Although researchers maintain that scholarly understanding is moving away from a monolingual approach to language learning (Conteh & Meier, 2014; May, 2014), policy in many countries has not taken part in this shift, some... [ view full abstract ]
Although researchers maintain that scholarly understanding is moving away from a monolingual approach to language learning (Conteh & Meier, 2014; May, 2014), policy in many countries has not taken part in this shift, some policies are even moving in the opposite direction, as might be the case in Norway. Norwegian school policies have moved away from strengthening both L1 and L2 for bilingual students. Allthough the number of students with Norwegian as their L2 has increased, the number of such students getting instruction in their L1 has decreased. Also, a shift towards using standardized tests in Norwegian to test the achievement of all students might have strengthened the all-Norwegian approach to teaching.
In a case study of three teacher teams, the teachers discussions of issues related to reading, standardized reading tests and general student achievement are part of the data. The focus of this presentation is the discourse of school achievement of multilingual students among the teachers. Drawing on the works of Gee (2012) and Fairclough (2010) the presentation will examine what might be interpreted as competing discourses about multilingual students and multilingualism, and discuss in what ways the discourses among the teachers are related to the policies regarding multilingual students. When policy documents emphasize the importance of language, all the while facilitating the use of Norwegian as the only medium of instruction, it might not be surprising that many teachers refer to Norwegian as „the language“ and referring to some of the students as being „without language“. This is one of the issues that will be discussed.
Conteh, J., & Meier, G. (2014). Conclusion: The multilingual turn in languages education. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turn in languages education : opportunities and challenges (Vol. 40). Bristol: Multilingual matters.
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis : the critical study of language (2nd ed. ed.). Harlow: Longman.
Gee, J. P. (2012). Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. London: Routledge.
May, S. (2014). Introducing the "multilingual turn". In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn : implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 1-6). New York: Routledge.
