Multilingual Classroom Assistants as Nonauthorized Policy Actors: Understanding and Enacting a Swedish School Policy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore how national-level Swedish policy intentions concerning multilingual classroom assistance are being enacted at the local level. The article is based on semi-structured interviews with 12 newly arrived students and 30 interviews with teachers, multilingual classroom assistants, school leaders, and other school staff, conducted in 2018/2019 at two compulsory schools in the Stockholm region, during one year of fieldwork. The data were analysed using the conceptual bases of critical policy analysis. The findings reveal that the structural conditions for enacting national policy concerning multilingual classroom assistance are characterized by collectivizing strategies. The schools build their support measure strategies on selective appropriations of collective solutions to achieve their own organizational strategies and goals. Engagement in policy enactment by constructing local strategies is not an option for all actors in these two schools, but only for authorized policy actors. The study further demonstrates the need to reorganize multilingual classroom assistance by grounding it in students’ individual educational needs.