Swedish) preschool in Sweden. Though this, three alternative readings of silence are produced.…

Taking its point of departure in the idea that language is never neutral but always coded in the masculine or the feminine (Irigaray), the main purpose of the paper is to explore the gendered coding of Religious Education teaching and how this coding interplays in shaping relationships and knowledge in the classroom. As recent research shows,…

This article explores material-semiotic movements of literacy and the collective potentials of an estranged relationship to language in early childhood bilingual education. It engages three different situations from a bilingual, Spanish-Swedish early childhood institution in Sweden with notions of a minor literature, as it appears in Deleuze and…

This paper explores language practice in early childhood education for children new to the majority language, discussing how language practice can be transformed through actions such as reflexive dialogues with educators. In a Swedish action-research project, educators and researchers collaborated in reflexive dialogues to develop language…

Seven successive curricula for Swedish in the Swedish primary school are investigated using a linguistic method that traces its origin to the Russian literary theorist, Michail Bakhtin. The amount of dialogicity, viewed as the room given to different paradigms to argue against each other, is shown to decrease from the earlier curricula to the…

Foreign language (FL) education has been marked by a monolingual principle that has favoured "intralingual" methodologies. Bakhtin's view of language interillumination--that languages throw light on each other--challenges such language teaching practices radically. Using conversation analysis methods, this article examines transcripts of…

This article addresses the changing role of the education of English as a Foreign Language by presenting results from a study aimed at problematizing and increasing the understanding of the inclusion of cultural aspects in the language classroom. The study from which this article is drawn consists of theoretical explorations into the field, linked…

In 1981, Swedish Sign Language gained recognition by the Swedish Parliament as the language of deaf people, a decision that made Sweden the first country in the world to give a sign language the status of a language. Swedish was designated as a second language for deaf people, and the need for bilingualism among them was officially asserted. This…