This study explores the linguistic aspirations and imagined outcomes behind the parental choice of English-medium instruction (EMI) in Swedish schools. Five parents were interviewed about factors influencing their EMI choice, e.g.,impressions of the school and beliefs about language use in the school context. The analysis was framed in Darvin and Norton’s model of investment (capital, ideology,and identity) and informed by theories of language ideologies, linguistic hierarchies,and parental aspiration. The findings reveal that the perceived benefits of fluency in English, high academic achievement, and calm environments interconnect with first, linguistic aspirations, as seen in the parents’ investment in the assumed capitalafforded by the English language; second, an ideology of the English language asconnected to a better academic situation than the Swedish language; and third , an identity ascribed to their children as able to accept the challenges of instruction through another language. Tensions in the three areas of investment are evident, as parents struggle with the effects that EMI may have on their children’s use and development of English and Swedish. Understanding parental motives is of interest to educators and policymakers in all contexts where EMI is offered to young learners.

Pre-service teachers today face challenges and opportunities in increasingly linguistically diverse Swedish schools. The present study aims to understand how pre-service English teachers of Years 4–6 (ages 10–12) plan lessons while considering this linguistic diversity. The focus is on pre-service teachers studying a course, English Language Learning and Teaching, with an analysis of their lesson unit assignments, spotlighting multilingual perspectives in their planning. Language orientations (language-as-right, language-as-problem, and language-as-resource) form the theoretical foundation of this study. An ecological perspective is also utilized, focusing on how potential affordances for lesson planning found in contextual layers (e.g., the national curriculum or course materials) may affect their planning. The findings indicate that pre-service teachers generally employ a multilingual stance in their lesson unit planning, revealing a clear language-as-resource orientation across the cohorts studied. Furthermore, micro-level factors, such as course literature, have a more immediate impact than macro-level influences, such as the Swedish Language Act. 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 in the linguistically diverse classrooms of today, can be of value to all teacher educators.

Begreppet transspråkande är användbart för att analysera språkande där en mångfald av språkliga resurser ingår. Transspråkande som pedagogik utmanar traditionella förhållningssätt och arbetssätt till förmån för sådana där elevernas språkliga repertoarer erkänns och används i lärprocesser. Transspråkande som praktik innebär därmed att man i den pedagogiska verksamheten utgår från flerspråkighet som norm för människors sätt att vara i och använda språk.

Författarna i denna antologi utforskar transspråkande i svensk utbildningskontext från förskola till högre utbildning och i relation till svenska styrdokument och rådande pedagogiska villkor. Syftet är att studera och synliggöra språkideologiska, teoretiska och pedagogiska perspektiv på transspråkande, bland annat som resurs för elevers utveckling och lärande, i förhållande till digitala medier, som meningsskapande praktik, som norm och ideologi samt som rum för transspråkande.

Boken aktualiserar på så sätt frågor som många lärare brukar ställa om hur en transspråkande undervisning kan se ut och vad teoretiska och ideologiska reflektioner kring den kan innebära för den dagliga praktiken. 

Transspråkande i svenska utbildningssammanhang vänder sig främst till lärarstuderande, verksamma lärare och andra med intresse för flerspråkighet och lärande.

This article examines how students' cultural identities are discursively constructed in the Finnish and Swedish national curricula for the compulsory school. The aim is to illuminate the manifold discourses on cultural identity which prevail within Nordic educational policy. The study employs a critical multicultural education and postcolonial perspective with a particular focus on essentialist and non-essentialist views of identity in the curricular discourses. Through discourse analysis, key terms such as 'cultural identity' and 'multicultural identity' as well as different aspects of cultural identities such as language, gender and religion are investigated. The results show diverging discourses, with distinct differences in their explicitness and implicitness in the two countries. A clear effort to see all students as having multi-layered and multicultural identities is evident in the Finnish curricular discourse whereas a more essentializing discourse emerges in the Swedish curriculum. We conclude with a discussion on the importance of addressing policy discourses on students' cultural identities in order to ensure non-essentialist and socially just teaching and educational practice.