Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Laptop Poster Session for Graduate Students

Swedish in Swedish immersion and Irish in Irish immersion

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion
Co-Official/Regional Language Immersion

Elementary (K-5)
Middle School/Junior High

An ongoing doctoral study examines how immersion pupils in one-way early total Swedish and Irish immersion manifest their linguistic identities. Particularly, the interfaces between identity construction and writing of schoolscapes are explored. This poster presentation gives an overview of the data collection, methodological approaches and expected results.

One of the key features of one-way early total Swedish immersion in Finland is an early introduction of L3 and L4 in addition to the L1 (Finnish) and the L2 (Swedish) which gives the programme its multilingual characteristic. In Ireland, one-way early total Irish immersion is characterised by high language intensity in the L2, meaning that 85 % of instruction is given through the medium of Irish.

The purpose of the poster presentation is to present my ongoing doctoral study of interfaces between schoolscapes and identity construction among 10–15-year-old immersion pupils. Schoolscapes, i.e. linguistic landscapes of school-based environments, refer for example to written languages displayed on the walls. In the study, the emphasis is placed on how writing (multilingual) schoolscapes within these two immersion programmes affects pupils’ manifestations of their linguistic identities.

The data of this ethnographic study will consist of photographs describing the schoolscapes of one dual-track Swedish immersion school and one Irish immersion centre, interviews of eighteen immersion pupils and field notes collected under non-participant classroom observations. Pupils’ participation in writing of the schoolscapes will be analysed through text histories (Lillis & Curry 2010). The interview data will be approached via interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith & Osborn 2003).

To elucidate the purpose of and the methodological approaches in the doctoral study I’ll present results of a pilot study conducted in one Swedish immersion classroom.  

My doctoral study is part of a new project at the University of Vaasa. Within the project, the interplay between language praxis, multilingual identity and language ideology in Swedish immersion is studied.

References:

Lillis, T. & M. J. Curry (2010). Academic writing in a global context. London: Routledge.

Smith, J. A. & M. Osborn (2003). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In J. A. Smith (Ed.) Qualitative psychology. A practical guide to methods. London: Sage. 53–80.