Possible meanings of "inclusion" in relation to the school subject Swedish as a second language in Swedish upper secondary schools
This paper emerges from a research project on the practices and ideologies of the school subject Swedish as a second language (SSL). In Sweden, SSL is equal to the subject Swedish in the sense that both make students qualified for upper secondary school and tertiary education. Whereas students in compulsory school are placed in either the subject Swedish or SSL by the school, upper secondary students choose which of the subjects to study.
Previous analyses of discourses surrounding the SSL school subject within the academic field in Sweden (authors, under review) have identified a prominent discourse that represents SSL as discriminating, thus encompassing a deficiency perspective on the students. Inclusion is here mainly conceptualized as physical inclusion.
Against this backdrop, possible meanings of inclusion are discussed in relation to findings from SSL classroom observations (gathered over a one year period of time) and interviews with three SSL teachers and 15 students across three upper secondary schools. In these schools, SSL is not an exception but studied by more students than the subject Swedish, or by all students. Alternative interpretations of inclusion were found, as SSL represented social inclusion rather than exclusion in the student narratives, due to the "mainstream" character of SSL in these schools as well as a perceived acceptance of L2 learning. These findings indicate that research on SSL (or equivalent L2 education) needs to focus more on schools with a large proportion of multilingual students, i.e. contexts where the concept of "mainstream" in language education can be problematized.
