Till handling! En studie om att omsätta diskurser om flerspråkiga elevers lärande

Abstract in English

The aim of the dissertation is to examine how teachers in preschool class and the first two levels of Swedish school implement discourses on multilingual pupils’ language and knowledge development in their mathematics teaching after receiving continuing professional development. The study is based on the theory of mediated discourse analysis and its methodology, nexus analysis (see Scollon & Scollon 2004), which reveals how discourses are translated into action based on three collaborating forces: interaction order, discourses in place, and the historical body. The analysis of the interaction order has been carried out using IR analysis (see Linell & Gustavsson 1987). The discourses in place and the teachers’ historical bodies have been analysed using a model of scaffolding strategies (see Hammond & Gibbons 2005) and have been restricted to pupils’ need for support in their development in the language of instruction and to use linguistic and cultural diversity as a learning resource. The material consists of three teachers’ final examination assignments in the continuing education, self-recorded lessons in mathematics and follow-up collegial reflection conversations. Also analysed is a questionnaire that the teachers completed before the continuing education started.

The results show that all three teachers support pupils to develop content knowledge in the language of instruction. However, none of the teachers supports the pupils in using linguistic and cultural diversity as a learning resource. Their teaching is in line with the attitude they showed in the questionnaire responses before the continuing education. The professional development nevertheless seems to have affected the teachers. The collegial discussions show not only that teachers are reinforced in their view of how multilingual pupils can be supported in their development of content knowledge in the language of instruction, but also that they have changed their views of how pupils’ linguistic and cultural diversity can be utilized as learning resources. With the support of the continuing education, all three have plans to test methods that take advantage of pupils’ linguistic and cultural diversity in teaching.