This paper sets out to describe a research project and to present and discuss some of its pre- liminary findings from an initial explorative phase. The project is conducted in collaboration with mathematics and science teachers in four mainstream compulsory schools with strong linguistic diver- sity within a geographic frame of a predominantly urban region in Sweden. The overall aim of the study is to generate knowledge about pedagogical potentials and limitations of multilingual practices in mathematics and science education. In this paper we draw on interviews with teachers, as well as workshops in which teachers and researchers collaborated, to explore the various meaning-making re- sources teachers express they draw on for teaching mathematics in multilingual settings, and their per- ceptions and experiences of teaching mathematics in multilingual settings. The preliminary findings indicate that the teachers draw on different meaning-making resources, with emphasis on resources that can be related to language responsive teaching. It seems easier for the teachers to reason about language responsive mathematics teaching than multilingual mathematics teaching. The teachers rea- son more about the value of a multilingual approach and less of concrete multilingual methods and strategies for teaching mathematics to multilingual students. They express positive views about multi- lingualism as a resource for learning mathematics at the same time as they show a hesitancy towards it, demonstrating an ambivalence.

This paper is a part of the project Spaces for multilingualism (Swedish Research Council, 2021-04155). The aim of the project is to generate knowledge about the pedagogical potentials and limitations of multilingual practices in mathematics and science education. We specifically aim to explore and problematise how multilingual approaches and activities may promote mathematics and science teaching and learning in school years 4–9. The qualitative project is conducted by an interdisciplinary research team that integrates theories from educational research in didactics, sociology and linguistics, including translanguaging theories. The project’s four-year period comprises initial exploration of existing pedagogical practices, in four culturally and linguistically diverse schools. The explorative phase is followed by a two-year period of pedagogical interventions.The presentation will focus on the exploratory phase of the study and the preliminary findings from interviews with students and teachers, workshops where teachers and researchers worked together, and classroom observations, and focus on teachers’ and students’ use of meaning-making resources in science education, and how students’ prior experiences and communicative repertoires are acknowledged as resources in multilingual classroom activities.

Although visual aids are widely considered a valuable source of scaffolding, the nature and active utilization of these aids in current science classrooms are not well understood. This qualitative study explores interaction in the teaching of concepts related to evolution, with a specific focus on a teacher's use of different visual support material. Based on a classroom study in a linguistically diverse Grade 4 classroom, we employed the perspective of discourse-bridging interaction to develop three broad categories of interactional examples, which we related to three kinds of visual support material used in the instruction: generic visual support images, naturalistic images, and disciplinary images showing examples of natural selection. The findings show that the interaction moved in and out of science discourse in a way that reflected the images' properties. A generic visual support image illustrated the concept of “adaption” as puzzle pieces fitting together, which promoted everyday and anthropomorphic examples of animals and people striving to fit in. When the teacher used naturalistic images, the discourse shifted between a range of perspectives, while visual aids and whiteboard drawings showing the classic examples of giraffes evolving (a disciplinary image) were employed to clarify the notion of natural selection. We discuss the study's implications for using visual support material in a planned way that supports disciplinary understanding.

This article focuses on how Grade 6 students interactionally make meaning out of subject-related language encountered in civics textbook material by searching for synonyms and engaging in discussions. Employing ethnographically-inspired methods, data was collected through observations and audio recordings of civics teaching in two linguistically diverse classrooms in which the students were taught in the majority language, Swedish. In the article, oral classroom interaction is perceived as a crucial part of the meaning-making social practice in which students' disciplinary literacy is developed. Key analytical concepts are discursive shifts and discursive mobility - the ability to move between and within different discourses. The results show that the use of online dictionaries promoted decontextualizing processes in which the students unsuccessfully tried to negotiate multiple abstract meanings that, in many cases, were unrelated to the disciplinary content. In other exchanges, the adults gave interactional support by contextualizing the words and expressions in content-relevant ways and pointing out recognizable parts of words. In some cases, the teacher instead drew attention to words that have different meanings, which complicated the content-relevant understanding of the words. Implications for working with subject-related vocabulary in ways which support rather than hinder disciplinary understanding are discussed.

This paper sets out to describe a research project and to present and discuss some of its preliminary findings from an initial explorative phase. The project is conducted in collaboration with mathematics and science teachers in four mainstream compulsory schools with strong linguistic diversity within a geographic frame of a predominantly urban region in Sweden. The overall aim of the study is to generate knowledge about pedagogical potentials and limitations of multilingual practices in mathematics and science education. In this paper we draw on interviews with teachers, as well as workshops in which teachers and researchers collaborated, to explore the various meaning-making resources teachers express they draw on for teaching mathematics in multilingual settings, and their perceptions and experiences of teaching mathematics in multilingual settings. The preliminary findings indicate that the teachers draw on different meaning-making resources, with an emphasize on resources that can be related to language responsive teaching. It seems easier for the teachers to reason about language responsive mathematics teaching than multilingual mathematics teaching. The teachers reason about the value of a multilingual approach and more less of concrete multilingual methods and strategies for teaching mathematics to multilingual students. They express positive views about multilingualism as a resource for learning mathematics at the same time as they show a hesitancy towards it, demonstrating an ambivalence towards it.

