Sverige är mångkulturellt och i skolan finns elever som är flerspråkiga och har andra modersmål än svenska. Tidigare forskning visar att flerspråkighet är positivt och att det är en resurs i elevens andraspråksutveckling. Därför är det aktuellt och intressant att undersöka hur lärare stöttar flerspråkiga­ elevers andraspråksinlärning. Studien har skrivits med syftet att bidra med kunskap om vilka typer av stöttning lärare i svenskämnet årskurs 4–6 använder för att utveckla flerspråkiga elevers andraspråksinlärning med fokus på ordförråd. Studiens frågeställningar är: Hur stöttar lärare flerspråkiga elevers språkutveckling i svenskämnet? och På vilket sätt används transspråkande, interaktion och visuella hjälpmedel som stöd för flerspråkiga elevers språkutveckling i svenskundervisningen? Studien består av intervjuer med sex lärare i svenskämnet årskurs 4–6. Empirin har analyserats genom en tematisk analys. Teorin som har legat till grund för studien är den sociokulturella teorin. Resultatet visar att de intervjuade lärarna stöttar sina elever genom att förmedla att flerspråkighet är positivt på olika sätt. Det framkommer att lärarna använder transspråkande, interaktion och visuella hjälpmedel men i olika utsträckning. / Sweden is multicultural and the school system has students who are multilingual and have other mother tounges than Swedish. Previous research shows that multilingualism is positive and is a resource in the students’ second language development. Therefore, it is relevant and interesting to investigate how teachers support multilingual students’ second language learning. The study has been written with the aim of contributing knowledge about what types of support teachers in the Swedish subject grades 4–6 use to develop multilingual students’ second language learning with a focus on vocabulary. The questions of the study are: How do teachers support multilingual students’ language development in the Swedish subject? In what way are translanguage, interaction, and visual aids used to support multilingual students’ language development in swedish teaching? The study consists of interviews with six teachers in the Swedish subject grades 4–6. The empirical data has been analyzed through a thematic analysis. The theory that has formed the basis of the study is the sociocultural theory. The results show that the interviewed teachers support their students by conveying that multilingualism is positive in different ways. It appears that the teachers use translanguaging, interaction and visual aids, but in different extents.

The purpose of this study is to investigate conceptions that affects the results of school development in order to improve the language used while teaching within all subjects. The approach is a dialogical practitioner-research where the principal studies within her own occupation/school and is driven by a social constructionist framework of knowledge and learning. Laclau & Mouffe´s discourse-theory was used to analyze the articular-practice in eighteen teachers and their principal’s written reflections. The study focus discourses of school-development and second-language-development in relation to the nodal point ”learning”. It also focuses on teachers’ construction of identity within the school. The meaning of conceptions within school-development and second-language-development discourses are analyzed using discourse-theory methods. Conflicting meanings are also highlighted. The prior questions of the study investigates the conceptions of school-development and second-language-development and how they relate to current discourses and to each other. Conceptions that are connected to these discourses are compared with how the role of the teacher is described by the teachers themselves. The study shows an agreement on the necessity of school-development and improvement of language. Boundaries are made against those who don’t agree with school-development-projects. Different approaches are standing side by side within both fields and the role of the teacher are given multiple understandings due to their diverse experiences and framework of teaching. The understanding of the concept “diversity” alter in different fields. The meaning of “safety” varies, the teachers and principal have different thoughts on the idea of what safety is. The study shows a lack of research and science in the teachers written reflections. One implication of the study is that the conception of the role of teachers has to be reconstructed to be able to build a professional-learning-community. Different conceptions about safety has to be highlighted to avoid different understandings that prevents collaborative work between teachers. / Syftet med denna masteruppsats är att få syn på föreställningar som påverkar utvecklingsprocessen på en skola där målet är att arbeta mer språkutvecklande. Studien är att betrakta som praxisforskning med en dialogisk ansats, där rektor lär genom att forska i sin egen verksamhet. Studien utgår från en socialkonstruktionistisk syn på kunskap och lärande. Genom den diskursteori som utvecklats av Laclau och Mouffe synliggörs skolans artikulatoriska praktik, så som den framträder i arton lärares och deras rektors reflekterande loggar. De diskursiva fälten ”skolutveckling” och ”andraspråksutveckling” studeras i förhållande till nodalpunkten ”lärande”. Även lärarnas föreställningar kring subjektspositionen som lärare granskas. Genom diskursteorins verktyg synliggörs också de olika innebörder som ges kring begrepp som förekommer i diskurserna om skolutveckling och andraspråksutveckling. Även motsättningar lyfts fram. Studiens frågeställningar handlar om föreställningar kring skolutveckling och andraspråksutveckling och hur de förhåller sig till rådande diskurser och till varandra. Även föreställningar om begrepp som hör samman med skolutveckling, andraspråksutveckling, lärande och lärarrollen studeras. Studien visar att det råder enighet både kring nödvändigheten av skolutveckling och kring att utveckla det språkutvecklande arbetet på skolan. Markeringar görs mot ett diskursivt yttre, att motsätta sig utvecklingen. Olika diskurser kring andraspråksutveckling och lärande syns sida vid sida i de två fälten. Också lärarrollen ges skiftande innebörder, som kan kopplas till olika epoker och lärandeteorier. Föreställningar om begreppet ”olikhet” varierar i olika diskursiva fält. Motstående uppfattningar kring begreppet ”trygghet” framträder utifrån de olika subjektspositionerna som lärare respektive rektor. Studien visar att vetenskap och forskning inte är så framträdande i denna skolas artikulation. En slutsats som dras av studien är att lärarrollen behöver ges nya innebörder om man vill få till stånd en professionell lärande gemenskap. Även olika föreställningar kring trygghet respektive lärande behöver lyftas till ytan och synliggöras, för att undvika att motstridiga tankemönster står i vägen för det fortsatta gemensamma arbetet.

