All education in Sweden, or the Swedish eduscape, is permeated by discourses of compensation and inclusion, conceptualized in this study as a one-school-for-all ethos or perspective. This ethos contributes to a social-ecological framing, wherein the intentions are a society where everyone can participate as active members. This study scrutinizes the governmental strategy of 2017 to digitalize the Swedish educational system based on a one-school-for-all perspective. The study is framed by SWaSP (Second Wave of Southern Perspective) theoretical ideas, with a special focus on positionings, languaging, timespaces, and epistemological-methodological dimensions, including ethics based on the entangled tenets of sociocultural, integrationist, and southern perspectives. Furthermore, this study is anchored in three research projects and one societal developmental project. Materials - e.g., video recordings, audio recordings, photos, artifacts, fieldnotes – from these projects have been generated through (n)ethnographic methods from different institutions in the Swedish educational landscape i.e., eduscape. These span across compulsory schools to Swedish for Immigrants (SFI), within Municipal Adult Education. Three themes have emerged in the multi-scalar data analysis from across settings: (i) intended inclusion, (ii) unintended exclusion, and (iii) intended exclusion. The first theme highlights how digital tools (DTs) create inclusion for students with special needs, or those who are new to the named-language Swedish, in the classroom community, thus contributing to social-ecological sustainability. The second theme illustrates how DTs intended for inclusion in classroom practices morph into tools of exclusion for individuals in mainstream classrooms. The third theme highlights how students in the Swedish eduscape are intentionally excluded from mainstream classrooms. We argue that a social-ecological sustainable stance troubles the division of eduscapes into “mainstream” and “other” settings in contemporary societies, calling for the inclusion of all students irrespective of their positionalities. Our findings highlight that multimodal use of DTs potentially can facilitate inclusion, by providing tools where individual students can participate in and contribute to teaching and learning—what we frame as a third position of classroom organization.

This study builds on a multi-scale ethnography of policies and mundane lives of lower secondary students and teachers with a specific emphasis on recent digitalization initiatives in Swedish schools. The study aims to illuminate the discourses and processes of inclusion and exclusion within contemporary educational digitalization initiatives whose intentions relate to a one-school-for-all agenda. Sociocultural perspectives have been a key point of departure and the discourse analytical framework of Nexus Analysis has been used as a guiding analytical lens. Participant’s deployment of digital tools in educational settings have been scrutinized through interviews, classroom audio and video recordings, and other ethnographic data. In addition, the study draws on analysis of national and school policies related to digitalization initiatives and Sweden’s one-school-for-all ethos. These data come from the research project Digitalization Initiatives, and Practices (DIP, www.ju.se/ccd/dip) where a key focus is the digitalization of the Swedish school system from a perspective of inclusion and exclusion.

With a point of departure in the one-school-for-all discourse, the Swedish school system rests on values like inclusion and compensation – inclusion for all students, irrespective of background, disabilities etc., and compensation of various types of functional disabilities. Framed by the one-school-for-all discourse, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is considered both a tool for inclusion and a compensatory tool in the Swedish school. Therefore, students (and teachers) with documented special needs have had access to digital tools like laptop computers or iPads for quite some time. However, due to the high degree of independence that individual schools and teachers enjoy, access to and usage of digital tools among students without documented special needs is reported to differ considerably, sometimes within the same school. Such previous findings across previous studies led the Government of Sweden to initiate a strategy to digitalize the entire Swedish school system in 2017. This strategy has had three key focus areas:

1. Digital competence for all in the school system.
2. Equal access and usage.
3. Research and follow-up about the possibilities of digitalization.

The first two focus areas highlight the inclusive ambitions of the one-school-for-all discourse. Many secondary schools have started teaching computer knowledge, and the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) has included affordances and constraints of the digitalization of society in the curricula of different subjects, in particular in the curriculum of mathematics where programming became an integrated part, as a means to fulfill the first focus area of the strategy. A majority of Swedish secondary schools today provide students with digital tools, with the result that the one computer per student ratio has increased dramatically, as a response to the second focus area. However, for students who are diagnosed with a functional disability, an initiative to digitalize the entire student population in a school, creates a paradoxical scenario of exclusion. Thus, as the following examples from our analysis suggest, digital tools for inclusion appear to have turned into tools for exclusion in Swedish lower secondary schools.

