Ideological and implementational spaces for translanguaging in the language introduction programme in Swedish Upper Secondary School

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates to what extent spaces created in the language introduction programme (LIP) in Upper Secondary School in Sweden close or open up for students’ varied linguistic resources, to create an understanding of the implementational spaces of the educational environments that the school represents, and of the ideological underpinnings that these imply. In the analysis, schoolscaping is used based on displayed language on the school premises in combination with language practices in classrooms. The material analyzed consists of photographs, both from classrooms and shared spaces, together with field notes from observations. The analysis made conflicting ideologies visible. Although students were invited to use their languages in classrooms, these were rarely made visible in written form, which is remarkable as written language is given great value in school. The relative invisibility of the LIP students’ languages in the schoolscape, except for in their own classrooms, together with the physical separation from other students at the school, paints a picture of expectations of assimilation and of a monolingual ideology, where the goal is that students become Swedish-speaking. Thus, the conclusion is that there are implementational spaces in the partly closed space that constructs LIP, while ideological spaces are rather closed.