Programme

Thursday 30 March

Friday 31 March

Preregistration

Preregistration needed, to simplesignup before 21 March 2017.

Sign up for 30/3 at https://simplesignup.se/private_event/91656/b21d7a7a27
Sign up for 31/3 at https://simplesignup.se/private_event/92453/a2352c7ec6

How to get here

The workshop will be held in room B 522, in Södra huset, Frescati, Stockholm University. You can locate the building Södra huset using this map of the campus: Map Campus Frescati (1996 Kb) . Use the entrance marked 14B on the map.

Information på svenska

Avdelningen för finska ordnar tillsammans med Romanska och klassiska institutionen ett seminarium om utbildning, språkpolitik och minoriserade språk över gränserna. Seminariespråket är engelska.

Abstracts

Download abstracts as a pdf: Abstracts Workshop 30-31 March (414 Kb) .

Memet Aktürk-Drake, Brussels, BE: When divergent state ideologies converge on immigrant-language education: The case of Turkish in Western Europe

Bourhis et al. (1997) identify four types of state ideologies (pluralist, civic, assimilationist and ethnist ideologies) that shape integration policies towards immigrants and their acculturation with relation to majority and minority identities. Table 1 provides a modified version with example countries mentioned by Bourhis et al. (1997) and other researchers (Yağmur & van de Vijver 2012, Aktürk-Drake forthcoming). Since language is a central component of culture and identity, divergent ideologies are likely to encourage different monolingual or bilingual profiles among immigrants and their descendants. Regarding instruction of and in immigrant languages, we would expect support or no stigmatisation from pluralist and civic ideologies but some discouragement from assimilationist and ethnist ideologies. Instead, all four ideologies display a surprising convergence on Turkish education for the children of immigrants in Western Europe. The focus of this paper is four Western European countries representing the four different ideologies: Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Germany. The data comprise previous studies on Turkish education in these countries as well as data concerning language proficiency and use among adult second-generation Turks in their capital cities from the project The Integration of the European Second Generation (Crul et al. 2012). I will explore how this convergence has come about and which differences in motivation, scope and organisation of Turkish education we can nevertheless find between the four countries and how these differences relate to second-generation Turks’ language profiles.    

References
Aktürk-Drake, M. (forthcoming). Turkish maintenance and bilingualism among second-generation Turks in multicultural Stockholm. In: Başer, B. & Levin, P. (eds.) Migration from Turkey to Sweden: Integration, Belonging and Transnational Community. London: IB Tauris.

Bourhis, R. Y., Moïse, L. C., Perreault, S., & Senécal, S. (1997). Towards an interactive acculturation model: A social psychological approach. International Journal of Psychology, 32, 369-386.

Crul, M., Schneider, J. & Lelie, F. (eds.) (2012). The European second generation compared. Does the integration context matter?. IMISCOE Research. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Yağmur, K. & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2012). Acculturation and Language Orientations of Turkish Immigrants in Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 43/7, 1110–1130.

Laura Álvarez & Anna Jon-And, Stockholm University, SE: Language shift and maintenance in Angola: a study on attitudes toward Portuguese and Bantu languages

In Angola, the linguistic profile of the population has changed radically since independence in 1975. Instead of a share of 60% who do not speak Portuguese, 70% of the population declare to be Portuguese speakers. In the educational system, the only language used is Portuguese and the official norm adopted is European Standard Portuguese. There is also official support for the use and teaching as well as the study of national Angolan languages. However, to our best knowledge, the country has yet to offer bilingual education. The present paper deals with questions related to language shift, bilingualism and language maintenance, by focusing on how speaker’s age and level of bilingualism in Bantu languages and Portuguese relate to self-reported proficiency, use and attitudes toward actual use of these languages among high school students in a rural and an urban setting in Cabinda, Angola. The aim is to provide an overview of language use and attitudes by describing tendencies in ongoing language shift, and identifying factors that may be favorable for the maintenance of local languages. Participants are bi- or multilingual speakers of Bantu languages and Portuguese as first and second languages, as well as simultaneous bilinguals of Bantu languages and Portuguese. The analyzed materials consist of 159 questionnaires, 30 diaries and 64 interviews. The results show that, despite that Bantu languages have generally not been taught in school in Cabinda, students tend to have positive attitudes toward Bantu languages, and respondents might be motivated to use these languages more than they do today. Consequently, a higher degree of exposure to both languages through bilingual education would have positive effects in maintenance of Bantu languages and increased proficiency in both Portuguese and local Bantu languages.

