Previous studies describe scaffolding as fundamental for newly arrived students to understand and create texts. In this article, scaffolding students’ multilingual palette (the full range of multilingual resources) is vital for their meaning-making. This study aims to make linguistic diversity visible when scaffolding newly arrived students during digital text activities in narrative and retelling text in Swedish as a second language. The following research question guides the study: How do scaffolding processes during digital text activities contribute to opportunities for newly arrived students with varying backgrounds and experiences of the Swedish language to use their multilingual palettes? The data consists of ethnographic fieldwork in three primary schools (year 3), focusing on scaffolding during nine newly arrived students’ text activities. Through an iterative analysis process, scaffolding emerged to have the following functions: 1) to promote multilingualism, 2) to develop textual competence, 3) to support student space. Scaffolding of newly arrived students who did not yet speak Swedish contributed to all students being able to create text within the text types. However, the scaffolding did not support their use of multilingual resources during individual text activities. For students to develop multilingual resources, scaffolding must focus on translanguaging and non-verbal means of expression, even during individual activities. For this, using digital technology is advantageous.

This study explores how newly arrived young students created meaning, communicated, and expressed themselves using digital technology in the subject of Swedish as a second language (SSL).  The qualitative case study presented in this article focuses on how the orchestration of teaching contributed to opportunities for digital meaning-making in the SSL subject in four classrooms at three schools in a city in Sweden. The notion of language as being fluid, which involves a critical approach to languages as separable entities, considers linguistic and embodied meaning-making, including digital technology, in social processes. This approach recognizes the roles of technology and digital meaning-making in young students’ second language acquisition. Moreover, technological innovations facilitate immediate and accessible communication.  In today’s language studies, ethnicity only is not considered an adequate focus of analysis. Furthermore, the meaning-making practices of newly arrived primary school-aged students remain under-investigated. In the present study, data collected in classroom observations and teacher interviews revealed three themes regarding the students’ utilization of digital technology to develop their multilingual skills. One insight was that the newly arrived students used digital technology strategically when they engaged in meaning-making activities with peers and teachers. When the students took the initiative in computer-assisted language learning, they displayed agency in meaning-making by being their own architects. The findings of this research provided insights into how the orchestration of teaching in Swedish as a second language to newly arrived students affects their opportunities to use multilingualism in meaning-making while employing digital technology.

The use of digital technology in the subject of Swedish as a second language (SSL) has increased in recent years. Schools in Sweden have received many newly arrived students due to the migration situation prevailing in contemporary European society. This article shares the findings of a study carried out on six SSL teachers' perceptions and experiences of using digital technology for SSL with newly arrived students. Participants' responses to interview questions were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings indicated the following: participants negotiated the digital tools as an entry ticket for the newly arrived students to become engaged with the teaching, to support literacy development, and to aid communication. The findings also underscore the challenges that respondents struggled with in teaching using digital technology. Results suggest that although digital technology is a regular part of Swedish education, there is no clear research-based framework for computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in SSL education or teacher education that teachers can rely on, meaning that it is up to teachers themselves to uncover relevant uses of digital technology to support SSL teaching.

An important issue in teaching and research is how newly arrived students best can develop their linguistic resources in learning. The overall aim of the dissertation is to contribute with in-depth knowledge of the context for newly arrived primary school students' digital meaning-making in Swedish as a second language (SSL) when the subject is studied in parallel with Swedish. The context includes the orchestration and content of the teaching, resources for meaning-making, reading and writing processes, and texts; all aspects are essential for the students' scope for meaning-making. This dissertation contains four articles, each aiming to answer the over-arching research questions. I have chosen to divide the context of newly arrived primary school students' digital meaning-making into three levels: conceptual, didactic, and production level. The levels are three different layers rather than a hierarchical system; the levels interact with each other and can move upwards or downwards in the system. 

The first level, which I chose to call conceptual, concerns teachers' experiences teaching newly arrived students with digital technology in Swedish. Through fieldwork and interviews, I study how teachers manage linguistic complexity involving increasingly digitized teaching. I investigate how teachers' reason whether digital technology can support or hinder learning Swedish as a second language. Here, I focus on the teachers' experiences and perceptions of using technology to help newly arrived students' learning. 

The second level-the didactic level -focuses on teaching with digital tools and how digital technology affects the organization of teaching in the classroom. How linguistic and spatial boundaries are challenged and handled in teaching with digital technology is studied through observations of teaching. I explore how teachers' teaching orchestration contributes to newly arrived students' opportunities for digital meaning-making, how teachers scaffold newly arrived pupils' digital text activities, and how the teachers use the students: multilingual resources. 

The third level, the production level, focuses the context surrounding students' text creation and agency in the writing process. In the dissertation, the production level is studied via written text activities, as part of students' meaning-making. I have observed teachers' writing instructions and analysed student texts to explore how newly arrived students create meaning, communicate, and express thehemselves with digital technology and how they can use their multilingual potential in digital writing within different text types.  types. 

This thesis takes its point of departure in sociocultural perspectives that are an overarching term for several closely related human learning (Vygotsky, 1978). By studying how people use tools or tools to understand, act and interact in the outside world and how people adopt, or appropriate, the mediating tools, it is possible to approach how people learn (Salji:i, 2020). Language is a mediating tool, a dynamic and constantly evolving sign system that interacts with other forms of expression (Saljo, 2020). 

The thesis also has a multimodal perspective (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006; Selander, 2017). Multimodality focuses on the different symbols people use to communicate with each other and express themselves (Kress, 2009). Different modalities can give room for multilingual ways of expression. In the thesis, I study how students use modalities in digital meaning-making processes and how students and teachers interpret and get involved in meaning-making. In analyzing students' digital meaning- making and their digital compositions, it is essential to notice how different modalities can contribute to how students use their multilingual palette.

The overall methodological approach in the thesis is an ethnographic case study. I chose the case study approach to capture the complexity and activities of a school subject (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011, p. 128). Inspired by Yin (2009), I intended to create broad empirical material to understand and analyze the context of newly arrived primary school students' digital meaning-making in SSL. Levy and Moore (2018) argue for qualitative methods to investigate how language teaching uses technology. Through qualitative research, learning processes can be studied moment by moment via the alternating use of an outside and an inside perspective.  

The thesis's most important results are that teachers had an inclusion focus on digital technology, where newly arrived students, together with teachers and other classmates, explored digital meaning-making through multilingualism and translanguaging. However, multilingual components were nothing the newly arrived students could build on in digitally mediated narrative and retelling texts.

One of the main contributions of the thesis is how it empirically visualized the context for newly arrived primary school students as well as opportunities and limitations in digital text activities in the Swedish subject. The study results contribute to developing teaching with a multilingual perspective regarding how technology is used, the orchestration of educati9n, and how students are scaffolded.