In the field of Language Teaching and Learning, and Pedagogical Work, researchers study the learning and teaching of language and language skills from cognitive, social, cultural and educational perspectives.
Multilingualism in education
The area focuses on research on multilingualism in different educational contexts (preschool, primary school, secondary school, upper secondary school, Swedish for immigrants, teacher education) and in different teaching subjects (e.g. mother tongue teaching). Several of the projects assume that both teachers and students in different educational contexts have linguistic repertoires that include many different linguistic resources.
Swedish as a second language
Research in the field of Swedish as a second language is largely focused on adult second language development and highlights, among other things, links between literacy in everyday life and educational contexts.
Teaching pupils with language, reading and writing difficulties
Research on how to develop teaching practices for pupils with learning difficulties. An ongoing project is investigating methods of teaching reading to pupils with decoding difficulties in grades 2 and 4. Previous projects have evaluated methods of teaching vocabulary to pupils with language disorder and methods of teaching writing to pupils with intellectual disabilities.
Participatory research
Participatory research is conducted in collaboration with schools and teachers. Two important characteristics of participatory school research are that it is both practice-orientated and participatory. The practice-oriented aspect means that the research conducted in schools must be relevant to the school; it must be close to the practice that the research is about. The participatory aspect of the research emphasises that research conducted in schools should also be conducted with the school, not just in the school, and can thus be described as participatory.
Teaching writing
Research on teaching of writing has different orientations, both towards primary and secondary school and higher education. A new project – Will writing ever be the same? On AI, writing processes and writing practices in secondary school – examines how AI affects writing processes and writing practices among 13–15 year olds in primary school, focusing on which writing practices are developed, how teaching is affected, the relationship between writer and technology and the impact on the writing process. Previous projects have had both cognitive perspectives, such as key stroke logging, and socio-cultural perspectives on writing and writing instruction.
Teaching foreign langauge
A previous project in school research showed that Swedish pupils practise too little speaking Spanish at school. An overarching question that the studies seek to answer is why pupils are not better at speaking, when we have long had a communicative focus on foreign language teaching in Sweden.
The teaching profession
Research areas include, for example, the teaching profession and teacher professionalism, critical pedagogy, the multilingual classroom, policy and curriculum studies, and discourse analysis.
