Ideological and implementational spaces for translanguaging in the language introduction programme in Swedish Upper Secondary School

5.1 Orienting to place, space and time

When arriving at Cherry School, the visitor, student or staff member meets a large sign on one wall on the outside of the building with the name of the school, claiming the space for the school. Inside the main entrance, there is a verbal welcoming sign and a sign that indirectly asks visitors to sign up at the reception desk to the left: ”Besökare anmäler sig i receptionen” [Visitors sign up at the reception] in Swedish. In the entrance hall, there is also a schematic sign with a map of the school premises illustrating an evacuation plan (Figure 1). Similar maps, usually with escape routes marked, are found in different parts of the school. There are also signs with arrows showing where to get to different parts of the school (see Figure 2).

Figure 1:

Evacuation plan.

Figure 2:

Signs showing how to get to various parts of the school.

Other signs show the reception and the janitors’ office with their opening times. These signs are more or less permanent, while other signage are more temporary, such as a display from twin school activities and some note-boards with posters. One of these note-boards has information from the student counselor about various types of jobs and on the others (Figure 3), posters from external associations and clubs are displayed. There is also a digital information screen, but at the time for observations it was not working. All of these signs are only in Swedish, except for the posters from associations and clubs where English is also used.

Figure 3:

Information about various job opportunities.

In the center of the school building is a recreational area with tables and chairs and some screens that are used to divide the area. On the walls in this area, there are a few signs, such as a sign with opening hours for the library.

On the outside and inside of classrooms there were schedules and specific information, such as the time for SGMT for a particular class, a photograph of one class, grammar rules and time schedules for tests. On classroom walls not much was displayed, except for wall-calendars and in SSL-classrooms a few maps of Sweden, Europe or the world.

Only rarely was a language other than Swedish or English observed in this type of signage during data collection. One of the few examples was in one classroom where posters with the Swedish “Allemansrätten” [Legal right to access private land] were displayed. Allemansrätten enshrines the general public’s right to and responsibility for access to privately owned property. This right holds a strong symbolic function in Sweden, and in this case it was translated to Arabic, Farsi and Somali.

In the orientation to space, time and place through signage at Cherry School, Swedish dominates. Also, the content in this signage may be said to represent a Swedish dominant context, and the only reference to other parts of the world comes in the form of recruitment to football clubs. Students’ other linguistic resources and their own experiences from other parts of the world are basically invisible. Although authors and agents are not often expressed explicitly, in classrooms they are mainly teachers while in shared areas they may be understood as the school as an institution or the school administration, with the board for associations and clubs as one exception. Students are not visible as agents through the signage. Thus, students in LIP may be understood as recipients and not agents in this regard.

5.2 Controlling behavior

When the second function is considered, to control behavior, displayed images, objects, symbols and written language are mainly directed towards students and visitors, and to a lesser extent to school staff. The school as institution may be implied as authors and agents, through janitors, representatives for the municipality or school administration. Some signage is clearly displayed to control behavior, such as rules of conduct. These signs are more or less directed towards students and may be understood to have been authored and displayed by the school as institution or teacher(s), but commonly the author is not explicitly stated.

In some of the signs, the message is not explicit but rather implicit, such as “trivselregler” (rules for well-being) found in one classroom, as well as signs claiming the school as a non-smoking and perfume-free area (Figure 4).

Figure 4:

Poster for the school as a perfume free zone.

The choice of more implicit expressions instead of more explicit alternatives, such as “smoking is prohibited”, “use of perfume is not allowed” and “rules of conduct”, may be perceived as a common strategy in Sweden, particularly in school settings, where more implicit forms are common. This may perhaps be understood as a way to create a sense of equality and democracy, where rules are something that “we” have agreed on and are expected to follow (by our free will). They may be understood as agreements rather than rules and to some extent creating a discourse: “Here, we are together and we have a common agreement on certain forms of behavior”. It may be understood as creating an egalitarian relationship, although students are also here positioned as recipients who are to follow the rules, but preferably of their own will.

5.3 Shaping discourses

The discourse of equality and democracy present through signage that expresses rules of conduct implicitly is also visible on a wall that is newly painted with the text “På Hägg möter du lärare som bryr sig” (In Cherry you meet teachers who care) in white on silver. This may be understood as addressing both teachers and students, expressed as what you should expect (as student) and follow (as teacher).

In posters and advertising from external clubs English is common together with Swedish (Figure 5).

Figure 5:

Recruitment to a football club.