Jeroen Darquennes, Namur University, BE: The role of language-in-education policy and planning in language maintenance in minority settings: practice-informed theoretical perspectives

This paper offers a round-up of theoretical perspectives on the role of language-in-education policy and planning on language maintenance in language minority settings. The round-up will be based on classical literature on the role of language education in and for communities that face different degrees of language shift (e.g. Fishman 1991, 2001; Baker 2006) as well as on findings expressed in more recent works (e.g. Hornberger 2008; Liddicoat 2013; Pauwels 2016). In order to make the theoretical round-up more tangible, it will be enriched with data from a large-scale survey conducted by the Soziolinguistika Klusterra in the Basque Country (Martinez de Luna, Zalbide, Darquennes & Suberbiola 2014) and will make references to the case-studies that will be presented by the other speakers in the course of the workshop.

References
Baker, Colin. 2006. Foundations of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 2001. Can threatened languages be saved? Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Hornberger, Nancy N. (ed.). 2008. Can schools save indigenous languages? Policy and practice on four continents. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Liddicoat, Anthony J. 2013. Language-in-education Policies. The Discusrive Construction of Intercultural Relations. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Martinez de Luna, Inaki, Mikel Zalbide, Jeroen Darquennes & Pablo Suberbiola. 2014. The use of Basque in model D schools in the Basque Autonomous Community. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 2, 2, 254-286.

Pauwels, Anne. 2016. Language Maintenance and Shift. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Natalia Ganuza and Christina Hedman, Stockholm University, SE: Mother tongue instruction and its impact on biliteracy development and school results

In an earlier study (Ganuza and Hedman in press), we investigated the impact of so called mother tongue instruction (henceforth MTI) on the development of biliteracy. Examples were taken from Somali-Swedish bilinguals (N=120, ages 6–12) and Somali MTI in Sweden. Overall, the results showed that students who had attended MTI performed better on measures of Somali reading and vocabulary than students who had attended no or little MTI, despite being entitled to it. Furthermore, participants’ test results in Somali were found to be positively correlated with their results on the same measures in Swedish (their language of schooling), in particular for the reading measures. Departing from these earlier results, we are currently exploring the relationship between the participants’ results on Somali and Swedish reading comprehension and their school results. These analyses are conducted with a subsample of 46 participants from the earlier study, who all attend the same school and who have all been enrolled in Somali MTI for several years. School results here refer to grades that the participants received in MTI, Swedish as a second language, Mathematics, as well as their overall average merit rating at the end of 6th or 7th grade. In the presentation, we present the overall results and discuss their implications in light of MTIs sociohistorical position in Swedish language and educational policy and practice. The results are also discussed in relation to earlier research on the impact of formal schooling on the development of literacy in a language minority context.

Gabriele Iannàccaro & Vittorio Dell’Aquila, Stockholm University, SE and Vasa University, FI: Desired schools, possible schools, real schools: Italian minorities and school systems policies

In the talk we want to analyse the attitudes of the ‘official’ Italian minority communities towards the school system, and in particular the presence and status of the minority language(s) in the educational curriculum. We will discuss data coming from a large survey on the Italian minority school systems that was entrusted to us by the Italian Ministry of Education in the late 2000’s (Iannàccaro 2010, Iannàccaro - Dell’Aquila 2011). A quantity of territorial varieties had been recognised within their own communities by a law in 1999, and the poll was meant to check the ‘status of the art’ after ten years of that law’s enforcement. Through individual interviews, creative focus groups, quantitative questionnaires and the analysis of language-related school projects a picture has been drawn of the presence and of the position of minority language(s) in virtually every school of the Republic that assured such a teaching. It will be shown that a quantity of language policy related issues are at stake in the vision – provided by teachers, pupils and parents – of the minority languages teaching, and that very often the official claims about the integration of minority languages in the curriculum are quite different from the ‘real’ desired solutions.

