This interview study of Swedish teacher educators, in-service teachers, and pre-service teachers focuses on their attitudes and beliefs on multilingualism through a language orientation lens. The study reveals tensions among the participants and contributes to an understanding of the impact of teacher training on linguistic diversity management.
Sweden is often hailed as a role model regarding the inclusion of home languages in formal education: the provision of both mother tongue instruction (where pupils' home language is taught as an optional school subject) and study guidance (where pupils are given content support in their home language or prior school language as a medium of instruction during subject lessons) is stipulated by law. However, despite this prominence of linguistic human rights in Swedish policy, orientations towards language as a right are not reflected in the national curriculum. In this paper, we examine the possible tensions between policies and practices, with an investigation of key actors' views. We present an analysis of semi-structured interviews with five teacher educators, five in-service teachers, and eight pre-service teachers, comparing their attitudes and beliefs on multilingualism. Our analysis reveals orientations towards language and language use as a problem and as a resource in teacher education and schools. More specifically, the participants signal a monolingual mindset in their focus on linguistic resources as instrumental to attaining Swedish proficiency. Thus, while national education and language policies are supportive of multilingualism per se, their implementation on the ground is challenging. Our results show that tensions exist between the three participant groups, due to differing attitudes and beliefs both about the multilingual pre-service teachers in teacher education and about the multilingual pupils in the Swedish school. Additionally, this intra-national comparison reveals a disparity between the daily working experiences reported by teachers on the one hand and the current scarce pre-service training and professional development on linguistic diversity in teacher education on the other hand, which is problematic as around one-third of pupils in Sweden are multilingual. We explore whether training may promote a 'multilingual turn' by changing teachers' monolingual beliefs and, in turn, affect their teaching practice.
