Drawing from a linguistic ethnographic project in accommodated language education for adult learners with intellectual disability, PTSD or migration stress, this paper engages with the sensing pedagogic body. We explore three language teachers’ recurring physical exercise and relaxation activities in their language courses, including music and images. We expand on previous findings of similar activities in a detailed account of these embodied activities as aesthetic and ethical, breaking with normative temporality and logocentrism, in line with crip theory. Building on both a Levinasian and Deleuzian perspective, we foreground the listening-resonating subject in multisensorial interactions entangled with materialities, and learning as ongoing. The findings contribute new knowledge on the role of aesthetics and relational ethics in this type of embodied space, of relevance to both educational research and practice, in accommodated language education and beyond. The findings also contribute to scholarly debate about representing subjects and subjectivity in linguistic ethnography.

This paper explores the ethical challenges and possibilities of conducting responsible and transformative translanguaging pedagogy in adult education for second language learners with limited previous experience of schooling. We identify and explore ethical dilemmas in teachers’ interaction and multilingual teaching practices. The data was produced in a linguistic ethnography and action research project. It consists of classroom observations and interviews with teachers who teach in the programme Swedish for Immigrants (SFI). The teachers express and embody ambivalence in relation to the students’ use of their whole linguistic repertoires and the students are not always treated as competent to make informed decisions about their own use of linguistic repertoires. This touches on issues of citizenship and democracy and here the framework ethics of care offers context-specific ways of understanding and responding to the ethical challenges of multilingual teaching.

The aim of this article is to generate knowledge about an MTT classroom in a Swedish elementary school and how MTT is positioned as a safe space for translanguaging. By studying a school context as a potential translanguaging space, our focus is mainly on two dimensions of space: the physical, including the material space of MTT, and the social, including safe spaces in MTT. The material is mainly from one selected Kurdish MTT classroom, in the form of field notes from lesson observations, photographs in the classroom interior, video recordings co-created with the MTT teacher. This classroom may be perceived as a space where Kurdish dominates, while being included in a Swedish-dominant school setting. This Kurdish space has borders that are physical and related to the scheduled lesson in the specific classroom. Both students and the teacher pass the door and through this shift language practices. Linguistic landscaping as a method, in combination with the collective reflection between the researcher and teacher, added another dimension to the study of MTT. Schoolscaping made language hierarchies and the language policy of the school concrete and visible.

This article analyses the knowledge about linguistic and cultural diversity that is delineated in the syllabi of teacher education programmes for pre-, primary and secondary schools at two Swedish universities. A quantitative search for 14 chosen keywords preceded a closer analysis of the concepts *language* and *cultur*, when using truncation, in 192 syllabi. This showed that linguistic diversity was to a certain extent evident, mainly through the subjects Swedish and English, while for one university cultural diversity was mainly identified in the syllabi of Educational Work and English. If knowledge about linguistic and cultural diversity is limited to language subjects, and to some extent to pre-school and earlier school years, the risk is high that student teachers are not prepared to support equity in education for multilingual and non-dominant groups. Thus, we find that students studying the current Swedish teacher education programme are unlikely to be well equipped to meet the challenges related to creating equal educational opportunities for students in situations of linguistic and cultural diversity. 

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, interviews and observations documented through field notes and photographs from an MT Somali classroom with grade six students. Through the use of a framework of language policy as layered and linguistic landscaping with a focus on aspects of time, place and social factors, the analysis shows how the mother tongue classroom may constitute a demarcated room, while simultaneously interacting with other spaces both inside and outside school. The understanding of policy as layered made power relations visible in terms of language that moves between layers. It also made visible how school discourses shift between micro/macro, management/practice and inside/outside in the creation of space dominated by Somali and Swedish. It became apparent that an environment that supports the use of Somali inside the MT classroom may increase the likelihood of the pupils using Somali outside the classroom.

Syftet med denna studie är att utifrån ett kritiskt perspektiv bidra med kunskap om språkideologier inom lärarutbildningen i Sverige. För att möjliggöra en likvärdig skola menar vi att det är centralt att förskollärare och lärare utvecklar arbetssätt för att ge alla barn och elever oavsett språkliga erfarenheter möjlighet att utvecklas. Fokus riktas här mot språkideologier i svensk lärarutbildning genom att undersöka hur ideologiska rum och rum för implementering av språklig mångfald konstrueras och förhandlas inom förskollärarprogrammet. Det empiriska materialet har skapats under fyra år genom observationer, individuella intervjuer och fokusgruppsamtal med lärarutbildare och studenter när vi följde en grupp studenter som på grund av sin migrationsbakgrund valts ut och getts stöd för att delta i förskollärarprogrammet. Analysen visar på en rådande enspråkig norm för standardiserad svenska såväl i förskollärarutbildningen som för studenternas framtida arbete som förskollärare, och att en förutsättning för att bli en erkänd medlem i denna grupp var att följa denna norm. Ideologiska utrymmen för flerspråkighet skapades under utbildningen men möjligheter att implementera dessa var få. En spänning fanns mellan å ena sidan pluralism och mångfald och å andra sidan ett starkt krav på anpassning av språkanvändning för minoritetsstudenter till en enspråkig standardiserad norm. Som lärarutbildare inser vi värdet och kanske nödvändigheten av en gemensam språklig norm, och även att denna i hög grad behöver gälla skriven text. Samtidigt argumenterar vi för att öppna lärarutbildningen för en flerspråkig pedagogik som inkluderar och stärker både studenternas språkliga repertoarer och ger dem möjlighet att utveckla förhållningssätt och arbetssätt för att arbeta i verksamheter präglade av språklig mångfald.

In this article images of and narratives about a specific homeland, heritage and culture in Mother Tongue Tuition (MTT) in Sweden are analyzed in order to discuss if and how the MTT classroom is constructed as a transnational space. In the Swedish context, MTT is a voluntary school subject with the aim to support students to develop knowledge in and about the mother tongue, namely languages other than Swedish used in the home setting. Through a modified nexus analysis of policy documents, field notes and photos from observations and semi-structured interviews with Mother Tongue teachers, a picture emerges of MTT as a transnational space. However, while the discourses of official curricula express a simplified view of the relations between language, culture and the geopolitical space perceived as the homeland, the analysis of the linguistic landscape of the classrooms and the MT teachers’ voices exposes the complexity of such relations in a globalized world. The analysis revealed that the construction of the homeland is not limited to relations between two geographical places, as expressed through the national curriculum, but rather the discourses in place may include varied diaspora communities as well as complex national situations in the perceived homeland.

The legitimacy of the mother tongue subject in a changing political landscape: An analysis of Swedish parliamentary debate in thetwenty-tens.

This paper highlights and discusses the arguments in favor of, or against Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) in Swedish parliamentary debate between 2010 and 2020. New to this decade is the entrance of yet another nationalist and populist party with the abolishment of MTI on its political agenda. Building on a critical discourse analytical frame and argumentation analysis, we discuss this party’s rhetoric on MTI – based in an Othering discourse and the construction of MTI as a path to alienation – and the parliamentary counter-voices. The latter mainly concern the role of MTI for development of Swedish and learning in other school subjects, implying that MTI in its own right is subordinated. We argue that this counter-discourse represents a shift in how MTI is legitimized – and in fact plays into assimilationists’ hands – compared to the pluralistic ideology that initially made way for MTI. The importance of scrutinizing political rhetoric is stressed to anticipate political action.