Conference Agenda

An increasing number of students worldwide follows (part of their) secondary education in a multilingual setting (Briggs et al., 2018). Although several studies have highlighted that a focus on language is not always an integral part of subject teachers’ teaching in different multilingual environments (Hüttner, et al., 2013; Oattes et al., 2018), very few studies have focused on the kinds of support that are provided.

Considering that multilingual students are a heterogenous group of learners with various linguistic, educational, and cultural backgrounds, it is likely that the type and level of language- and content-related difficulties they meet when learning different school subjects vary. One of the frustrations reported by subject teachers, for instance social studies teachers, is that they often recognize their students’ language-related needs in content-area classrooms, but that they require more specialized knowledge of teaching about language. They also express needs for strategies that enable them to bring a language focus into subjects classes without being constrained by aspects like time and the large quantity of content that needs to be covered (Zhang, 2017; Yoder, et al., 2016).

Given the fact that the number of multilingual students is ever increasing, it is imperative for teachers to reflect on their teaching approaches in order to meet their students’ needs (Duarte & Kirsch 2020). This symposium aims to discuss questions surrounding the opportunities and challenges of a dual focus on language and subject area learning, both from a teacher and student perspective. The objectives of the symposium are: (1) to enhance the knowledge on language- and content-integrated learning across school subjects, (2) to discuss teaching and learning contexts promoting language development and subject area learning, (3) to critically reflect on the existing barriers for improving language- and content-integrated learning in linguistically and culturally diverse classroom environments.

By juxtaposing pedagogical philosophies, didactical approaches and teaching traditions as well as the pupil´s point of view, this symposium is designed to shed light on pedagogical possibilities from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. A certain point of interest thereby are interfaces of teaching and learning acknowledged minority languages and “migrant” languages. It also aims to reinforce the internationalization of the field and help researchers identify new theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and transfer methodology between school subjects. The cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach aims to build bridges between various school subjects, hoping to reduce the tension between disciplinary learning and language development.

According to statistics from the Swedish National Agency of Education (2021-2022), more than 26% of students in compulsory schools in Sweden have acquired Swedish as their second language. Swedish is the official language of the school and society in Sweden. Different types of difficulties that second-language (L2) students meet in relation to texts in civics have still not been extensively researched. Results from a thematic literature review based on studies elaborating on students’ civics learning indicate that although reading texts is central in civics, L2 students’ possible difficulties with reading comprehension of civics texts have not received significant attention in research (Rinnemaa, in press). L2 students’ perspectives are required to better scaffold them in classrooms where civics is teaching. The data in this study is based on thirty-six individual think-aloud (TA) task completions combined with semi-structured interviews with eighteen L2 students in grade nine. The students have various linguistic and educational backgrounds and were recruited from three schools located in two municipalities within a large city in Sweden. The schools represent low, middle, and high socioeconomic status in relation to the parents’ educational background. A four-field model is constructed and used as the conceptual framework and analytical tool. The four-field model is a way of visualizing the complexity of difficulties with texts in civics. The students’ verbal reports are analyzed and categorized using the four key components from the model: a) literacy abilities, b) disciplinary literacy abilities, c) prior knowledge, and d) content-area knowledge. In this presentation, the implication of the findings for teaching and learning civics in linguistically diverse classrooms will be discussed. Examples of language- and content-related difficulties with texts in civics, viewed from L2 students’ perspectives, will be presented. Moreover, the students’ reasoning about the strategies, types of knowledge and abilities that they find meaningful for reading comprehension of texts in civics will be explained. For instance, in contrast to previous research, indicating that difficulties with texts are mainly caused by the difficult language used in them (e.g., Myers & Zaman, 2011, Deltac, 2012), the students in this study report that the simple language and the simplified content in civics texts are problematic for their reading comprehension. They also report that the lack of intercultural perspectives in the civics texts makes it difficult for them to draw on their life experiences and previous knowledge to make sense of the civics themes discussed in the texts.

Deltac, S. M. (2012). Teachers of America's immigrant students: Citizenship instruction for English language learners [Doctoral dissertation, Emory University, USA]. Emory University Theses and Dissertations Archive. https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/6q182k28d?locale=en Dong, Y. R. (2017). Tapping into English language learners' (ELLs') prior knowledge in social studies instruction. The Social Studies, 108(4), 143-151. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2017.1342161 Jaffee, A. T. (2022). “Part of being a citizen is to engage and disagree”: Operationalizing culturally and linguistically relevant citizenship education with late arrival emergent bilingual youth. The Journal of Social Studies Research, 46(1), 53-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2021.11.003 Myers, J., & Zaman, H. (2009). Negotiating the global and national: immigrant and dominant culture adolescents' vocabularies of citizenship in a transnational world. Teachers College Record, 111, 2589–2625. Florida State University Digital Library. https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:209947/datastream/PDF/view Rinnemaa. P. (in press). Adolescents’ Learning of Civics in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms: A Thematic Literature Review. The journal of social science education. Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard educational review, 78(1), 40–59. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.78.1.v62444321p602101 Skolverket (2022). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet: Lgr22. [The Swedish National Agency for Education. Curriculum for elementary school, preschool class and after-school care center] https://www.skolverket.se/getFile?file=9718