1. Before the digitalization initiative, students with special needs were often the only students in the classroom with their own digital tools. This marked them as students with special needs, even thoughthe digital tools provided features which made it possible for them to study at the same pace as their non-marked peers. When all students received digital tools within the framing of the digitalization strategy, the effect was that the compensatory advantage for the students with special needs decreased and they started experiencing a lagging behind effect in educational settings.
2. An outcome of the digitalization strategy was that many schools stopped buying paper editions of textbooks in order to be able to reserve resources for the procurement of digital tools and other digital resources. Therefore, students are currently required to use digitalized textbooks. This offers the possibility to use digital features like text-to-speech, i.e. the written text is synthetically read aloud. Wearing headphones, the students listen to the texts simultaneously while they may read it on their individual screens, something that is easier for students with diagnoses like dyslexia, or those who are new to the named language Swedish. However, the combination of digital tools and headphones tempts students to engage with non-school tasks (like scrolling Spotify playlists or watching YouTube videos) instead of reading an assigned text. This results in students who best need time to study lagging behind in school tasks.

Discourses of compensation and inclusion circulate in the Swedish school system. However, for students with special needs these discourses can imply a further exclusion if this means a compensation and inclusion for mainstream students. After the digitalization strategy was implemented, digital tools have become an integrated part of the Swedish lower secondary classrooms. For students with special needs, digital tools can function as compensatory measures and facilitate learning. However, this study suggests that digital tools for everyone can become counter-productive for students who are marginalized to begin with.

Our analysis highlights and troubles the binary dichotomies of being abled and disabled, or what being a student with special needs implies as compared to those who do not have any diagnoses or special needs. When functionally disabled students or students with special needs are seen as “problems” who can be “fixed” with digital tools, the tools themselves risk becoming hindrances for the students’ educational development. To come to terms with this, students, regardless of prerequisites, need to be understood as individuals with individual needs, and whose needs call for individual solutions that are part of solutions for all students. This study also highlights how a discourse analytical framework of Nexus Analysis can be used to shed light on complex social relationships across different types of data.

This study illuminates the political, ideological, moral and ethical driving forces behind the Swedish governmental initiative to digitalize the educational system—the Swedish Digitalization Initiative (SDI). Taking a sociocultural point of departure, policy documents are considered mediational means and have agency. Nexus analysis is the analytical lens that is deployed. Policies are analyzed according to the public consultative discourse analysis scheme. Three main findings are reported in this study:

• The policy documents are chained, that is, one document is linked to one or more others.

• There are three important discourses that circulate in the policy documents: digital competence, programming and an economical discourse.

• Different policy documents have different strengths of agency, expressed rhetorically in terms of both languaging and layout.

The driving forces of SDI are politically and ideologically economical liberalism. Moral and ethical driving forces can be seen in terms of equality between women and men.

Aim/Purpose

The aim of the study is to explore students’ encounters with digital tools and how they account for their experiences of using digital tools within formal education.

Background

While computers have a long history in educational settings, research indicates that digital tools function both as affordances and constraints, and that the role of digital tools in schools continues to be debated. Taking into consideration student perspectives can broaden the understanding of knowledge formation practices.

Methodology

The study is part of a larger ethnographic project, focusing on agency at all levels with respect to digitalization in schools. The present exploratory study is built primarily on interviews with 31 secondary school students at five different schools (15 girls and 16 boys). The analytical framework was a Nexus Analysis, focusing on discourses in place.

Contribution

The paper shows how digital tools are conceptualized as being formed by and fitted into the traditions and habits of the institution, rather than acting as a transformative force to change knowledge formation practices in schools.

Findings

From the students’ narrative accounts, the following key themes emerge: (1) Action in contexts, (2) Agency in contexts, and (3) Equality in contexts. The first deals with the use of digital tools in school and the interaction order as it is accounted for in the use of digital tools in schools. The second frames human agency with regards to usage of digital tools and how agency fluctuates in interaction. The third deals with the compensating role digital tools are supposed to play for students who are identified with special needs and for students with divergent backgrounds, especially socioeconomic standards.