For almost 30 years, the school subject Swedish as a second language (Sva) has struggled with poor goal achievement, a high proportion of unqualified teachers and a political lack of interest in multilingualism. With large flows of refugees in recent years, there is a considerable number of students in Swedish primary school who are in need of a school subject with clear assessment routines for more effective second language teaching.In order to make visible how assessment routines are used for second language development and thus enable the purpose of this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with seven sva-teachers at six different primary schools in a medium-sized city in northern Sweden. A conventional content analysis has been done based on the transcribed material, through coding and thematization.Based on Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective and Hattie's theory of visible learning, this descriptive study investigates how and why the interviewed Swedish teachers apply continuous assessment of students' second language development.The result shows that even if the sva-teachers in this study use the same assessment tool to make students' progression in the second language visible, it is not certain that the effect of the assessment is the same because the same assessment tool is used for different purposes by different sva-teachers.

Digitala verktyg genomsyrar mycket av dagens undervisning i skolorna. Utifrån tidigare erfarenheter finns det inte alltid en tydlig bild varför digitala verktyg används i undervisningen. På grund av det är det ett viktigt forskningsområde för att alla elever ska få en undervisning som är anpassad till dem.    Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur lärare i årskurserna F-3 arbetar med digitala verktyg i svenskundervisningen när det gäller språkinlärning hos elever med svenska som andraspråk. Studien utgår ifrån det sociokulturella perspektivet som fokuserar på sociala samband samt medierade verktyg. Metoden är en kombination av kvantitativ och kvalitativ och materialet i studien består av en enkät med 63 respondenter och intervjuer av tre lärare. Resultatet i studien visar att majoriteten av lärarna använder digitala verktyg i undervisningen. Lärarna använder digitala verktyg på olika sätt men en av de viktigaste tillgångarna att använda som ett skrivverktyg och möjligheten att eleverna har tillgång till sitt modersmål. / Digital tools permeate much of today's teaching in schools. Based on previous experiences, there is not always a clear picture of why digital tools are used in teaching. Because of that, it is an important area of research for all students to receive instruction that is adapted to them.   The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers in grades F-3 work with digital tools in the teaching of Swedish when it comes to language learning for students with Swedish as a second language. The study is based on the socio-cultural perspective which focuses on social connections and mediated tools. The method is a combination of quantitative and qualitative and the material in the study consists of a survey with 63 respondents and interviews of three teachers. The results of the study show that most teachers use digital tools in teaching. The teachers use digital tools in different ways but one of the most important assets to use as a writing tool and the possibility that students have access to their mother tongue.

