Resolving dilemmas: Swedish special educators and subject teachers’ perspectives on their enactment of inclusive education

Paulsrud, David

doi:10.1080/02680939.2023.2210102

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The policy enactment framework has been applied in studies of Nordic educational contexts (see, e.g., Bjordal & Haugen, 2021;Gunnulfsen, 2019;Haugen, 2019;Paulsrud, 2022Paulsrud, , 2023, although not in studies of VET, and not specifically related to the topics of language and multilingualism. The resource view of multilingualism in policy and reported practice has been the focus of some studies (see, e.g., Kjelaas & van Ommeren, 2019;Myklevold, 2022;Myklevold & Speitz, 2021), but again, the VET context has not received much attention in this regard.…”

Section: Introduction At Large" (Norwegian Ministry Of Education and ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Vocational teachers as policy actors

Andersen

2024

Apples

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Linguistic diversity has become a focus in the Norwegian National Curriculum (LK20), which establishes students experiencing “multilingualism as a resource” as a policy intention. This study explores if and how this policy intention corresponds with teachers’ experiences and practices in mainstream vocational education and training (VET). Using the concept of policy enactment developed by Ball et al. (2012) as a theoretical and analytical framework, I analyze the curricular aims set by the LK20 Core Curriculum and a subject-specific VET curriculum, comparing them to the teaching practices reflected in interview data gathered through linguistic ethnographic fieldwork in mainstream Norwegian VET programs in 2020 and 2021. My findings show that (a) the National Curriculum positions vocational teachers as subject-specific, mainly Norwegian-oriented language teachers held to ensure the enactment of “multilingualism as a resource”, even though most vocational teachers are not trained in language education, and that (b) vocational teachers act as interpreters, translators, and relatively passive receivers of language-related policies, also frequently assuming critical positions towards these policies and some organizational features of the educational institution. The study highlights the ambiguous and challenging positions vocational teachers find themselves in, emphasize the necessity of more multilingually-oriented approaches to mainstream vocational education, and show that for language-related policy intentions like “multilingualism as a resource” to be enacted, it is imperative to provide policy actors like vocational teachers with sufficient suitable resources.

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