Recommendations for Practitioners

For teachers, the recommendation is to engage in dialogue with the stu-dents on how and when to use digital tools and the affordances and con-straints involved from a student’s point of view.For school leaders, the recommendation is to review how organizational structures, culture, and processes hinder or support the development of new practices in digitalization processes.

Recommendation for Researchers

The three key themes that emerged in this study emphasize the need to reflect upon how a panopticon view of contemporary classrooms can be challenged. Involving students in this work is recommended as a means to anchor ideas and results.

Impact on Society

This study is part of a larger project at Jönköping University, focusing on agency at all levels with respect to digitalization in schools. The overall goal is to increase our understanding of how to improve digitalization and implementation processes in schools.

Future Research

Future studies that address digital technologies in schools need to pay special attention to the interaction between students, teachers, and various kinds of tools to map the nature of the education process, with the aim of challenging the panopticon view of the classroom. Future studies need to focus upon processes themselves, rather than accounts of processes.

Two important reasons are often presented to account for the significant organizational shift at the compulsory educational level and for ways in which continuing education is conceptualized in many parts of the world in the post-World War II period. These two encompass ideologies related to a “common education-for-all” and a “life-long learning” perspective. They have had far reaching consequences for both individuals and collectives. Even though access to schooling and learning opportunities over the life-span are unevenly distributed across the globe, a major transition has occurred during the last five-six decades: doors to formal education have become a feasibility (if not a reality) for all members of society. Formal education became a possibility for groups that were previously marginalized; for instance, girls, functionally disabled, economically disadvantaged, individuals in rural areas, immigrants, etc., and for the post-school and college going sections of the population.

A common education-for-all young people including the life-long learning movement are, in different ways, understood as constituting fundamental principles that many democracies currently uphold. These conceptual traditions, based upon the notions of equity and human rights, have specific implications regarding (i) what is understood as legitimate in the conceptualization of human diversity and (ii) concomitantly how teaching and learning are organized for groups that previously stood outside the educational system/s. In other words, how human difference is conceptualized has a bearing upon how communities have historically organized education and/or provision for “different” groups. In addition and more significantly, as will be argued, what is meant by learning plays an important role in how education gets organized for some groups within the framework of a “common education-for-all”.

This chapter takes the discourse of equity and rights as a point of departure in order to discuss how education for different groups of young people and adults in the post-World War II period has been organized, particularly in the contexts of the global North. Issues related to human difference, the meanings subscribed to different identity categories or constructs (for instance, immigrants, functional disability and gender) and the ways in which learning for different groups gets framed is of focal interest here. My aim here (and in current academic work) is to theorize what can be termed the “didactics of inclusion-equity-integration”. Thus for instance, an interest is to understand the basis on which education for different groups has been argued for and organized. Given that learning and instruction was organized differently for different groups in the pre-World War II era, an interest here is to try and tweeze out the ways in which exclusion and segregation currently get played out, particularly in the contexts of the global North. What kinds of knowledge about human diversity are seen as important, are privileged and are made relevant in educational contexts? What understandings of learning and instruction guide the organization of education and everyday practices in educational contexts? In other words, what are the didactics of inclusion, integration and equity? These constitute some of the issues that are explored here.

Reflections on the themes attended to here arise from my previous and ongoing studies across different projects. The cumulative empirical work that the present chapter draws upon can be understood in terms of different long term ethnographically oriented projects that are framed within sociocultural and postcolonial perspectives and that furthermore invite intersectional analysis. In addition to these empirically driven research projects, the issues I raise here draw upon experiences from both large scale school developmental projects and national level work for Governmental and policy organisations since the mid-1990s.

