Contemporary social issues in English teaching

Sweden is a diverse and multilingual place. Today’s students represent a broad spectrum of cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Sweden is also a site for mobility as people flow in and out through processes of migration, tourism, international trade, and study abroad. It is in this context that English is taught in Swedish upper secondary schools. The subject of English in Sweden, then, is about more than language study. As the syllabus for English indicates, “knowledge of English can also provide new perspectives on the surrounding world, enhanced opportunities to create contacts, and greater understanding of different ways of living.”The collection of essays presented on the blog Contemporary Social Issues in English Teaching follows in this spirit by presenting specific ways in which the subject of English can open ‘new perspectives on the surrounding world’, globally and locally.These essays, written by pre-service English teachers in the subject teacher education program at Lund University Campus Helsingborg, emerged from a course that I taught focused on educational sociolinguistics. Building on the notion of research-based practice advocated by Skolverket, the authors review current research from scholarly journals and books in order to explore issues of diversity relevant for English teachers, including diversity among students, among teachers, and in the English language itself. We share them here with the hope that research in the field of educational sociolinguistics will inform and inspire creative and socially responsible English teaching