The poster in Figure 5 is written in English only, addressing those who would like to make a football career abroad. The choice of English may hint at internationalism but to the English-speaking part of the world that the reader is assumed to be part of. The individuals represented in the photos are young men with light skin and bleached hair. As most of the students in LIP have black hair and a large proportion have dark skin, they are to that extent not visibly represented through that poster, and no poster was observed during the study representing non-white young persons. The posters may thus be understood as creating a discourse of young people rethinking language and life with Swedish and English as the languages used, while not making experiences and origins from other parts of the world visible.

The discourse made visible through this signage does not open much space for translanguaging, expect for use of Swedish and English, and the diverse linguistic resources among students and school staff are not represented. Surprisingly there was an absence of transgression, such as scribbles, written language or other signage that may be perceived as provocative. Perhaps one poster displayed in a place that was not prescribed may be referred to as transgressive through its placement. This was a sign for “Fridays for the future”, that is school strikes for the climate, which one Friday was attached to one of the entrance doors, using tape (Figure 6). It is not known to me who put this post up er and it was displayed only a few days.

Figure 6:

Poster for school strike for the climate.

Thus, the discourse made visible through signage at Cherry School is a discourse where students in LIP are quite invisible and do not act as authors. The discourse may rather be understood as expressing a “we”, but not through the representation of LIP students and without giving space to their voices or agency. Still, the discourse is inviting, and students are implicitly welcomed to become included in the implicit “we”. The example with the translation of the legal right to access to private land may in this context be understood as an inclusive discourse where students are invited to become like “us”, Swedes who are expected to care about this rule.

6.1 Inviting translanguaging in lesson on sound

In the selected lesson in Physics, the teacher Maria only had five students who all aimed at fulfilling the learning requirements later that term. The main languages that these students use apart from Swedish are French, Arabic, Kormanji, Somali, Thai and Dari. The topic was sound and Maria illustrated sound and the vibrations of the sound using a tuning fork. She explained in Swedish that the fork “sätts i vibration och förstärker och förtunnar luften” [vibrates and amplifies and thins the air]. She talked about musical instruments, took out a flute on which she played a traditional song from the local area, and she described sound waves and the amplification of sound. Students were given a handout with words and concepts and the task for the unit was that students should be able to describe the meaning of these. She asked students to start to find the meanings “På vilket språk som helst” [in any language], reminded them to use the reading services, and suggested an instructional film that had translation either through sound or subtitles in some of the languages that students knew. All students took out their laptops and started to look up the meaning of the words in the list through various languages. In the lesson, they googled the words, used Wikipedia, and listened to translations of the textbook through the reading services. Some watched the instructional film. One of the students wrote her own translation in Thai, which she retrieved through Google translate, on the handout. Another student explained after a direct question from the researcher on what she does to learn the words: ”jag lyssnar först på arabiska, sen på svenska” [I first listen in Arabic, and then in Swedish]. Thus, students made use of their varied linguistic resources through various media to be able to give explanations of the words and concepts in the assessment. However, apart from inviting students to use multilingual resources, Maria did not check whether students had understood. She told students that during the assessment the following lesson they would be asked to pick among the concepts and to give a short explanation.

Through this teaching, students were invited to use their varied linguistic resources, but they were to a great extent left on their own to find successful ways to navigate between languages. Some of their languages were available in various ways, while some, such as Dari, Kormanji and Thai were only available to a restricted extent. Thus, different students used different translanguaging strategies. Their focus was on finding translations and explanations of the words to write down. Spaces opened for translanguaging only included students, and the teacher kept herself outside this space. When students had questions, they rather turned to their classmates than asked Maria. The same pattern is observed in other lessons observed with Maria, for example in lessons where there was an SGMT assistant speaking one or more of students’ other languages, Maria did not involve herself in the discussions following students’ questions to the assistant.

Languages other than Swedish were used as tools to learn what was valued which was to express the knowledge in Swedish. It may be noted that while Maria explained the topic, she rarely explained specific words and never referred to how these concepts could be expressed in other languages. However, three of the four interviewed students claimed that they already knew the content through their earlier schooling before they came to Sweden, and that what they needed was to learn how to express this in Swedish. Thus, there may be said to be an ambivalence in the teacher’s goal for the lesson and some of the students’, as the teacher’s focus was on teaching the content and not on teaching language. There is a risk for misunderstanding when the teacher does not explain important concepts, such as in the introduction of this lesson when she says “vibrates and amplifies and thins the air” without further explanations of the concepts and without checking students’ understanding. As for example Swanson et al. (2014) and Ünsal et al. (2016) have shown, it is problematic to rely entirely on students’ own understanding through translations as these may obscure understanding. This risk was particularly high for the student who did not know the content earlier.

