A Nordic model in policy and practice? The case of immigrants and refugees in rural schools in Iceland and Sweden

Abstract

Through a cross-national analysis of Iceland and Sweden, we investigate How are the two countries’ national and local educational systems ensuring access to education and social inclusion of immigrants and refugees? How do immigrant and refugee students talk about their agency in their classrooms, schools, and peer communities in rural contexts? Our analysis builds on fieldwork including classroom observations and interviews with immigrants (Iceland) and refugees (Sweden) aged 12–16 years, their teachers, and school principals, in four compulsory schools. The concept of ecology of equity is used to investigate power relations with regard to place and agency. The analysis also includes investigation of the politics of the teaching profession in response to students’ diversity. Findings show that although some students describe that they do not feel “othered,” the majority, especially refugee students in Sweden, do feel excluded from their peers. The Icelandic and Swedish rural schools are on their own in tackling issues of working with these students, despite the fact that their practices may lead to reinforcing inequalities between schools and regions of the two countries. In this sense, the approach of the two countries does not reflect the ideals of the Nordic welfare system.

Factors facilitating and obstructing a school development project

“…This factor has imposed new demands on the receiving schools, as language acquisition is often a significant barrier for secondlanguage pupils to succeed in school (Cummins, 2000;Obondo, Lahdenperä, & Sandevärn, 2016). Furthermore, schools often experience a shortage of personnel able to support pupils' learning in their mother tongue (Bunar, 2017), and support from headteachers as well as municipalities is often lacking (Wozniczka & Rosvall, 2019). Not only is the promotion of intrinsic reading motivation an important challenge for the teachers (Economou, 2015), but also developing disciplinary literacies in all subjects becomes central (Petersson & Norén, 2017).…”