Pedagogical collaboration for multilingual support in Swedish compulsory schools – multilingual study guidance tutors’ perspectives

Abstract

26% of the students in Swedish compulsory school have an immigrant background. To support the simultaneous development of their language proficiency as well as their academic skills and knowledge, several measures may be implemented by schools. This study focuses on one of those measures, namely multilingual study guidance, and illustrates the perspectives of multilingual study guidance tutors regarding their pedagogical collaboration with mainstream teachers for multilingual support. A purposeful sampling with a maximum variation was chosen to obtain the highest possible representativeness. Thereafter, twelve individual, thematical interviews were conducted. To discuss the categories arising from the abductive analysis, in 2003, Bronstein’s model on the influences of interdisciplinary collaboration, focusing on the professional role, was used. The study forms part of a wider research project which aims to get a more in-depth view of multilingual support in Swedish compulsory schools. In this paper, however, only results concerning multilingual study guidance tutors and their views on their pedagogical collaboration with mainstream teachers as well as their professional role and work responsibilities are presented. The results show that multilingual study guidance tutors struggle with professional identity issues. The pedagogical collaboration therefore depends heavily on educational and individual aspects. The findings suggest that in order to increase and improve pedagogical collaboration a more uniform educational path is required, which includes general subject education as well as official steering documents, and a final diploma.