Jarmo Lainio & Lasse Vuorsola, Stockholm University, SE: International minority language promotion in relation to local indifference – the matter of non-implementation of bilingual education in Sweden

The situation for the five national minority languages of Sweden (Finnish, Meänkieli, Romani Chib, Sami and Yiddish) has become more focused in several ways since the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) by Sweden in 2000. Firstly, there is an increasing international and national attention paid to these languages in general, and secondly, the stand-still of development with regard to public instruction of and in these languages has likewise received much attention. At the national level the general situation for the five national minority languages has improved, in part also due to the Law on national minorities and minority languages (LoNM 2010), but again, very little has happened in the field of education, partly because the LoNM excluded the issue of education, except for pre-school. The critique delivered by the Council of Europe as well as by Swedish NGOs, the National Board of Education and researchers, has had two or three main targets: the low amount of hours for mother tongue instruction and the lack of bilingual education options. In addition, the lack of any teacher education for these purposes has been the target of critique. Also, since 1991 the public sphere has almost completely handed over bilingual education to the so-called independent schools. For Finnish, the number of such schools has decreased steadily, from more than 10 in the 1990s – compared to tens of bilingual classes arranged by the municipalities earlier – to five at present, four of which are situated in the Greater Stockholm area. In January 2017 the bilingual independent Sweden Finnish school in Gothenburg was closed down, at the order of the National Schools Inspectorate. The closure of the school received extensive attention and was initially harshly criticized. However, a closer look at the process and closure of the school may reveal many other features, e.g. concerning attitudes to, the treatment of and the position of national minority languages in the Swedish educational system. It also reveals how vulnerable the situation is for these languages, in some part also since the minority locally may lack some of the required economic and other resources to run a school. It is our purpose to both describe the process of closing the school, the language policy discourses at different levels at play, and the possible effects of this chain of events, for the teaching of Finnish in Gothenburg, and for the whole Finnish-speaking community in Sweden.

Conchúr Ó Giollagáin, University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland: Minority bilingual acquisition and challenges for educational provision: Issues for the Gaeltacht and the Gàidhealtachd

Gaelic in Scotland and Irish in Ireland are in an advanced stage of endangerment (Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007; Ó Giollagáin and Charlton 2015; Taylor 2016; MacKinnon 2011). Given the centuries of neglect and denigration of Gaelic-speaking communities and their culture, the efforts to elaborate official policies in support of two Gaelic languages have had to contend with considerable historical challenges. Defining aspects of language policy in the contemporary period have focussed on the realms of educational provision for Irish and Gaelic, broadcasting initiatives and increasing the visibility and use of the Gaelic languages in official and public domains. Despite these considerable achievements, broader social policies aimed at supporting the use of Gaelic in the home and in community settings remain underdeveloped, amounting to a disregard of the social contexts in which vernacular competence is acquired.

This paper draws on the findings of the Analysis of Bilingual Competence: Language acquisition among young people in the Gaeltacht (Péterváry et al. 2014) to assess the policy challenges of providing Gaelic/Irish-medium education in the social context of minority bilingualism. The findings of Péterváry et al. (2014) conclude that the incomplete acquisition of the minority language emerges as the sociolinguistic norm under the conditions of early unidirectional bilingualism. This paper discusses the implications of this non-optimal acquisition of the minority language for educational provision in the subordinated language. One of the main implications of providing minority-language education in this bilingualised context centres on the policy contradiction of minority language educational provision in the context of majority language socialisation. The paper asks where this sociolinguistic disconnect is addressed in minority language policy initiatives.

Natasha Ringbom & Ekaterina Protassova, Stockholm University & Helsinki University: Family Language Policy in Finland and Sweden: Linguistic choices of Russian – Speaking parents

The present study identifies and describes how family language policy (FLP) is managed in bilingual families with Russian-speaking backgrounds in Sweden and Finland. By FLP we mean an integrated approach to how languages are managed, learned and negotiated within individual families (see King et al., 2008). Using questionnaire and interview techniques, the linguistic practices of the parents are compared with the linguistic outcomes of their children. The attitudes of mother tongue teachers and their teaching practices are considered as well. In Finland, Russian language is not taught at the pre-primary level, like in Sweden. The aim of mother tongue teaching is functional bilingualism, not transition to the dominant language.

