Adrian Rexgren

ABSTRACT

Culturally diverse and multilingual groups are interacting more than ever thanks to international mobility and the internet, and at the forefront of this interaction is language as a tool for communication. According to García (2009), translanguaging, understood as the use of multiple languages in real-life communicative situations, is a dynamic skill that school pedagogy has still failed to include in a more substantiated way to teaching practice. That entails that, if pedagogic strategies in the 21st Century are to catch up with the current diversity that a globalised world brings along into current educational settings, language teaching would need revamping. This study examines the multicultural classrooms where global citizens learn a new language. Iƚ pƌeƐenƚƐ ƚhe ǁaLJ BankƐ͛ ;ϭϵϵϯ) dimensions of multicultural education aƌe opeƌaƚed dƵƌing claƐƐeƐ͕ and leaƌneƌƐ͛ life-changing transformations due participation in such tuition. This journey conveys different meanings and create impressions that trigger manifold interpretations. The participants are Latin-American native speakers of Spanish who completed the national programme of Swedish as a second language for migrants in different Stockholm folk high schools. The findings suggest that the intended learning process and materials reflect an absence of a structurally multicultural educational practice, but at the same time show the presence of some educational factors that undoubtedly fit into the category of multicultural. Surrounded by such contradictory circumstances, themes related to life changes, flexibility of school, divergent visions of historical-political and economic and developments; and critical views of education seem to unfold at individual level according to their accounts.

Keywords

multicultural education, transformative learning, translanguaging, comparative education, critical education theory

References

1. Banks, J. (1993). Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and Practice. Review of Research in Education, 19(1), (p3-49). https://doi.org/10.2307/1167339

2. García, O. (2009). Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA & Oxford: Basil/Blackwell.

3. Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. New Directions for Adult Education, 74(2), (p5-12). https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.7401.