Scarlett Mannish
About me
I am a PhD student in the national research school CeEEd-LL and based at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism, where I examine ideological tensions in multilingual education in Sweden through a Bourdieusian lens. I am interested primarily in mother tongue education which is at once both systematically inclusive and systematically exclusive of different language speaking groups. I examine mother tongue instruction as a language-ideological concept. The first part of my thesis tracks identity within the language research and political fields to explore how identity became a cornerstone of minority language education in Sweden. I am now analysing an ongoing far-right discursive shift with mother tonge instruction at its centre, and investigating the effects of mother tongue instruction's organisational form on processes of language commodification.
Teaching
I teach the following courses:
Second language acquisition and bilingual development within the teacher training course packet for Swedish as a second language
Sociolinguistic perspectives on multilingualism within the teacher training program for subject teachers of Swedish as a second language
Culture, communication and linguistic diversity as a freestanding summer course
I also supervise teacher students within the independent dissertation course for Swedish as a Second Language
Publications
A selection from Stockholm University publication database
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Lived Experiences of a High-Status Language in a Low-Status Medium: Swedish Bilingual Students’ Investment in English Mother Tongue Instruction
2019. Scarlett Mannish.
Read more about Lived Experiences of a High-Status Language in a Low-Status MediumSweden is one of few countries offering mother tongue instruction (MTI) to students in compulsory education with a native language other than Swedish. Traditionally research has focussed on the benefits of MTI as a space for the development of minority languages despite the logistical and ideological hindrances in execution that have resulted in the subject’s low status. This research explores the dichotomy between English as a high-status, global language and a low-status mother tongue subject, illuminating the role of English MTI in an environment that already offers ample opportunity for English language development. By taking an interest in the lived experiences of MTI students, their reasons for investing in additional English classes are revealed. Data was collected through a mixed research method comprising four in-depth interviews and questionnaires distributed to fifteen students, all at the end of their MTI careers in several Stockholm secondary schools. Thematic analysis of the varied data suggests diverse investment beyond the simple answer that an additional grade in the subject helps with gymnasium application. Both quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate that investment in MTI is dynamic, related to changes in student’s lives outside the classroom and closely tied to feeling that obligatory English lessons are insufficient, a desire to develop an English-speaking identity and a rapport with their English teacher. Students are also acutely aware of the cultural capital inherent in being a proficient English speaker.
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Student agency in relation to space and educational discourse. The case of English online mother tongue instruction
2022. Christina Hedman, Scarlett Mannish. English in Education 56 (2), 160-173
ArticleRead more about Student agency in relation to space and educational discourse. The case of English online mother tongue instructionThis study emerged from the abrupt shift to online distance teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic and reports of Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) in Sweden, where online distance teaching was initially introduced in MTI only. In Sweden, MTI is offered to students whose parents/caregivers speak languages other than Swedish on a daily basis in the home. The focus is on how agentive space, as a body–space relationship, was created by students in a 9th grade class (ages 15–16 years) studying English MTI, in relation to both space and educational discourse. Despite the prescribed online distance teaching, many of the students collaboratively chose to assemble in a physical classroom without a supervisor on site. How the students created a new learning frame through their actions is discussed on the basis of video-recorded lessons, and two students’ reflective follow-up talks. In this new – and in many respects difficult – learning space, educational discourse and educational ground rules were upheld through collaborative agency, which also facilitated expressions of identity and emotional space among the students. It is worth exploring further how schools can more efficiently draw on students’ agency for language learning in similar and different contexts.
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Is mother tongue instruction culturally empowering?
2024. Scarlett Mannish. Educare, 45-61
ArticleRead more about Is mother tongue instruction culturally empowering?In this paper, I formulate a position on the dissemination of ‘cultural empowerment’ in schools through a critical discussion of its relation to my research field, mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Sweden. In addition, I compare the ideals of the culturally empowering pedagogies and praxis of MTI, which I see as related through the underlying utopian visions of the multilingual and multicultural school. Both are forms of education which place a focus on the validity and importance of students’ individuality and their pre-existing knowledges from outside the curriculum. In discussing the marginalisation of MTI via the discourse of its threat to ‘Swedishness’, I hope to highlight some of the underlying problems inherent in cultural empowerment as an individualising practice carried out within the universalising framework that is the state education project. The implementation of MTI demonstrates a need for change targeted not only at the level of teachers and researchers but also at a level where legitimacy is granted to such change.
Show all publications by Scarlett Mannish at Stockholm University