I will, in this presentation, discuss both conceptualizations of inclusion-as-action, and issues regarding the didactics-of-representation. In my presentation I will argue for the need to shift the focus (i) from the marginalized Other to the non-marked Norm, and (ii) from the center to the boundaries that are (re)created in everyday actions and that give rise to the Other. I will illustrate how human identity and diversity, including an “imaginary community” (Andersson 1991), plays a decisive role for society’s planning of and support in the work that is done for integration, inclusion and equality. I will specifically discuss identity and the conceptualizations or metaphors related to the dominating dichotomized positions – “inclusion/mainstreaming” and “exclusion/segregation” – we have inherited, live with and that (re)create possibilities or frameworks for children, young people and adults in different institutional settings (Wertsch 2002). Taking an overarching critical humanistic, socially oriented framework that includes a sociocultural perspective and a decolonial position on human communication and identity, I will draw upon studies from different ethnographic projects at the CCD research group at Örebro University, Sweden (www.oru.se/humes/ccd). Taking the field of deafness research, including work in the areas of gender and ethnicity as illustrations, I will introduce a third position or “alternative voices” (Husnain et al 2013) in conversations about human collectives and communities-of-practices. This third position, highlights spaces for the didactics-of-representation and inverted-inclusion, allowing for new conceptualizations, including institutional strategies with regards to one-society-for-all, one-school-for-all, a-culture-for-all or in other words, one-for-all.

References:

Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

Hasnain, I., Bagga-Gupta, S. & Mohan, S. (Eds.) Alternative Voices: (Re)searching Language, Culture and Identity... Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Wertsch, J. (2002). Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This article discusses both conceptualizations regarding inclusion as action and issues related to representational-didactics. Taking a point of departure in both my scientific engagement and my experiences of research and societal developmental projects related to ethnicity, gender and functionality both inside and outside Sweden, the article argues for the need to shift focus (i) from the marginalized other to the non-marked norm, and (ii) to the boundaries that are drawn in everyday actions and activities that in themselves create the Other. I illustrate how understandings about human identity and diversity, including ”an imaginary community” (Andersson 1996), plays a decisive role for how societies plan for and organize support services regarding integration, inclusion, equity, etc. I specifically discuss identity and the conceptualizations (or metaphors) regarding the dominating dichotomized positions – inclusion and segregation – we have inherited, live with and that in themselves create possibilities/restrictions for children, young-people and adults in different institutional contexts.

Using the findings of different ethnographically framed research projects and with the fields where deaf individuals are focused upon as illustration, I introduce a third-position in a conversation about human diversity. Such a position, I argue, makes possible newer conceptualizations that include representational-didactics and inverted-inclusion. This has relevance for the organization of education, culture, and other services for everyone. In other words, by taking the case of research and the organization of language issues in the domain of deaf monolingual and bilingual education as specific instances of a dominating dichotomy, the aim of this article is to illustrate how a third-position makes visible languaging i.e. the doing of language, and identity-positionings i.e. the doing of identity, thereby allowing for newer ways of understanding functional dis/abilities, participation and inclusion. Such a position builds upon a critical humanistic thinking where theoretical sociocultural and decolonial framings are central. This position allows for, I argue, new ways to conceptualize a one-education-for-all and a-society-for-all.