Cet article vise à décrire un projet de recherche et à présenter et discuter certains de ses résultats préliminaires issus d'une phase exploratoire initiale. Le projet est mené en collaboration avec des professeurs de mathématiques et de sciences dans quatre écoles obligatoires ordinaires présentant une forte diversité linguistique dans le cadre géographique d'une région majoritairement urbaine de Suède. L'objectif général de l'étude est de générer des connaissances sur les potentiels pédagogiques et les limites des pratiques multilingues dans l'enseignement des mathématiques et des sciences. Dans cet article, nous nous appuyons sur des entretiens avec des enseignants, ainsi que sur des ateliers dans lesquels enseignants et chercheurs ont collaboré, pour explorer les diverses ressources créatrices de sens sur lesquelles les enseignants déclarent s'appuyer pour enseigner les mathématiques dans des contextes multilingues, ainsi que leurs perceptions et expériences d'enseignement. mathématiques dans un contexte multilingue. Les résultats préliminaires indiquent que les enseignants s'appuient sur différentes ressources de création de sens, en mettant l'accent sur les ressources qui peuvent être liées à un enseignement sensible à la langue. Il semble plus facile pour les enseignants de raisonner sur un enseignement des mathématiques sensible à la langue que sur un enseignement des mathématiques multilingue. Les enseignants raisonnent sur la valeur d'une approche multilingue et plus encore sur les méthodes et stratégies multilingues concrètes pour enseigner les mathématiques à des élèves multilingues. Ils expriment des opinions positives sur le multilinguisme en tant que ressource pour l'apprentissage des mathématiques, tout en manifestant une hésitation à son égard, démontrant une ambivalence à son égard.

The project Spaces for multilingualism is founded by the Swedish Research Council (2022-2026). The purpose of the interdisciplinary project is to generate knowledge about the pedagogical potentials and limitations of multilingual practices in mathematics and science education. We specifically aim to explore and problematise how multilingual approaches and activities may promote mathematics and science teaching and learning in school years 4–9. The qualitative project is conducted by an interdisciplinary research team that integrates theories from educational research in didactics, sociology and linguistics, including translanguaging theories. The project’s four-year period comprises initial exploration of existing pedagogical practices, mainly through workshops with teachers, classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers, in four culturally and linguistically diverse schools. This explorative phase is followed by a two-year period of pedagogical interventions, in which teachers and researchers together design, carry out and analyse classroom interventions. The interventions involve exploring the pedagogical potentials and limitations for promoting multilingual resources for teaching and learning. Further, students’ identities as engaged learners of mathematics and science are explored. Our ambition is for the project to contribute with new and multifaceted knowledge on the complexity of teaching and learning in multilingual mathematics and science classrooms in mainstream compulsory schools in which the students have a variety of language backgrounds. The presentation will focus on the explorative phase of the study and the preliminary results from interviews with students and teachers as well as workshops in which teachers and researchers collaborated. We will also present the ongoing preparations for the interventional phase of the study.

The purpose of the interdisciplinary project is to generate knowledge about the pedagogical potentials and limitations of multilingual practices in mathematics and science education. We specifically aim to explore and problematise how multilingual approaches and activities may promote mathematics and science teaching and learning in school years 4–9. The qualitative project is conducted by an interdisciplinary research team that integrates theories from educational research in didactics, sociology and linguistics, including translanguaging theories. The project’s four-year period comprises initial exploration of existing pedagogical practices, mainly through workshops with teachers, classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers, in four culturally and linguistically diverse schools. This explorative phase is followed by a two-year period of pedagogical interventions, in which teachers and researchers together design, carry out and analyse classroom interventions. The interventions involve exploring the pedagogical potentials and limitations for promoting multilingual resources for teaching and learning. Further, students’ identities as engaged learners of mathematics and science are explored. Our ambition is for the project to contribute with new and multifaceted knowledge on the complexity of teaching and learning in multilingual mathematics and science classrooms in mainstream compulsory schools in which the students have a variety of language backgrounds.

Tidigare studier har visat den muntliga interaktionens betydelse för att främja elevers språk- och kunskapsutveckling i olika ämneskontexter. Det kontextuella stöd klassrumssamtalen erbjuder är särskilt viktigt i klassrum där undervisningen bedrivs på elevers andraspråk. Trots det tilltagande intresset för ämneslitteracitet och språkliga dimensioner i ämnesundervisning finns det relativt lite forskning som anlägger språkliga perspektiv på elevers möte med skönlitterära texter. En sannolik förklaring är den traditionella uppdelning mellan språk och litteratur som har inspirerat konferenstemat, Språk och litteratur – en omöjlig eller skön förening? Den aktuella presentationen bygger på en studie av en lärares högläsning av den prisbelönta bilderboken Legenden om Sally Jones i en språkligt heterogen årskurs 4. Etnografiskt inspirerade metoder användes för att dokumentera högläsningen i två undervisningsgrupper med fokus på följande forskningsfrågor: 1) Vilka diskursiva strategier använder läraren för att främja förståelsen av skönlitterärt språkbruk under högläsningsaktiviteter, 2) Vad kännetecknar de skönlitterära ord och uttryck som läraren fokuserade på? För att besvara dessa frågor analyserades transkriberade ljudinspelningar utifrån perspektivet diskursiv rörlighet med hjälp av verktyg från systemisk-funktionell lingvistisk och legitimation code theory. Resultatet visar att läraren under högläsningen gjorde många omformuleringar som antingen utvidgade eller förenklade det skönlitterära språket. De utvidgande strategierna var särskilt framträdande och bestod av såväl klargörande omformuleringar som mer diskreta tillägg av vardagsspråklig karaktär. Det skönlitterära språk läraren fokuserade på var dels specialiserade ord och uttryck, dels formuleringar som kan kopplas till skönlitterära beskrivningar. De diskursiva strategiernas roll för att utvidga elevernas språkliga repertoarer och främja deras förståelse och engagemang vid gemensam läsning av skönlitterära texter diskuteras.