Språkutvecklande arbete och modersmålsundervisning : status, roll och framtid i skola

Sammanfattning: Today we live in a multicultural society where many students have Swedish as a second language. Straszer et al. (2022) says that in 2017 24% of all students in the Swedish schools had recently migrated to Sweden. We have noticed that language acquisition in the subject social science has not been researched as much as other subjects with higher status. We will answer questions such as why language acquisition is important for students that have Swedish as a second language. The method to this research is a form of literature study, where we have used scientific articles and a doctoral thesis. These treat both language acquisition in general but also linked to the subject language in social science, they also treat the importance of the mother tongue when it comes to language development in a second language. The articles take place both in Sweden but some articles treat language acquisition from a more international perspective such as examples from the United states of America and Singapore. In the result we meet subjects such as epistemic injustice that describes that all students don’t have the same presumptions when it comes to knowledge. Keerfoot and Bello-Nonjengele (2022) looks at this knowledge based justice from a lingual perspective where knowledge is being mediated through language and communication. We also take a look outside of Sweden to broaden our study with more examples and research. We have examples from both the USA and Singapore. Singapore for example has all their teaching in another language than their official language. Thereafter we also look at how one can work with language acquisition in a science classroom, both from a natural science perspective and a social science perspective. We found a gap in research where natural science holds a higher status than social science. This gap should be filled since we in many articles learned that language acquisition and social science work very well together. In the search of how one can work with language acquisition many articles about mother tongue tuition appeared and how it can and should be integrated more in the language acquisition-work with students that have Swedish as a second language. We also found research on how it should be more integrated as it has a great impact on both language acquisition and school results in general. We find that there is a hierarchy among languages and that modern language holds a much more secure role in school as it is a part of the syllabus. At the same time that we write this study a new government has recently taken place that lays out a suggestion to investigate whether mother tongue would have a negative effect on2integration and knowledge development in the Swedish language. How can these suggestions be suggested when science research says otherwise? This was something we wanted to investigate more.