Our results show both differences and similarities among Russian-speakers in the two countries, not only in their family language practices, but also in their attitudes towards Russian-language literacy. Multilingualism and the maintenance of the heritage language and culture are encouraged and the intentions of the parents are aimed at transmitting Russian. Yet, their everyday practices may be in sharp contrast with their intentions. World politics also seem to influence the FLP, which makes the situation more complicated.

References

King, Kendall, Lyn Fogle & Aubrey Logan-Terry (2008). Family language policy. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5): 907–922.

Fritjof Sahlström, Åbo Akademi, Vasa, Finland: Teaching and learning in the shadow of Taxell’s paradox – language practices in co-located Swedish-Finnish schools in Finland

Finland is a bilingual nation with two official languages, the majority language Finnish and the minority language Swedish. The parallel school system can be seen as an example of a spatial policy which aims to protect the significantly smaller minority language through a spatially implemented parallel monolingualism. In Finland, this policy has been described with the term Taxell’s paradox (1986), formulated as “bilingual solutions lead to monolingualism, whereas monolingual solutions lead to bilingualism”. The view summarized in the paradox has in practice informed and guided language and education policy in Finland for a long time. In an increasingly multilingual society this position has come under scrutiny, in particular with respect to collaboration between Finnish and Swedish, but also with respect to the role of minority language education in meeting diversity. In this presentation, the construction of linguistic and cultural difference in educational discourse and practice in Finland is analyzed by looking closer at the parallel monolingualism of the Finnish education, at policy level and in practice. By analyzing ethnographic data and public debate I argue that discursive and material practices related to monolinguistic separation have a significant role in constructing difference and otherness in the Finnish school context.

Linus Salö, Stockholm University: Mother tongue education in Sweden and Denmark: Linguistic exchange rates and nation-ization struggles

In globalizing times, schooling remains a crucial site within which states exercise control over the value of linguistic resources by deciding what kinds of bi/multilingualism schools should develop (Heller & Martin-Jones 2001). This paper explores these dynamics in mother tongue education (MTE) in Sweden and Denmark. It adopts a historical, comparative perspective to account for prominent convergences and divergences in Scandinavian approaches to MTE, as expressed in policy and debate. In Sweden, notwithstanding persistent implementation issues, MTE is offered to minority children irrespective of their linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. In Denmark, by contrast, the right to state-sponsored MTE has been abolished for children of non-European descent. Moreover, while the policies of both states devalue skills in mother tongues other than those that constitute the legitimate language of each society, this position is more pronounced in the Danish debate, where MTE is viewed primarily as an instrument for enhancing the acquisition of Danish. The paper employs Bourdieu’s idea of capital exchange rates to understand analytically how the promotion of skills in the mother tongues per se is accepted only insofar as they are exchangeable into the capital of Danish language skills. A similar form of indirect capital conversion is noticeable in Sweden, where MTE is conceived of as beneficial for enhancing skills in Swedish and other school subjects. Yet here, in addition, mastery of the mother tongues is assumed to bolster the link to the children’s ethnic identity, culture, and origin. These divergences exist because, in Sweden, MTE is founded on a multiculturalist stance that has never taken root in Denmark. Here, it is particularly tangible that MTE is a politicized object locked within what Gorski (2013) terms a ‘nation-ization struggle’, where agents seek to control the exchange rate of linguistic resources and, in effect, the social worth of different speakers.

Toshiko Sugino, Kogakuin University, Japan: Educational, social, and psychological problems that new-comers in Japan have faced, especially in case of Nikkei Brazilians

There is a commonly held belief that Japan is a monolingual and mono-ethnic country. Is Japan truly a monolingual country? According to a June 2016 Immigration Control Office survey, 2,765,267 foreign nationals registered, which Nikkei Brazilians accounted for the highest number besides Chinese and Koreans.  This total did not include Japan’s often-overlooked minorities such as the Ainu and Okinawans. Japanese generally know of the existence of minorities but many parents and teachers show uneasiness when children mention minorities unless the issue is part of a multicultural or international studies lesson. In this presentation, first I will briefly review the history of some minorities in Japan, and then will mention about the new-comers mainly Nikkei-Brazilians, and finally claim the need for college students to learn about educational, social, and psychological issues that minorities are dealing with  as well as language policies for/against them.

