Attitudes and beliefs on multilingualism in education : voices from Sweden

Sweden is often commended for the inclusion of home languages in the formal education system: both mother tongue instruction (where a pupil's home language is taught as an optional school subject) and study guidance (where a pupil is given content support in their home language or prior language of schooling) are offered. Still, while many national educational policies are supportive of multilingualism, their enactment on the ground is often problematic. The attitudes and beliefs of teacher educators, in-service teachers, and pre-service teachers are crucial here, yet few studies have investigated how these key actors in Sweden perceive their encounters with linguistic diversity. Furthermore, an understanding of the similarities and differences in the perspectives across these three cohorts is lacking. We have analysed interviews with five teacher educators, five in-service teachers, and eight pre-service teachers concerning their attitudes and beliefs on multilingualism. These interviews reveal orientations towards language and language use in teacher education and primary schools. Specifically, language is seen both as a problem and as a resource. Our results uncover tensions in the expressed attitudes and beliefs about multilingualism, as well as about multilingual pre-service teachers in teacher education and multilingual pupils in the Swedish school