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Syftet med denna artikel är undersöka elevers karaktärsemotionella inferenser (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994) av en litterär text utifrån deras skriftliga sammanfattningar av lästa kapitel ur romanen, Stjärnlösa Nätter av Arkan Asaad (2015). Studien genomfördes inom undervisningen i svenska som andraspråk på det individuella programmet Språkintroduktion på gymnasiet med två deltagande lärare och tretton deltagande elever, 16–20 år. Analysen visade att många elever återberättat huvudkaraktärens känslor: hat och kärlek i relation till fadern, ilska över diskrepanser mellan generationer och kulturer samt ensamhet i att inte tillhöra eller få förståelse för en kultur. Med utgångs-punkt i resultatet föreslår artikelförfattarna att skriftligt återberättande skulle kunna tas i bruk i litteraturundervisningen för att skapa insikter om elevernas förståelse för huvudpersonens känslor såväl som för sina egna samt som ett led i arbetet med demokrati och identitetsutveckling. Slutsatsen är att denna didaktiska potential bör tas tillvara i arbetet med litteratur.

This paper explores the construction of language ideologies and language learning within English-language education in a Language Introduction Program (LIP) in Sweden. LIP is an individual transitional program for newly arrived migrant students that seeks to quickly transition adolescents into further education or the job market. High proficiency in English is important in Swedish society and insufficient knowledge of English might lead to consequences for individuals, but also long-term consequences for society regarding inequality and inequity. The methodology is based on linguistic ethnography, with observations and interviews at two schools. Data from interviews with English teachers and principals at LIP are analyzed using Foucauldian perspectives to discuss power and individualization. Our results show that LIP is organized in a manner that reduces teachers' possibilities to cooperate and assist each other in planning, assessing, and in developing teaching practices. To a certain extent, principals withdraw from their responsibility and place a significant amount of organizational responsibility on individual English teachers. Furthermore, monolingual ideologies are prominent in educational practices, and LIP is often positioned as different from the rest of the school which increases isolation.

International migration creates a need for second language (L2) education in majority languages. The language programme Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) offers basic education in Swedish as an L2 to newly arrived adult migrants in Sweden. The aim of the study presented here is to explore the stability and dynamics of teachers’ beliefs about the education offered to students studying Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults (LESLLA) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is part of an action research project that included teachers and students at four SFI schools. This sub-study builds on individual and focus group interviews with teachers from these schools, which are analysed though content analysis. The theoretical base for the study is the beliefs of teachers and the stability and dynamics thereof. For these teachers, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic meant an abrupt switch from in-person instruction in the classroom to various combinations of digital education and in-person instruction in smaller groups. The beliefs of these teachers remained stable concerning their students’ needs, such as the importance of social interaction, varied exercises and frequent feedback. At the same time, they showed creativity in developing new forms of teaching. The situation was stressful for teachers and a higher level of stability could have allowed them to prioritise in other ways. In these politically and economically challenging times, LESLLA students are in even greater need of efficient and empowering education, not least access to digital tools and competence of high quality. We conclude that the possibilities for the schools of handling the crisis that the pandemic caused depended on the professional competence of individual teachers as well as their ability to act independently.

This article examines classroom work with literature in the Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) programme in which adult migrants study Swedish at a basic level. The participants were a teacher and a group of students with limited previous education. The study explores practices that the participants applied during classroom work with an easy-to-read novel. The theoretical and analytical framework includes the four resources model, transactional theory and the concepts of translanguaging and embodied literacy practices. Data for the study were collected in a large action research and linguistic ethnography project by means of classroom observations and focus group conversations with teachers. Findings show that decoding and meaning-making practices were most prominent, while text-using and text-analysing practices were scarcer. Aesthetic reading and efferent reading were in different ways integrated with the different families of practice. Aesthetic reading was connected to multimodal aspects and embodied literacy practices. Efferent reading was found at many levels in the reading and was interconnected with all families of practice. Translanguaging practices often intersected with meaning-making practices.

In this study, we investigate linguistic diversity in teacher educationin the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a setting where discourses on emigration and re-emigration are strong. The aim is to explore social discourses on linguistic diversity as constructed in teacher training programmes for teaching English to primary and secondary school pupils, in course descriptions at two universities, and the implications of these discourses for the suggested teaching practices. Four discourses were identified:double monolingualism, contrastive perspective, linguistic diversity as one of many types of diversity and English as a gateway to future possibilities. Students’ earlier linguistic resources in other languages were treated as negative for the development of their English-language skills. English and Kurdish were treated in ways that suggest they should be kept separate and skills in other languages were rendered invisible. This is likely to have an impact on students’ teaching in the future, making them less inclined to recognise their pupils’ prior knowledge of other languages. We conclude that, more research is needed focusing on issues of circular migration and diaspora, and on other themes than those dominant in the West and the Global North, such as high number of immigrants and issues of integration and assimilation.