Curricula vitae

The list is preliminary. Download as a pdf: CVs 30-31 march 2017 workshop SU 20170309 (387 Kb) .

Memet Aktürk-Drake

Memet Aktürk-Drake is a general linguist with a PhD in bilingualism. His main research interest is language contact, especially its effects on heritage languages. He has published on loanword phonology and heritage-language phonology. Currently, he is working on Turkish maintenance and bilingualism among second-generation Turks in Western Europe from an integration and language-policy perspective. A further research interest of his is historical sociolinguistics, especially the impact of modernity on societal multilingualism. He has written and taught on the history of multilingualism and linguistic diversity in Istanbul.

Laura Álvarez López

Laura Álvarez López is a Professor of Portuguese at the Department of Romance Studies and Classics at Stockholm University. Her research has mainly focused on Latin American varieties of Portuguese and Spanish in contact with African languages. Since 2014, she has been working with African varieties of Portuguese, and for that purpose she has performed fieldwork in both Angola and Mozambique.

Jeroen Darquennes

Jeroen Darquennes is currently a professor of German and General Linguistics at the University of Namur and an affiliated researcher at the Mercator European Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning in Ljouwert (The Netherlands). In his research, he mainly concentrates on aspects of language contact, language conflict and language policy and planning in European language minority settings. He has published widely in the field of European language minority studies. He is one of the general editors of Sociolinguistica, the European yearbook of sociolinguistics (published by de Gruyter). Together with Joe Salmons (Wisconsin) and Wim Vandenbussche (Brussels) he is preparing two volumes of a handbook on Language Contact (as part of de Gruyter’s HSK-series). He quite recently completed a 3-year term as associate editor of the journal Language, Culture & Curriculum (Routledge).

Vittorio Dell’Aquila

Vittorio Dell’Aquila is an independent researcher in linguistics (Centre d'Études Linguistiques pour l'Europe, Forskningscentrum för Europeisk Flerspråkighet) and works since about 20 years in collaboration with different European universities and research centres. He has worked as guest professor at the universities of Vaasa/Vasa, Genova, Cagliari and Milano teaching sociolinguistics, language planning, ethnolinguistics, historical linguistics and Scandinavian linguistics and he has been involved in different European research projects. He is also specialised in geography of languages, lexicography and terminology for minority languages.

Christina Hedman

Christina Hedman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Director of studies in Swedish as a Second Language, Department of Language Education, Stockholm University. My research interests encompass educational perspectives on multilingualism, including the role of mother tongue instruction for biliteracy development (a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council 2013-2015, grant number 721-2012-4275,together with Natalia Ganuza), and formal L2 education as well as literacy practices in minority languages outside formal school contexts.

Gabriele Iannàccaro

Gabriele Iannàccaro is a full professor of Italian linguistics at the University of Stockholm. Founder and co-director of the Centre d'Études Linguistiques pour l'Europe. Co-cordinator of various large-scale sociolinguistic surveys in a number European minority communities, sponsored by regional institutions and by the European Union. Appointed by various local and national governments as a consultant on language policy and language planning issues. Research interests: Sociolinguistics, Contact Linguistics, Dialectology, Perceptual Linguistics, Language Planning, Historical Indo-European Linguistics, Writing systems theory. Organiser of a number of International congresses and meetings. Author of 10 monographs, about 100 scientific papers and editor of many volumes.

Jarmo Lainio

Jarmo Lainio is a Professor of Finnish at Stockholm University since 2008. He was the head of the Centre for Finnish Studies of Mälardalen University, Eskilstuna (2003-2011), and Guest Professor 2011-2014. His research covers sociolinguistics, bilingual studies/education, the sociology of language, minority languages, language policy and educational linguistics. He was Senior lecturer at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University (1998-2004) and Visiting Research Fellow at University of Ottawa, Canada (1990-1991). Since 2006 Lainio is the Swedish member of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts, which monitors the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; from December 2015 he is also a member of its Bureau/Chair’s committee. He is involved in several international networks on the promotion of multilingual education, multilingualism, language policy and linguistic diversity. He has supervised PhD works in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Karelia/Russia on various minority languages. Within teacher education he is since 2014 involved in the recently developed mother tongue teacher education and further training of the national minority language Finnish; connected to this is the recently founded network of teacher training educators of the national minority languages of Sweden.

