About the project
My PhD project concerns the role of and space for multilingualism in mainstream vocational education in Norway. I first and foremost examine the experiences and perspectives of vocational teachers in mainstream vocational classrooms. Moreover, I pay attention to the perspectives of the teachers' multilingual students, as well as to the education and policy documents pertaining to vocational education and training in Norwegian upper secondary schools.
Some overarching questions in the project are: Which languages are used in mainstream vocational education in Norway, how are they used and why? How do vocational teachers respond to language-related intentions put forth in recent educational policies? How do vocational teachers make language-related decisions when teaching linguistically diverse student groups? What kind of role does English play in Norwegian mainstream vocational education?
Methods and data material
I adopt a linguistic-ethnographic methodology (e.g. Copland & Creese, 2015), and in my analyses I draw on an extensive data material – including, but not limited to, observations, interviews, teaching materials and policy documents. The main part of the data collection was completed in the summer of 2021. The participating teachers represent four different vocational education programs.
Theoretical framework
I make use of several theoretical lenses in the project overall. Three concepts are particularly relevant: language ideologies, teacher agency and policy enactment.
Within language ideologies, I specifically draw on the notions of monolingual ideology (Ortega, 2019) and elite multilingualism (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Nørreby, 2020). I identify expressions and reproductions of language ideologies in teachers' perspectives and reported practices, and connect them to the teachers' space for agency within the institutional structure.
Regarding the concept of teacher agency, I use the ecological approach of Priestley et al. (2015) as my point of departure. Partially diverging from their conception of temporality in teacher agency, I have opted to examine and emphasize the teachers' decision-making here-and-now in my studies. In short, I focus on how teachers' past experiences and visualizations of the future factor in when they make language-related decisions in the classroom, but I do not explore the development and professional trajectories of the participating teachers.
As for the notion of policy enactment (Ball et al. 2012), I explore how language intentions expressed in policy documents pertaining to vocational education are perceived and received. Moreover, I investigate how the intentions compare to the reported practices of vocational teachers. I include both the Core Curriculum (Norwegian Directorate of Education and Training, 2017) and various vocational subject-specific curricula in this investigation.
Duration:
2020-2023
References
Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Routledge.
Barakos, E., & Selleck, C. (2019). Elite multilingualism: Discourses, practices, and debates. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 40(5), 361–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2018.1543691
Copland, F., & Creese, A. (2015). Linguistic ethnography: Collecting, analysing and presenting data. Sage.
Norwegian Directorate of Education and Training. (2017). Core curriculum – values and principles for primary and secondary education. Retrieved from https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/53d21ea2bc3a4202b86b83cfe82da93e/core-curriculum.pdf
Nørreby, T. R. (2020). Elitær flersprogethed. Nordand, 15(1), 22–36. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.2535-3381-2020-01-02
Ortega, L. (2019). SLA and the Study of Equitable Multilingualism. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12525
Priestley, M., Biesta, G. J. J., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach (1. ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.