Swedish schools test new method to unlock migrant students' language skills
Researchers piloted a classroom approach that treats multilingual awareness as a strength rather than a barrier, finding that when teachers cultivate curiosity about language diversity, recently arrived students participate more actively in lessons. The method could reshape how schools integrate migrant populations and improve educational outcomes across diverse communities.
Originaltitel: Critical Multilingual Language Awareness Among Migrant Students: Cultivating Curiosity and a Linguistics of Participation
<p>This paper draws from a collaborative project in which we piloted a Critical Multilingual Language Awareness approach (CMLA) in a preparatory class for recently arrived secondary school students in Sweden. We adapted material on Language Awareness from We Are Multilingual (https://www.wamcam.org). This adapted approach followed the five principles of educational design for multilingual learners, which also relate to cognitive, performative, affective, social and power domains of Language Awareness. Data consist of audio- and video-recorded interactions from classroom observations, student/teacher interviews, and teaching/student-produced material. With a process-oriented focus, we discuss student participation in this co-learning design as contingent upon practices of curiosity. A focus is also on the co-learning process through reflection on activity, and how cultivating new ways of listening, involving multilingual study mentoring, may spur linguistic participation.</p>