Due to an educational system that tends to prioritize receptive reading and listening skills and a concomitant lack of opportunities to engage in meaningful spoken production in the target language outside of the class, many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Japan struggle to develop their English speaking abilities even after many years of study. For many of these learners, post-secondary coursework presents a first opportunity to engage in consistent active oral production of the language in interactive communicative situations, but how language abilities develop in this context over time is not well understood. This longitudinal, mixed methods research study explores the development of interactive second language (L2) speaking proficiency of Japanese university students throughout their first year of post-secondary study. The participants were 92 female students from five sections of a required oral communication course of which I was the instructor: 34 from two mid-proficiency sections and 58 from three low-proficiency sections. In addition to the standard curriculum for this course, these participants also completed a series of ten 10-minute discussion tasks in groups of three to four participants on personal information topics of general interest over the course of two 15-week semesters that comprise the academic year. All of the group discussion tasks were video-recorded and carried out under the same procedures: without any pre-task planning time but with a post-task transcription and reflection assignment. The first group discussion task was administered for training and instructional purposes and excluded from the data analyses leaving seven tasks conducted roughly one month apart throughout the academic year as well as one additional repeated task with the same group assignments completed at the end of each semester. In total, nine discussion tasks were carried out for analysis in this study. A number of quantitative measures were collected for this study at various points throughout the academic year. First, all of the group discussion performances were rated using an adapted rating scale consisting of criteria dedicated to complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) as well as interactional engagement and overall communicative effectiveness. Additional measures consisting of participant ratings assigned to topic difficulty and group member familiarity were collected via questionnaire after each discussion task. Furthermore, measures of extraversion and English-speaking self-efficacy were collected along with the three repeated tasks that spanned the entire year. Finally, initial and end-of-year scores on the TOEIC-IP test consisting only of listening and reading sections were used as measures of general English proficiency. To provide a richer understanding of the participants’ perceptions of their development as well the social and individual difference factors considered most directly relevant to the research questions, an embedded qualitative component consisting of two focus groups and one individual interview was also carried out. The results indicated that the participants in this study made small but significant improvements in their mean interactive English speaking abilities across both the three repeated tasks and between the most temporally distant earliest and latest new tasks administered in the first and second terms, accounting for relatively large amounts of the variance in the measures. Furthermore, the social and individual difference factors investigated were found to jointly predict 56% of the variance seen in the interactive English speaking measures for the three repeated tasks. Of these factors, the participants’ initial general proficiency scores, English speaking self-efficacy ratings, and averaged group member initial proficiency scores were found to be much stronger predictors than their topic difficulty, group member familiarity, and extraversion ratings. When the ratings given along the five rating scale dimensions were inspected, strong relationships were revealed among all of them, though particularly among the CAF rating measures. Tracking these relationships over time revealed that they tended to strengthen from one task to the next with the most readily identifiable changes found among the relationships between accuracy, interactional engagement, and overall communicative effectiveness. Finally, the qualitative component of this study revealed that the participants interviewed perceived changes in their conscious attention during the group discussion tasks shifting from accuracy concerns to speaking fluently/effectively, a general lack of concern for and attention to complexity throughout, and improvement in their interactional engagement over the course of the academic year. Furthermore, the interviewees were found to generally ascribe a high degree of influence on their resulting group discussion task speaking performances to both the topic prompts assigned and their group members’ personalities as well as to the complex interplay between group member proficiency and familiarity among other factors. Although a number of limitations should be taken into account, it is believed that the results of this study provide new, important insights into the longitudinal development of interactive English speaking proficiency in an EFL university context where learners have little engagement with target language beyond limited classroom contact hours. / Teaching & Learning

The purpose of this study was to examine how schools identify and support newly arrived students in language developmental and/or reading and writing related difficulties. A qualitative design was chosen with semi-structured interviews in which eight teachers and special education needs teachers participated. The interviews were analyzed and categorized, which ultimately resulted intwo themes: Schools’ work with identification and Supportive measures. The results showed perceived difficulties in assessing and supporting newly arrived students in language development and/or reading and writing skills. The causes of this problem were inadequate assessment material, lacking routines for supportive measures and collaboration between the school's professionals, and lack of knowledge about second language development among special needs professionals. Despite the limitations in the scope of the study, the results showed consistency with current research. The authors have highlighted the need for more research on newly arrived students in language developmental and/or reading and writing difficulties, especially regarding the role of special needs professionals.