Why teacher educators need to prepare student teachers for linguistically diverse classrooms in the Nordic region

Anne Reath Warren, Associate Professor at the Department of Education at Uppsala University

Earlier this year, a new volume on multilingual perspectives in teacher education was published by Language Science Press. The volume presents seven empirical studies, all addressing questions concerning how teacher education prepares student teachers in the Nordic region for their work in linguistically diverse classrooms. In the age of globalisation, linguistically diverse classrooms are very much a feature of the Nordic region, meaning there are significant numbers of school-age children who speak one or more languages in addition to the national, majority languages. Sweden has the largest proportion; 30% in the compulsory school (Statistics Sweden, 2023) and at 8%, Finland has the lowest (Statistics Finland, 2023). Despite these numbers, research in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden indicates that teachers do not always feel prepared to work in linguistically diverse classrooms. The contributions in the volume help us to understand why this is the case, and to identify common challenges in lifting multilingual perspectives in teacher education across the Nordic region. Läs mer här