Language and Identity at School and at Home : Language Shift among Mennonites in Paraguay

This essay has investigated the question of an ongoing language shift from Plattdeutsch and German to Spanish among the Mennonites in Paraguay and the role of the school in this process. The aims of the study were to compare the use of languages among the Mennonites in Asuncion and in the Menno colony and to identify the importance that parents give to the languages and to compare this with a school leader perspective. The aim was also to identify factors that influence the language shift and identify the influence that the shift excerpts on Mennonite values and identity. The results are based on my own observations, interviews with Mennonite women and interviews with key informants who have insight into the school policy issues. The outcome may be used as a basis for educational and language planning. There is a need to consciously sit down and re-define the Mennonite identity and to make the community and the school aware of their responsibility in language maintenance.

Skolutveckling som diskursiv praktik : Några ideologiska implikationer

This study aims at highlighting the ideological implications of school development as a discursive practice. More comprehensively the aim is also contributing to rearrangements and shifts in perspective when school development is the matter. One of today´s most widespread and dominant discourses are said to be the one which concerns development, and according to many interpreters, development is one of the most prominent commandments in the modern as well as the post-modern narratives. School development as a concept has for the last 15 years established itself firmly in both Swedish school policy and in Swedish school research. It may sound obvious and commendable but also such axioms may be questioned.The design of the study lies in the field of discourse research and more specifically within critical discursive psychology, which draws on both a post-structural and a postmodern conception of discourse. The study is based on the idea that the ideological potential of arguments occurs, develops and changes in discursive practices and not anywhere else or at any abstract level. The starting point is a perception that certain issues and topics within e.g. conversation, depending on time and context will be seen as controversial, while others will be taken for granted.One part of the basis of the study consists of texts with a direct bearing on a specific school research and development project which took place between 2003 and 2008. Participating partners in the collaboration were the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement, Karlstad University, Dalarna University and 13 municipalities in Sweden. Another part of the basis of the study consists of texts in which ‘school development’ is considered and negotiated in more general terms, usually without reference to the project. All texts derive from the period 2003 – 2006.The analysis shows that school development as discursive practice often rely on a set of stereotypical expressions and ways of arguing. Stereotypes, which among other things, tend to divide people into suitable and non-suitable, capable and non-capable, which may be regarded as a somewhat unexpected implication of school development. The material has been dramatized by an intrigue inspired by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman´s texts. He has written extensively on the modern in relation to the postmodern and about the ambivalence which resides in between and school development as discursive practice can be understood in much the similar way.

High-School Students´ Summer Jobs and their Ensuing Labor Market Achievement : the Long Term Effect

In part because of high and persistent youth unemployment, adolescent students’ transition from school to work is an important policy and research topic. Many countries have implemented public programs offering summer jobs or work while in high-school as measures to smooth the transition. While the immediate effect of the programs on school attendance, school grades, and disposable income is well documented, their effect on the transition to the labor market remains an open question. Observational studies have shown strong positive effects of summer jobs, but also that the estimated effect is highly vulnerable to selection bias. In this paper, some 3700 high-school students applying for summer jobs in the period 1995-2003,via a program, are followed to 30 years of age. A quarter of the applicants were randomly offered a summer job each year. Among the remaining students, 50% had a (non-program related) summer job while in high-school. We find the income, post high-school, for the offered and non-offered groups to be similar and conclude that the effect of summer jobs on the transition to the labor market is inconsequential.

Vocational English in policy and practice

The aim of this licentiate thesis is to examine how, and in what ways, vocational English is a part of English language teaching in the Building and Construc­tion Programme in Sweden, and what the influences are for such pedagogy. The main research question is how policy documents relate to the views of teachers and their educational practice regarding vocational English. The study consists of two parts: a textual policy analysis of the three latest upper secondary school reforms in Sweden (Lgy 70, Lpf 94, and Gy 2011), and semi-structured interviews with practicing English teachers in the Building and Construction Programme. The interviews are categorised by using Spradley’s (1979) semantic relationships and taxonomies. Balls’ (Ball, 1993) and Ozga’s (1990; 2000) concept of policy enactment is used in the analysis as well as Bernstein’s (1990; 2000) theoretical framework of classification, framing, and horizontal and vertical discourse. The results show that five of the six teachers in the interviews work with vocational English in some way. The study also shows that there is a distinct gap between policy and practice. Several of the teachers have the notion that they are supposed to work with vocational English and that it must be written down in policy somewhere. The greatest influence on the teaching for these teachers are their students, either indirectly or directly. Further, the study shows that different frame factors such as time poverty hinders the teachers from reading policy texts and cooperating with the vocational teachers in the Building and Construction Programme.