My interest in this paper is twofold: first, to make visible the work that participants and institutions do throughanalyses of naturally occurring communication, including policy texts over time. Second, by using a range ofrepresentational techniques, illustrate how multimodal analyses across time and space allows for revisiting theways in which language categories get talked-and-written-into-being and how identity positions become framedin and through social practices. This data-driven contribution takes both a socially oriented perspective and apostcolonial framework on human ways-with-words and human ways-of-being. It is based upon analyses ofethnographically framed video-recordings of mundane activities, naturally occurring or data-prompteddiscussions and policy texts vis-à-vis different institutional settings in Sweden where Swedish Sign Language,SSL is used in addition to Swedish and English.My previous studies in a range of settings inside and outside schools across time in Sweden have highlighted theneed for “Going beyond the great divide” (Bagga-Gupta 2004, 2007) in both research and education for studentswith hearing impairment. This divide points to the highly dichotomized state of deaf research, institutional fieldsand discussions therein vis-à-vis oralism-signing, integration-segregation, normality-disability,medical/psychological-cultural, monolingualism-bilingualism etc. Transcending these dichotomies (and theconcomitant normative positions that they are tagged with), I juxtapose ethnographic data from primarily twoareas brought together under the umbrella concepts “languaging” and “diversity/identity” research with theintention of exploring how special needs are accounted for through the systematic analysis of data-sets from twolarge scale Swedish national research projects where fieldwork was conducted in deaf schools since 1996. Dataincludes video-taped classroom life in signing environments, video-data prompted oral reflections and policydata including discussions during the 1990s that lead to the establishment of some of these projects.Analysis focuses upon exploring the ways in which individuals and institutions account for the special needs ofpupils with a functional disability. What are the ways in which language use in itself frames identity positions indifferent sites (and across time)? How do micro-interactional analysis and the use of time and space ininstitutional settings inform issues related to inclusion/exclusion? What is the status that is accorded differentlanguage varieties in these settings and how does this status frame accounting practices related to special needs?The preliminary findings in this study challenge current understandings attributed to identity and languagegenerally and the organization of (segregated) education for the deaf in Sweden more specifically. Issues are alsoraised with regards to the ways in which individuals and both SSL and Swedish become “technified”. This paperpresents evidence that questions the polarized positions between linguistic-medical, signed-spoken/writtenlanguage varieties, mono-bilingualism and deaf-hearing worlds. The analysis contributes to the growing researchliterature where detailed analyses of textual discourses and signing-oral-written interaction can both provide anemic understanding of how narratives and accounting are a core aspect of the negotiation of identity positions aswell as illustrate the Third Position in the area of special needs.

Bagga-Gupta, S (2007) Going beyond the Great Divide. Reflections from deaf studies. Örebro, Sweden. Deaf Worlds. International Journalof Deaf Studies. Special theme issue: The meaning and place of “Deaf Studies” 23.2 & 3: 69-87.

Bagga-Gupta, S (2004) Visually oriented bilingualism. Discursive and technological resources in Swedish Deaf pedagogical arenas. In VHerreweghe, and M. Vermeerbergen (eds.), To the Lexicon and Beyond. Sociolinguistics in European Deaf Communities, Volume 10. The Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities Series. Editor C. Lucas. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press, pp. 171-207.

This contribution has a threefold interest: first, to make visible the active work that participants and institutions “do” with symbols and artifacts through detailed descriptions of naturally occurring communication and interactions across time and space. Secondly, by using a range of representational techniques, the paper illustrates the ways in which multimodal analysis allows for revisiting the dimension of agent-artifact-agency. Agency here gets accounted for not as the sole property of human agents, but rather in terms of an intrinsic performatory dimension of agents-cum-artifacts-in-concert. Finally, the study illustrates the incongruence between individual actors talk and institutional accounting of language, learning and identity on the one hand, and the performance of languaging, learning and identity on the other.

Drawing upon multidisciplinary and multisited studies of social practices in different settings across time and space allows for juxtaposing of micro scale analysis of the unfolding of identity positions as well as the dynamic and chained obstacles, resistance, support, meaning-making that characterizes everyday social life at a meso scale. This data-driven contribution is based upon analyses of ethnographic recordings of activities from projects that can be conventionally described in terms of (i) virtual platforms and social media; (ii) expert lead public discussions on gendered spaces in a megacity in Asia; and, (iii) segregated special schools in Sweden.

This empirical contribution takes both a socially oriented perspective and a postcolonial framework on ways-with-words and ways-of-being. The ways in which human beings “live in language” and their “languaging” has a bearing upon socialization, including the learning of conventional language varieties and identity positions in different settings. Focusing performatory and accounting practices shifts the analytical lens away from actors “pure” intentions, motivations and desires, and the “real” meanings that reside in and are ascribed to human talk.

Educational arenas are important sites for understanding how diversity and democracy become operationalised since they constitute and at the same time must attend to students' different needs. This article focuses on diversity from two specific angles: how research activities allow for particular ways of understanding human differences and how human pluralism is conceptualised in the organisation of education. These discussions emerge from the position that our use of language itself shapes human realities. The organisation of the segregated Swedish special schools for the deaf and research that focuses on this specific “human category” are used to illustrate and discuss issues pertaining to diversity and democracy. Pupils in special schools are conceptualised both as “handicapped” as well as belonging to a “linguistic-minority” group. Democratic tensions related to maintaining a separate school and conducting research on the human category defined on the basis of “deafness” are discussed and alternatives raised. Implications regarding (the lack of) pluralism in research perspectives and agendas are also discussed and the need for integrating studies of marginalisation into mainstream academia is highlighted.

