The interview with Lotta took place in August 2015 after the second classroom obser- vation. The place for the interview was an adjoining room to the classroom. After 54 minutes, Lotta had a class again and we decided that I should return a second time. The second recorded interview lasted 16 minutes, giving a total of 110 minutes. The atmosphere seemed relaxed during the conversations before, during and after the in- terview.
Personal experience with multilingualism
Lotta had no significant personal experience with multilingualism. She had not spent any extended time abroad and she had not completed any training regarding multilin- gualism or second language acquisition. Apart from Swedish, she spoke English and some Spanish. Her experience derived from working with multilingual students. She mentioned that she had had classes, where almost none of the students were born in Sweden.
School set-up regarding multilingualism
The school had no official policy regarding multilingualism. At the time of this study (2015), there was no special material about multilingualism present at the school. There was one special education teacher (speciallärare)with an interest in Swedish as a Sec- ond Language at the school.
Students with other home languages could take classes in those languages as mother tongue instruction. A notice in the staffroom indicated the times for the different lan- guages and where the classes took place. Nine languages were mentioned on the no- tice. The 40-60 minutes classes took place once a week.
Lotta stated that no exchange usually takes place between the teachers in the main- stream classes and the teachers of the mother tongue. These teachers would mainly arrive at the school in the afternoon when the other teachers were in meetings or had left the school for the day. She thought that they would have to develop such an ex- change.
She stated that the school had not experienced any problems with racism regarding different skin color. The only issue that they had was between Muslims that had criti- cized other Muslims, for not being sufficiently Muslim, such as the girls not wearing headscarves.
Beliefs regarding multilingualism
When asked, what multilingualism would mean to her, Lotta stated:
It is a benefit, that I would say firstly. But multilingualism – being able to express yourself and to understand, in several languages. Well, you get a more enriched language. Multi- lingual. You can express yourself and understand several languages. This is how I think. (SV1:1)12
She had not thought of any advantages or disadvantages with multilingual students in the class, or regarding multilingualism in general, but she considered it an advantage, that multilingualism implies, not only knowing another language, but also another cul- ture:
Actually, I do see an advantage with this, it is not only linguistically, but also as an ad- vantage of understanding other cultures, an understanding of the worldview, that is the big thing I believe with multilinguals. (SV1:2)
Lotta stated though that some multilingual students had limitations, they did not know many synonyms, Swedish for them would be a school language, not a reading lan- guage. Some of these students would not read that much, they had another reading culture, which does not facilitate learning, Lotta explained.
Reading and multilingualism
In this classroom, reading comprehension was highlighted as a vital part in the students learning process. Therefore, the students were required to read 20-25 minutes every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning. The teacher chose a couple of
books, of which the students could choose one. The students also had the possibilities to listen to the books, since the school had an agreement with an external company which reproduce them digitally.
Several read the same book at the same time. After students had finished the books, they had conversations about them (boksamtal) in groups. They also had periods, where the students could choose a book of their own and then present it in some way, through a review or an oral presentation with PowerPoint.
For reading comprehension, the school worked with the methods from En läsande
klass13 (A Reading Class), an initiative by the Swedish best-selling children’s book au-
thor Martin Widmark and financed mainly through one of Sweden’s biggest lotteries (En läsande klass, 2017). The project En läsande klass started in April 2014 and a number of experienced teachers developed a study plan for teachers to use. The material con- sisted of a study guide with texts that the publishers, authors and illustrators had put at the disposal of the teachers until the end of 2018, as a concrete tool for reading com- prehension. In this approach, reading is learned with reading strategies, each of which is supported by figures with different tasks (see Fig. 17).
Fig. 17: Reading strategy figures from En läsande klass in classroom SV1
13 www.enlasandeklass.se En läsande klass was based on three models for reading comprehension:
RT (Reciprocal Teaching), TSI (Transactional Strategies Instruction) and QtA (Questioning the Au- thor).
The material was distributed free of charge in printed form to all schools teaching the first six years of compulsory school. It was also made available freely on the internet. The class SV1 also worked with another scheme: Läsförståelse (Reading comprehen- sion) (Hydén et al., 2013), with different levels of understanding the text (see Fig. 18).
Fig. 18: Abstract from the book Läsförståelse A in classroom SV114
At the first parents-teacher meeting, the parents normally received a copy of a parent guide for reading (Hesslind, 1998) from the Swedish Council of the International Read- ing Association (SCIRA).
Lotta had not given much thought about multilingualism and reading, although one issue that she had been reflecting on was the fact that the multilingual children sometimes had difficulties with Swedish terms. If a student did not know a word, they could look for words on the internet using the school iPads.
14 In this textbook, the questions are divided in three different levels according to the following:
Green: Vad står det i texten? (What does the text say?). The answers are clearly to be found in the text.
Yellow: Vad säger texten? (What does the text express?). These answers are also written in the text, but between the lines. The student has to draw her/his own conclusions.
Red: Fundera över texten (Reflect upon the text). The student should reflect upon the text in a criti- cal way.