Att arbeta språkutvecklande : En kvalitativ intervjustudie på en mångkulturell gymnasieskola i en av Stockholms förorter

Sammanfattning: This essay presents and discusses a study that was performed in a multicultural school, where the teachers, since August 2004, have obtained internal training in how to work with language development. The objective with this essay is to investigate how the connection between language development and the development of knowledge can be understood and apprehended by teachers working in this school, and furthermore, to show how a language developing way of work can be accomplished in the teachers daily work. Moreover, I have studied which objectives and strategies, the three language developers in charge of the training of the teachers, have concerning this work, furthermore I have looked into if these objectives and strategies differ from what the teachers understand and practically perform. Pauline Gibbons book, Stärk språket, stärk lärandet (2006), has become a base for this school’s work when it comes to language development. Gibbons presents theories and practical exercises which have their origin from Vygotskij, Halliday and Cummins. Their theories have also become my theoretical base in this study. I have made qualitative interviews with four teachers working in this school, and with one of the language developers. The results, from the teacher’s views and opinions in this subject, are presented individually. The spread between the teacher’s thoughts, when it comes to the connection between language development and knowledge, is quite extensive and so are the methods they choose, consciously or unconsciously, to work in a language developing way. The most important result, drawn from this study, is that all four teachers give examples of how to work in a language developing way, but only one presents a more well-thought-out method of how to work, and also explains why these methods develops the students knowledge and not only the language development. Consequently, there is a gap between the awareness of how important language development is in the process of developing ones knowledge, and how this is performed in the teachers’ daily work with the students’. This could be of interest for the school to investigate further.