Från introduktionen: En hel del har diskuterats och skrivits kring delaktighet, jämlikhet, likvärdighet, inflytande och närliggande begrepp under sista årtiondena. Vad dessa begrepp syftar till, varför de är väsentliga i dagens samhälle, hur vi kan förstå människans delaktighet och jämlikhet i olika sammanhang, etc. verkar ha engagerat politiker, författare, debattörer och har fångat uppforskares uppmärksamhet. Samtidigt finns det uppenbarliga tecken på att fler och fler i vårt (och andras) samhälle ställs utanför olika sammanhang. Det tycks vara så att medan strävan är att skapa bättre möjligheter för delaktighet, jämlikhet, etc. så blir vi ännu mer medvetna om att vi inte uppnår de mål och ideal som eftersträvs. Fler och fler grupper i samhället gör anspråk på bättre inkluderingsvillkor i s. k. mainstreamlivet och det uppmärksammas att dessa grupper känner att de inte får samma möjligheter som andra grupper i en rad olika avseenden.

The essay presented in this paper constitutes a reflection based on my explorations of transcending siloed academic areas from Southern or Decolonial frameworks generally and on my reading of the 572-page, 2023 volume Decolonizing The Mind. A guide to decolonial theory and practice by Sandew Hira published by Amrit Publishers more specifically. Aligning with emerging discussions regarding the need to trouble the colonially framed ways of mainstream academia and academic writing itself, I - like an increasing number of scholars, including Sandew Hira - attempt to present these reflections in what may appear as unconventional writing. This paper is organized in six sections that talk to the human condition across the territories of the contemporary planet based on situating and historicizing its narrative as a response to emerging decolonial waves that have so far marked academic settings differently across the global North and the global South, including my open-ended reading of Sandew Hira's 2023 volume. In lieu of a standard summary, this reflective paper functions as an expanded teaser to the volumes rich and troubling offerings.

Paper at the invited symposium 'Illusions and Delusions of the Centre within the Framework of Globalization'

My interest in this paper is twofold: first, make visible the work that individuals and institutions “do” in the global North and global South. Second, illustrate how analyses across time and geopolitical spaces allows for revisiting the ways in which language categories get talked-and-written-into-being and how identity positions and culture become framed in and through social practices and textual accountings. Taking both a socially oriented perspective and a decolonial framework on languaging and identity positions, this contribution juxtaposes data from ethnographic projects at the CCD research group at Örebro University, Sweden (www.oru.se/humes/ccd). The analysis builds upon (i) video-recordings of mundane activities, (ii) data-prompted discussions and (iii) archives and policy related to institutions in Sweden and Mumbai, India where individuals have access to a number of language varieties.

The findings highlight the incongruence between individuals and institutional accountings in the global North (as opposed to individuals talk and institutional accountings in the global South) as well as the performance of languaging, identity and culture in the global North. In other words, this study challenges dominating understandings of language, identity and culture generally and the organization of “special” support for “immigrant” individuals in the global North more specifically. Issues are also raised regarding the “technification” of language and diversity. Evidence presented questions the simplistic positions and problematic “webs-of-understandings” (Bagga-Gupta 2012) that frame mono-bi-multilingualism and mono-bi-multiculturalism in the global North. Providing emic understandings of how accountings constitute a core dimension of “collective remembering” (Wertsch 2002) of “imagined communities” (Anderson 1991), the paper illustrates “alternative voices” (Hasnain el al 2013) in the Language and Educational Sciences (Bagga-Gupta 2013, 2014). This endeavor calls for a major shift in analytical perspectives, an “earthrise” viewing from decolonial positions, instead of the dominant “sunrise and moonrise” viewings that build upon northern hegemonies that currently frame discourses of globalization.

References:

Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

Bagga-Gupta, S. (2012). Challenging understandings of Bilingualism in the Language Sciences from the lens of research that focuses Social Practices. In Eva Hjörne, Geerdina van der Aalsvoort & Guida de Abreu (Eds.) Learning, social interaction and diversity – exploring school practices. pp 85-102. Rotterdam: Sense.