Cor van der Meer

Drs. C. van der Meer (Cor) has a degree in sociology and research methodology of the University of Groningen. He works as project manager for the Fryske Akademy in Leeuwarden/Netherlands and is head of the Mercator Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning which is a platform for Regional and Minority Languages in Europe, serving linguistic diversity. Cor van der Meer is an expert in the fields of multilingualism, regional and minority languages and language learning. His work is often related to the goals and practices of a number of international organisations. He is frequently presenting his work at conferences and seminars, in Europe and beyond.

Conchúr Ó Giollagáin

Conchúr Ó Giollagáin is the Gaelic Research Professor in the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland. He is also the academic director of Soillse, a sociolinguistic research partnership, based at Scotland’s national college for Gàidhlig, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye. In 2015 he was appointed as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway. He co-authored the government-commissioned Gaeltacht survey Comprehensive Linguistic Study of the Use of Irish in the Gaeltacht (2007). The Update of the Comprehensive Linguistic Study of the Use of Irish in the Gaeltacht: 2006-2011 was published in 2015. He co-authored the first major study of bilingual acquisition in Ireland, Analysis of Bilingual Competence: Language acquisition among young people in the Gaeltacht. He co-edited the ground-breaking Beartas Úr na nGael: Dálaí na Gaeilge san Iar-Nua-Aoiseachas [A New Deal for the Gaels: Irish in Postmodernity] (2016). Conchúr, along with colleagues in the Soillse research partnership, is currently concluding a major study of the social vitality of Gaelic in the Western Isles of Scotland.

Ekaterina Protassova

Ekaterina Protassova, PhD in Linguistics and Pedagogy, is Adjunct Professor of Russian Language in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki, Finland. She has studied multilingualism in Russia and abroad, Russian-speaking diaspora in the world (especially in Finland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan), the use of the modern Russian language, Russian as a lingua franca, acquisition of Russian as first and second language, Russian in the intercultural communication and participated in numerous international projects upon bilingual education and language revitalization. She is widely publishing on related topics both research papers and student manuals.

Natasha Ringblom

Natasha Ringblom, is a Slavist affiliated with the Department of Slavic and Baltic studies, Finnish, Dutch and German at Stockholm University. Her main research interests concern Russian-Swedish bilingualism and second language acquisition. She defended her PhD in 2012 about the acquisition of Russian in a language contact situation. Her current projects deal with Mechanisms of language acquisition, language socialization and heritage grammar. Natasha is also a member of two COST Projects: "New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe - Opportunities and Challenges" and "Enhancing children's oral skills across Europe and beyond".  She has a long experience of teaching Russian and Swedish.

Fritjof Sahlström

Fritjof Sahlström, PhD, is Professor in Education at Åbo Akademi University in Vasa. He is a recognised expert in the field of video-based, empirical research on teaching and learning. In particular, this concerns the innovation and implementation of theoretically and empirically novel cross-disciplinary ways of studying learning in interaction, the re-focusing of classroom research, bringing students and learners into focus, and addressing diversity in educational settings, as well as the development of new, widely adopted methods of collecting and analysing interaction data for teaching and learning research. Throughout his career, his work has been carried out in an international context, with positions held in Sweden 1993-2007 and Finland 2007-, and with extended research visits (University of California, Santa Barbara; Fulbright Scholarship 1996-1997, International Centre for Classroom Research, University of Melbourne, 2003-2004, 2011; University of California, Los Angeles, 2006-2007). Sahlström has published widely, and has supervised a large number of doctoral dissertations in Education. In addition to scholarly achievements, Sahlström is a frequent participant in public debate on teaching and learning, in particular on co-located and bilingual education. Currently, Sahlström is involved in research projects studying the implications of mobile phone use in classrooms, and in research and development projects studying minorities and diversity in Finnish and Nordic educational contexts.

Toshiko Sugino

Toshiko Sugino is a former full professor of English at Kogakuin University with Ed.D. in SLA, and is presently a lecturer at Kogakuin University, Waseda University and Foreign Service Training Institute of Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has published extensively on SLA and language policies. She is a Japanese editor for The Language Teacher, on FIEP World Director Board and is the head of JACET Language Policy SIG.