Interaction in the Multilingual Classroom

Abstract

Classrooms are institutional social spaces where there is microlevel interaction that is embedded in wider sociocultural and sociopolitical institutional contexts in a society. In mainstream schools, they are intended for socialization, curriculum learning, and assessment. As such, they are spaces where students' full range of linguistic and semiotic expression may be leveraged (Cummins 2007) in their interaction with individuals that are often outside students' normal communities (Anderson 2018). Being part of a layered structure of institutions in a nation, the classroom is considered "an immensely rich site for the investigation of the processes of social and cultural (re)production and the relationship between micro classroom and macro institutional processes" (Tsui 2017: 194).Classroom interaction research dates back some seventy years, with early work leading to insights that classroom processes are extremely complex (Tsui 2017: 188). Multilingual classroom research emerged in the 1980s out of a concern for the education of language-minoritized children (Martin-Jones 2015; Aline and Hosoda 2021). Since then, increased mobility across the world has led to today's multilingual classrooms housing individuals with highly diverse translocal linguistic repertoires. This is mirrored by the recent immense increase in scholarly interest in multilingual language use in education, notably in studies of translanguaging pedagogy (

Tværsproglighedens veje: Om sproglig bevidsthed, tværsproglighed og didaktisk forandringsarbejde i en folkeskolekontekst

“…I en skandinavisk kontekst tyder forskning på, at der i hvert fald i engelskundervisningen primaert fokuseres på at tale engelsk, (Kabel et al, 2019;Källkvist, Gyllstad, Sandlun & Sundquist, 2017;Källkvist & Sundquist, 2019) Det er kendetegnende for projektets aktionsforskningsbaserede tilgang, at det ikke omhandler afprøvningen af en specifik, foruddefineret tvaersproglig didaktik, som fx translanguaging (Wei, 2018), évail aux langues (Daryai-Hansen et al, 2015) eller almen sprogforståelse (L. Andersen, 2004;Calmar Andersen et al, 2017). Her er i stedet tale om en tvaersproglig didaktik, som udvikles igennem det kollaborative forandringsarbejde, beskrevet i kapitel 4.…”

Research on foreign language learning, teaching, and assessment in Sweden 2012–2021

“…There are a few studies on multilingual classrooms (see e.g., Fuster & Neuser, 2021;Gunnarsson, 2015;Källkvist et al, 2017Källkvist et al, , 2021, and it is likely that this is a burgeoning theme suffering from some lag, considering the influence of the 'multilingual turn' (May, 2013). Much research has been done on the role of the background languages in L3 learning during the period, but then mainly considering L1 Swedish and English and MLs as L2s.…”

“…Drawing on theoretical frameworks like Pedagogical Translanguaging (see, e.g., Cenoz & Gorter, 2020), Language Mode (Grosjean, 2008), and Teacher Cognition (Borg, 2003), the four-year MLS project (Källkvist et al, 2017) focused on classroom heterogeneity of different kinds. Källkvist and co-researchers investigated the multilingual English classroom at secondary school level.…”

“…They were interested in the hypothetical benefits of the ‘target-language only’ approach. The main findings of the project (Källkvist et al, 2021) included a profound variation as to teachers’ beliefs about use of other languages than English, a dominance of English in teachers’ use, but not exclusive, often complemented by Swedish – a strategy students liked in general. Students whose stronger language was other than English or Swedish used this very sparingly or not at all.…”

Mundtlighed og translanguaging

“…Efter paedagogisk intervention lykkedes det imidlertid at udvikle en kommunikativ undervisning på målsproget kombineret med en flersprogethedsdidaktik, der bygger bro mellem elevernes forskellige sprog (Daryai-Hansen & Albrechtsen 2018). Källkvist et al (2017) kommer frem til en lignende konklusion på baggrund af omfattende observationer i svensk engelskundervisning i udskolingen. De foreslår, at de sidste 20 års mantra om "English only" bør erstattes af "English mainly", dvs.…”