Föreställningar om läsande och läsundervisning hos lärare i svenska som andraspråk

Pipils in the Language Introduction programmes in upper secondary schools in Sweden are required to develop reading skills to be admitted to national programmes. This study focuses on perceptions of reading and reading instruction among teachers in Swedish as a second language. The empirical material consists of interviews with five teachers. The interviews were analyzed thematically to illuminate the teachers’ perceptions of reading practices and their underlying understanding of reading and reading instruction. Freebody and Luke’s resource model and Ivanič’s multilayered discourse model served as the theoretical frame for the study. The teachers’ narrow view of reading and reading education was revealed in the analysis, with emphasis on practices of coding and meaning making, and on discourses of skills and processes. A picture emerged of the reading education as lacking richness and without necessary conditions to focus on issues of identity, power and ideologies, something that is important for students in this age and situation. We argue that a prerequisite for development of reading education that includes not only cognitive and psychological perspectives but also sociocultural and sociopolitical is that teachers turn their focus from individual students to the social and cultural contexts. Such education could support reading education to develop these pupils’ interpretation and critical skills necessary for future life.