”Var i kroppen känns språken liksom?” Fyra flerspråkiga lärares reflektioner över yngre elevers språkliga identitetskonstruktioner

Abstract

Although an increasing number of pupils and teachers in Swedish primary schools bring languages other than Swedish and English to the classroom, research is lacking about multilingualism in mainstream primary school settings. This article is based on a research project with an ethnographic approach. The project was conducted at two elementary schools with a high proportion of multilingual teachers and pupils and involved in total three classes in second and fourth grades. The study aims to illuminate multilingual teachers’ perspectives on their pupils language identity construction, through language portraits (Busch, 2017, 2018). Data consist of field notes from observations of the multilingual teachers’ modeling of and reflective talks on the research-generated activity (language portraits). In these reflective talks the teachers exhibited good knowledge about their pupils’ language repertoires. They also expressed surprise that some multilingual pupils filled in only one language in the portrait. Other pupils portrayed themselves as monolingual Swedish speakers, but wanted to add for additional languages to their portrait. The teachers’ reflections also comprised complex notions of what languages are, linguistic identity, and multilingualism relating to their own experiences and emotional understanding. This use of language portraits may provide more knowledge about identity constructions as well as showing the complexity of multilingualism.