Language policy has an impact both on societies and on individuals, especially in contexts where negative ideologies toward minorities and minority languages may exist. A functional language policy protects a minority and allows it to develop its culture and language, while an ineffective policy might cause irreparable damage and lead to language…

This book provides an overview and evaluation of the quality of bilingual education found in internationalised higher education institutions. Its authors focus on the multifaceted roles that language(s) play in these growing multilingual spaces and analyse and identify the many factors that account for quality multilingual degree programmes. The…

This article focuses on the similar approaches to, yet different contexts of legal recognition of sign languages in Sweden and Norway. We use examples from sign language documentation (both scientific and popular), legislation that mentions sign language, organization of implementation of sign language acquisition, and public discourse (as…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise description of the European minority language, Sámi in Sweden, in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools,…

This special issue has as its focus the agency of young children in relation to language policy and practice in bi- and multilingual preschools in Finland and Sweden. Studies of language policy in practice in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in these two countries can be particularly relevant even to those in other contexts, because they…

This edited collection explores the immense potential of translanguaging in educational settings and highlights teachers and students negotiating language ideologies in their everyday communicative practices. It makes a significant contribution to scholarship on translanguaging and considers the need for pedagogy to reflect and embrace diversity.…

This compilation includes programmes which promote language and culture as resources and see them as an added value rather than a challenge for literacy teaching and learning. It also includes programmes designed to support migrants and refugees by equipping them for integration into mainstream society while strengthening their literacy skills in…

In the wake of conversations about integrating macro- and micro-levels of linguistic analysis over the last 50 years, and following theoretical and methodological debates in the 1990s about investigating the dynamics of entire social systems, complexity theory is coming of age in educational linguistics. Central to the application of complexity…

In 1981, Swedish Sign Language gained recognition by the Swedish Parliament as the language of deaf people, a decision that made Sweden the first country in the world to give a sign language the status of a language. Swedish was designated as a second language for deaf people, and the need for bilingualism among them was officially asserted. This…

This investigation examined whether access to sign language as a medium for instruction influences theory of mind (ToM) reasoning in deaf children with similar home language environments. Experiment 1 involved 97 deaf Italian children ages 4-12 years: 56 were from deaf families and had LIS (Italian Sign Language) as their native language, and 41…

Bilingual education programs and policies in three countries with sizable minorities, Sweden, Australia, and the Federal Republic of Germany, are examined in order to gauge both the extent to which children with limited proficiency in the dominant language are in integrated classrooms and the degree of their social integration. First, the…

Swedish research and opinion on bilingualism, language policy, and bilingual education in Sweden is reviewed. The Swedish debate on language planning and bilingual education revolves around two perspectives: structural-functional theory and conflict theory. Swedish research consists primarily of statistical and descriptive studies rather than…

This paper discusses the question of whether, in a multilingual society, the child's first or second language is best as a language of instruction in primary school. Reviewing eight case studies from seven countries in which initial primary schooling was given either in the second or first language, the discussion compares achievement in reading…

A study of the native language literacy of Finnish immigrant children in Sweden had as subjects the 81 Finnish immigrant pupils in grades 3-6 of a Swedish industrial city. At the time of the study, about 20 percent attended Finnish-medium classes, 34 percent attended Swedish-medium classes, and about 46 percent attended bilingual classes. Native…

This report presents results of research conducted in conjunction with a Swedish project focused on the bilingual instruction of immigrant children. The main aim of the project was to construct a model for teaching children with a mother-tongue other than Swedish (in this case, Finnish) in a way that would provide them the same educational and…