New Perspectives on Culturally Relevant Language Pedagogy in Swedish Tuition for Immigrants (Sfi)

In Sweden the Swedish Tuition for Immigrants (Sfi) is unique in several ways. For example, the courses are designed specially for adult immigrants, which constitute a wide variety of students in terms of backgrounds and future plans. Most Sfi students need to use Swedish outside the classroom before they have had the opportunity to develop such skills. The focus on a functioning second language is stronger than in other courses in Swedish as a second language. Contrary to many other language courses, Sfi does not prepare for the academic domain. In this presentation, preliminary results from a research project carried out in cooperation with teachers in Sfi will be presented. In the project, material was gathered through classroom observations, interviews, examination of test materials and analysis of curricula.

The aim of the presentation is to discuss practical and theoretical consequences of the analysis, which will be based on the Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (elaborated by Gloria Ladson-Billings and others), as well as on the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (DMM) developed by Herdina and Jessner. Thus the focus will be on understanding the teachers' knowledge of the learners' (educational) culture and the implicit progress of the learners' cultural competence.