An increasing number of learners worldwide follows (part of their) secondary education in a second language (Briggs et al., 2018). The types of secondary education that offer education in a second language assume an important role for subject teachers to offer language support (Duarte, 2019). Within these settings, the concept of scaffolding is used to conceptualize the support that allows learners to engage with content in a language they only partially know (Lyster, 2019). Although several studies have highlighted that a focus on language is not always an integral part of subject teachers’ teaching in different bilingual environments (Oattes et al., 2018), very few studies have focused on the kinds of support that are provided. This presentation consists of an overview of the results of an investigation of the types of language scaffolds used by social studies and geography teachers teaching in Dutch secondary bilingual education and their reasons for employing these language scaffolds. Interviews, lesson observations and stimulated recall interviews were conducted to investigate reported practices, actual practices and reasons teachers have for using particular scaffolds. The central research question of the investigation is: ‘which types of language scaffolds do citizenship related subject teachers teaching in Dutch secondary bilingual education use in their practice and which reasons do they have to employ these practices?’ The observation tool and interview scheme build on the concept of whole class scaffolding (Smit et al., 2013) and incorporates language levels and linguistic demands (Lo et al., 2019). Van de Pol et al.’s (2010) distinction between scaffolding goals and means is used to provide further insight in the ways scaffolding of language takes place and the motivations teachers have to engage in it. The outcomes consist of two parts. The results comprise an overview as well as examples of the various types of language scaffolds used by the teachers and the reasons teachers have to use them in their classes. These examples will provide the kind of texture to the types of scaffolding which will increase the chances that the results will be of use not only to researchers, but also to teachers and teacher educators in search of examples of language scaffolding which they can use to their multilingual students’ ever-increasing needs.

Briggs, J. G., Dearden, J., & Macaro, E. (2018). English medium instruction: Comparing teacher beliefs in secondary and tertiary education. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 8(3), 673-696. 10.14746/ssllt.2018.8.3.7 Duarte, J. (2019). Translanguaging in mainstream education: a sociocultural approach. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 22(2), 150-164 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1231774 Lo, Y. Y., Lui, W. M., & Wong, M. (2019). Scaffolding for cognitive and linguistic challenges in CLIL science assessments. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 7(2), 151-165. https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.18028.lo Lyster, R. (2019). Translanguaging in Immersion: Cognitive Support or Social Prestige?. Canadian Modern Language Review, 75(4), 340-352. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.2019-0038 Oattes, H., Oostdam, R., De Graaff, R., Fukkink, R., & Wilschut, A. (2018). Content and Language Integrated Learning in Dutch bilingual education: How Dutch history teachers focus on second language teaching. Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(2), 156-176. Smit, J., AA van Eerde, H., & Bakker, A. (2013). A conceptualisation of whole‐class scaffolding. British Educational Research Journal, 39(5), 817-834. Van de Pol, J., Volman, M., & Beishuizen, J. (2010). Scaffolding in teacher–student interaction: A decade of research. Educational psychology review, 22(3), 271-296.

Using an exploratory research approach, our research team in the spring of 2021 conducted 63 semi-standardised qualitative interviews with students of the „BG/BRG für Slowenen“, a high school genuinely built for members of the Slovene autochthonous minority in southern Austria. This school uses Slovene as main teaching language (in sense of CLIL), while German and English are taught as school subjects, along with other possible languages. The interviews were conducted in Slovenian or in German with the aim of identifying indicators that have an impact on language acquisition of minority school students in Carinthia/Koroška. Over the decades, Slovene minority members were discriminated in southern Austria, but this changed in the 21st century. While Slovene is gaining prestige, fewer pupils of the "Slovene high school" speak Slovene as their first language; many now also come from Slovenia or Italy to to take advantage of the school's multilingual education offer. Our research focused on attitudes and motivation for first, second and third language acquisition, on personal perspectives on the relevances and values of multilingualism and the associated feelings, relationships and identifications. The heterogeneous composition of the interviewees allows for certain comparisons in this study: Some of the interviewed acquaint e.g. Slovene as a foreign language on this school, others as a first-/ second language (mainly the minority members). The study will be repeated in the summer semester of 2023 and will be designed as a longitudinal study. In our presentation, the results of the research on the topic of language acquisition and its frame of reference to emotions and society will be presented. Resulting implications for educational practice will be discussed. Schematised, life worlds of the interviewees will be presented, as they can be understood as another key to successful language acquisition factors of minority and foreign languages in mainly different language speaking environments (with more or less pressure and discrimination on minority language speakers – in comparison with learning a national language).

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