Teachers' experiences of using newly arrived students' multilingualism in teaching

This study explores how teachers view the role of students’ multilingualism at a Language Introduction Program (Språkintroduktion) for newly arrived students aged 16–20 in Sweden. Through qualitative interviews with teachers, analyzed through phenomenography theory, the study explores when teachers make use of their students’ multilingualism and what potential risks they view with a multilingual pedagogy. Students’ languages are used by all informants for translation and brief explanations, and by some informants to read texts and discuss subject matter as well. The main risks highlighted by some informants are large groups of pupils with a shared language dominating the classroom at the expense of the rest, and the use of the mother tongue being detrimental to the pupils’ exposure to the target language. The study concludes that the issue of multilingual pedagogy requires situation-specific professional decisions based on the individuals’ needs and the group’s social dynamics. For teachers to make such decisions, increased knowledge about meaningful multilingual teaching methods is required