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Home-school interaction is increasingly digitally mediated in Norway, and the schools hold the overarching responsibility for the inclusion of multilingual parents.
How do language and digital communication affect the inclusion or exclusion in the home-school interaction between immigrants with Norwegian as their second language and teachers in Norwegian schools?
This is one of the main questions Hilde Thyness has aimed to answer in her dissertation at the PhD in Teaching and Teacher Education (PROFF) programme.
In the article-based dissertation, 'Inclusion in parent-teacher relationships. A sociolinguistic approach to language and media practices in multilingual contexts', Thyness has researched how multilingual parents and Norwegian teachers communicate digitally, and how they themselves evaluate this communication.
– A main finding is that digital communication provides good opportunities for inclusion by how both parents and teachers negotiate equal relations by using emojis, punctuation and strategic choices related to the communicational channels, Thyness says to inn.no.
Additionally, the teachers express that they put emphasis on taking care of all parents, and that they consider multilingualism as a resource.
However, Thyness has also found several challenges regarding this effort.
– One of the most central challenges is that the schools to a small extent adapt their language use to the language competence of the parents, and that teachers experience a lack of support from the school management and owner in their work with the homes, she explains.
The study demonstrates that a visual representation of the parents’ linguistic and digital practices, a mediagram, can be used with parents and pupils to challenge the teachers’ monolingual ideologies and shortsightedness towards multilingual parents.
Here you will find more information about Hilde Thyness’ disputation 24 May 2024.
Main findings in the doctoral research:
- Parents and teachers negotiate equal parent-teacher relations by using several semiotic resources aside from language.
- On a general basis, the teachers are aware of their responsibility regarding the inclusion of parents, and it is expressed that they view multilingualism as a resource.
- However: Norwegian is the main language for communication, and the findings point to the fact that teachers and schools have a monolingual ideology.
- The teachers experience a lack of attention towards and support from the school management and owner in their work with multilingual parents.
- Initiatives for creating awareness, e.g. using a visualisation tool such as mediagram, can be effective in challenging the monolingual ideology and the shortsightedness towards multilingual parents which often goes hand in hand with this ideology.
Contact information:
- hilde.thyness@inn.no
- Phone
- +47 62 59 79 37