Thus, this lesson may be said to open space for translanguaging, while the teacher did not involve herself in the negotiation of meaning that mainly took place through varied languages, but this was left to students in collaboration with the SGMT assistants on the occasions when they were present.

6.2 Including translanguaging in all parts of a lesson on the decimal system

The second selected lesson is a lesson in Mathematics, with a group of students with no or little earlier schooling (see also Wedin 2021a). During this lesson, there were five students in the classroom, who apart from Swedish knew Kurdish (Gulan), Somali (Maxamed, Osman and Hani) and Dari (Sarwar). The teacher, Khaled, speaks Farsi, which is linguistically very similar to Dari. There was also an SGMT assistant, Suleymaan, who speaks Somali and Arabic. Khaled, Suleymaan and the students use their various linguistic resources in their negotiation for meaning. Even though the Kurdish-speaking student only shared her limited Swedish with the others, both Khaled and the assistant tried to use some Arabic and English together with mathematics material when they explain concepts to her. In this lesson, Khaled assigned individual work to two of the students, while he arranged three of them, Gulan, Maxamed and Osman, to work together with him on the decimal system. He started by repeating the principles of the decimal system, units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He poured out material on the desk in front of the three, magnetic figures resembling units, tens, hundreds and thousands together with fake money. He demonstrated how to use the money, put the magnetic figures on the whiteboard, writes ‘2785’ and showed how the magnetic figures can be arranged to represent the same number, asking students to do the same on the bench in front of them. When Maxamed had problems carrying out the task, Osman helped him through Somali and by showing him with the materials on the bench.

Khaled then wrote three four-digit numbers on the blackboard and asked students to go up to the board and to represent these using the magnetic figures. While they worked, Khaled and Suleymaan discussed the solutions with the individual students, pointing to the figures and digits and orally expressing the four-digit numbers and the number of units, tens, hundreds and thousands that they represented.

During the rest of the lesson, students worked with exercises on handouts while Khaled and Suleymaan walked around and helped them individually. Through this work process, verbal language, with Swedish dominating, was only part of the modalities used. Thus, for Khaled Swedish was the main verbal language to use with these three students, combined with some English and Arabic. However, as became visible through the work process, other modalities were important for the negotiation of meaning in this Mathematics lesson. Apart from the mentioned fake money, magnetic figures and written digits, Khaled also used embodied expressions, for example when one student asked the meaning of ‘order of magnitude’ he used his body including his own clothes to demonstrate small, medium and large. Thus, in the negotiation of meanings, the teacher shuttled between oral and written language, materials and embodied language. This fluidity of languaging may be compared to translanguaging practices described as ‘seamlessness’ by Lindahl (2015) from a sign-language classroom, and in this Mathematics classroom this may be described as shuttling in the form of anchoring (Wedin 2021b), where the teacher started with the four-digit number ‘2785’, said the number-name orally ‘two-thousand-seven-hundred and eighty-five’, constructed the number in material form, and returned to the four-digit number. Thus, the shuttling started and ended with the mathematical expression with other types of representations that are closer to students’ experiences in their daily lives in between. Khaled not only used his own linguistic resources with the students, but also varied modalities to explain and create patterns for students to negotiate meaning by shuttling between various resources.

6.3 Implementational spaces for translanguaging in the two lessons

The two teachers’ strategies as far as linguistic resources, digital tools and varied modalities are concerned are similar when it comes to inviting students to use their varied languages. Students’ diverse linguistic resources were tolerated, and they were invited to use them through various media. However, there is a difference between Maria and Khaled whether they take part in the negotiation of meaning that is done through translanguaging. This affects the role and status given the translanguaging space, either as something valuable for all, including the teacher, or as something for students to use to reach their goal, to fulfill the requirements where only Swedish is valued. Thus, classroom practices here may be said to open up for translanguaging, but the difference between the two teachers affected the status given both to students’ varied linguistic resources and to translanguaging.

It may be argued that Maria only shared Swedish with her students, while Khaled and the SGMT assistants shared also other languages. However, if translanguaging is understood as the seamless shuttling that Lindahl (2015) refers to and as including all linguistic resources, including oneself in the negotiation through varied resources is not restricted to those who share languages. In Khaled’s classroom, for example, Gulan was not excluded from the negotiation through translanguaging, and Khaled and the SGMT assistant both were involved in translanguaging with all students, creating a translanguaging space (Li 2011) were the norm was shuttling between linguistic resources and modalities. By excluding herself from the ongoing negotiation through translanguaging in her classroom, Maria excluded herself from part of the meaning-making that was done there and thus students missed out on her knowledge in an important space for developing scientific knowledge.