Inga IG i Kemi A : En språkdidaktisk studie av en kemilärares undervisningsstrategier i en gymnasieklass med elever med svenska som andraspråk

As global migration escalates, the number of students with Swedish as their second language entering high school in Sweden also increases. This demographic and linguistic change in the mainstream classroom has forced the role of language in teaching/learning to surface. In order for society to provide all students with equal educational opportunities, accommodation to the needs of second language learners has become a pressing issue. The purpose of this study is to try to understand what opportunities the teaching strategies of a 10th grade chemistry teacher may create for second language learners to develop their Swedish language repertoire in the subject. The study has been conducted from the point of view of language didactics, and a socio-cultural framework has been used to provide a theoretical perspective. Of fundamental importance is the notion that language is the primary mediating tool in learning; that learning is situated; that the situated learning is socially constructed. Furthermore, the concepts of vygotskian origin, scientific and everyday language/scientific and everyday concepts are part of the theoretical perspective along with scaffolding, second language development, language repertoire, and chemistry teaching. The empiric material was collected by observations and video and audio recordings of 31 lessons in one class with one teacher. The vast majority of the students had Swedish as their second lan-guage and half of them had, at the time of the study, been in Sweden four years or less. This primary source material has been transferred into secondary material by way of transcription. The analyses sought to answer three questions regarding 1) the teacher’s general didactic and subject related didactic strategies; 2) the teacher’s language didactic strategies in the whole-class teacher talk; 3) the consequences for the opportunities this may afford the students to develop a language repertoire in the subject. A variety of theoretical concepts has been applied in the process of analysis: cooperation and drive; Johnstone’s triangle; interactivity, a dialogic or authoritative voice, and directness. Consequences of the teacher’s strategies are discussed in terms of positions allowing for receptive or productive language use, scaffolding and meta-skills. The study is concluded by the presentation of a didactic approach to an oscillating shift of focus on the subject matter and on how this subject matter is linguistically constructed