Swedish Education System

Helping recently arrived pupils learn the language of education in the countries they move to is a significant responsibility for schools in Sweden and other immigrant-receiving countries. Also important but often overlooked is the continuing development of the language(s) these pupils already speak and their value in learning majority languages and subjects. This article asks what the functions of multilingual practices
during Multilingual Study Guidance are and how they help recently arrived pupils in the Swedish school reach the learning goals of subjects in the Swedish curriculum. A functional analysis of linguistic  ethnographic data shows how using languages pupils understand to reformulate, explain, discuss and raise task, metalinguistic and sociocultural awareness, creates a temporary space for translanguaging, which facilitates subject knowledge development in Swedish and other languages. It is argued that recognition and expansion of this space has the potential to improve opportunities for recently arrived pupils’ on-going multilingual development.

This report summarises my DigiLitEY-funded research visit to the University of Stockholm and Swedish preschools. It considers potentials and challenges within the concept of 'digital languages' through discussions with leading academics working in the field of digital technologies, multimodality and Reggio Emilia. Meetings and workshops with the Stockholm Reggio Emilia Institute highlighted the strong conceptual foundation for digital technologies within a 'hundred languages' approach and the ongoing support and training being offered to educators. These knowledge exchange activities were enhanced by visits to three Reggio-inspired Swedish preschool settings to observe and discuss their use of digital technologies in practice. The preschool visits revealed a multitude of ways in which educators are embedding digital technologies in their everyday practice and using the digital in combination with traditional forms. The teachers I encountered were enthusiastic about new possibilities of digital technologies, saw them as additional forms for exploration and meaning-making, used them in combination with non-digital materials and were thoughtful and articulate about their potentials and constraints. The Reggio Emilia concept of children's 'hundred languages' seemed to provide a rich foundation for using digital technologies to support young children's multimodal meaning-making. In Stockholm this was underpinned by a broad, Reggio-inspired, play-centred curriculum to the age of 6, teacher training which introduces the concept of 'multimodality', ongoing professional development opportunities, school networks and research collaborations focusing specifically on the digital.

Comparative Education Studies have an important value, especially in educational sciences and the findings from these studies give us useful information regarding the educational practices of various countries. Investigating of the other countries' educational systems, learning how to solve various problems faced in education in these countries,knowing their curiculum, administration, supervision and educational institutions and their structures can offer us different experiences and perspectives. In this study, Swedish Education System and the Structure of Inspection have been discussed and described through reviewing the related literature.

-- The effect of communicative purpose on the quality of texts produced by a class of French learners in Swedish upper secondary school. -- Per definition, task designers should specify a receiver when they create communicative tasks for language learners. In this way, the writer knows who (s)he is writing to and with what purpose (informing, convincing and/or entertaining). As noted by CEFR among others, failure to specify a receiver and thereby purpose means the task cannot be regarded as communicative. Despite curricula emphasizing communicative language use, language writing exercises in the Swedish school system very frequently omit the receiver and thereby deprive the writer of a specified writing purpose. This study empirically tests the effects of including and omitting a specified receiver in task design for a class of French learners in a Swedish upper secondary school (roughly in their sixth or seventh year of French as a Foreign Language). The students (n=13) were asked to complete, in different orders, one task with a receiver and an equivalent task without a receiver. The resulting texts were subsequently analyzed both for communicative and linguistic quality. The study finds that the communicative performance assessed in the written text was higher when the task had a specified receiver and purpose than when it did not. When it comes to linguistic performance (assessed in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency) the effect was roughly neutral, except for a discernible increase in complexity. While the empirical study has limitations and no known predecessors, it underlines the easily reaped benefits of a simple task design change. A short accompanying  test-taker survey on the preferences of the pupils reinforces this finding.

Remarks on the Turkish Publication ("Çokkültürlü Toplumlarda Eğitim - Türkiye ve İsveç'ten Örnekler") of "Education in Multicultural Societies - Turkish and Swedish Perspectives"
http://socav.gu.se/digitalAssets/1374/1374238_info-education---turkish-swedish-perspectives.pdf
http://www.idefix.com/kitap/cokkulturlu-toplumlarda-egitim-turkiye-ve-isvecten-ornekler-fatma-gok/tanim.asp?sid=AU7BTUX0N2N5YQTCHFC7