Study Swedish as a second language at Karlstad University
Our courses are aimed at students who are interested in education for multilingual pupils in pre-primary, primary, lower- and upper-secondary school, as well as adult education.
Approximately 25 percent of children in preschool and pupils in primary and lower-secondary school have a foreign background. In Swedish upper-secondary school, the programme “Language Introduction” is the introduction programme with the most students, and within adult education there are approximately 160,000 people studying Swedish for Immigrants (SFI). At the same time, there is a shortage of qualified teachers in the subject. There is, in other words, a great demand for pedagogues, teachers and school leaders with competence in Swedish as a second language throughout all levels of the school system.
Swedish as a second language is an interdisciplinary subject with a theoretical base in, for example, linguistics and language education. The subject studies questions of migration and ethnicity, multilingualism, language structure, second language acquisition, and language and literature education. Courses offered in the subject at Karlstad University have a clear focus on practical application and are professionally oriented.
The subject also offers courses aimed at exchange students who want to learn basic Swedish. These courses are offered as Swedish as a Foreign Language.
Research
The subject-didactic and practice-based interest is also reflected through the research projects conducted within the subject at Karlstad University. Ongoing research projects focus on basic literacy development within SFI; educational models on migration; selection and transformation of educational content; definition and transformation of the school subject in the educational system of three different countries; teachers’ attitudes, understanding and knowledge of multilingualism; and reading homework for multilingual pupils.
