Fostering multilingualism in Swedish schools – intentions and realities

• The continuous cast of ethnic and linguistic diversity in negative terms in Swedish schools reveals systematic mismatches between intended policies and everyday classroom practices. In this article, failures in terms of the implementation of language education policy are attributed to languagepolicies not being sufficiently attuned to the sociolinguistic realities in multilingual contexts and at the same time disregarding issues of power and identity. With reference to findings in critical, ethnographic research, it is suggested that strategic essentialism at a general policy level as well as linguicism as a manifestation of prevailing deficit ideologies at an institutional and individual level of practice may contribute to an unresolved tension between the official policy and local educational practices. It is concluded that a number of challenges remain to be addressed before the vision of equal access to linguistic resources in Swedish schools can be realized.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

language education policy

mother-tongue tuition

Swedish as a second language

strategic essentialism

deficit ideologies

linguicism

Linguistics

lingvistik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)