Balansgång mellan två språk. Lärares berättelser om tvåspråkig undervisning på svenska och arabiska.

Abstract

The article aims to examine how teachers involved in bilingual education in Swedish and Arabic perceived and handled this activity. In many ways, the educational situation in the bilingual classes was demanding. Initially, there were no written, clear goals or guidelines and the teachers had to find their own ways to manage the classroom. One complication was that the two teachers would be teaching the same subject matter to the class, and that they would be teaching alongside each other which required a high degree of joint planning. The Swedish teachers were also assigned new roles as teachers. Instead of being in the focus of teaching in class, they now had to stand back. They had to deal with the fact that they did not understand what the bilingual teachers told pupils in Arabic. According to the teachers, many of the pupils increased their self-confidence and self-esteem and it was positive to see that the pupils now had access to two languages which they could switch between. The article additionally highlights how various discourses on language influenced bilingual teaching in the district.

Keywords

• Arabic and Swedish
• bilingual education
• discourses
• elementary school
• teachers