Bagga-Gupta, S. (2013). The Boundary-Turn. Relocating language, identity and culture through the epistemological lenses of time, space and social interactions. In Imtiaz Hasnain, Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta & Shailendra Mohan (Eds.) Alternative Voices: (Re)searching Language, Culture and Identity... pp 28-49 Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Bagga-Gupta, S. (in press 2014). Performing and accounting language and identity: Agency AS actors-in-(inter)action-with-tools. In P. Deters, Xuesong Gao, E. Miller and G. Vitanova-Haralampiev (Eds.) Interdisciplinary approaches to theorizing and analyzing agency and second language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Hasnain, I., Bagga-Gupta, S. & Mohan, S. (Eds.) Alternative Voices: (Re)searching Language, Culture and Identity... Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Wertsch, J. (2002). Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Issues related to time and space explicitly or implicitly frame ways in which identity and language broadly, and literacy specifically get (re)searched. This study explicates challenges related to space – here, there and the virtual, mobility – across time and space (both geographical and virtually), and identity-positions through empirical examples from on-going ethnographically framed research in the Global North and South. Taking both a socially oriented perspective and a decolonial framework on language and identity, this contribution juxtaposes data from ethnographic projects at the CCD research group at Örebro University, Sweden (www.oru.se/humes/ccd). The analysis builds upon (i) video-recordings of mundane activities, (ii) data-prompted discussions and (iii) archives and policy related to institutions in Sweden and Mumbai, India where individuals have access to and engage with a number of language varieties including their written modalities. Fieldwork in the projects raise important issues related to globalization and the very doing of research

Recent shifts in media and digital spaces have created new conditions for the human condition. For instance, how people engage with information, the visual, the written, the cultural; how they find, engage with, experience the written word and other cultural and intellectual tools. Everyday life across spaces, including the disparity of experiences between individuals and groups calls for systematically revisiting some central areas in the educational and social sciences. Flexibility and the hybridity of languaging in physical as well as digital spaces are afforded by the glo-cal nature of linguistic landscapes. Here processes of identity are shaped by the transnational, multilingual and glo-cal nature of participation both inside and outside institutional settings. These linguistic landscapes enable the creation of physical as well as symbolic relationships, enabling glo-cal states and experiences.

I attend to the following issues: (i) illustrate some important challenges of doing fieldwork in present times; (ii) raise issues related to individual actors talk and institutional accounting of language, learning and identity on the one hand, and the performance of languaging, learning and identity-positioning on the other; (iii) illustrate the chained ecology and hybridity of communication and use of technologies in vastly different geopolitical physical and virtual spaces (ie. make visible the active work that participants and institutions “do” with symbols and artifacts through detailed descriptions of naturally occurring communication and interactions across time and space); and (iv) illustrate the ways in which multimodal analysis allows for revisiting dimensions of language socialization and identity-positions which get accounted for not as the sole property of individuals or as distinct bounded entities, but rather in terms of intrinsic performatory hybrid dimensions of individuals-cum-technologies-in-concert-across-time-and-space.

This paper introduces the theme of Languaging, Diversity and Democracy. Contemporary issues of participation and ways-of-being and positions the 12 individual papers that constitute the 2022 double special issue of Bandung: Journal of the Global South. Its interest lies in contributing to knowledge that is relevant for contemporary human challenges related to issues of mobility, digitalization, and communication in and across different geopolitical regions across the planet and across virtual-physical spaces. Raising concerns regarding universalizing tendencies of special issues (and collected volumes generally), and based on the premise that what kind of knowledge matters is tied up with the issue of whose knowledge and in what named-language this knowledge matters, this paper raises critical queries that focus on the narrators positionality and gaze, the composition of scholarly narratives, the flow of narratives, what vocabularies circulate in frontline scholarship, including the organization of special issues, etc. Drawing attention to the universalizing Euro/America-centrism that shapes what counts as knowledge, the paper draws attention to the taken-for-grantedness of what counts as international languages of publishing which eclipses alternative epistemologies, ways-of-thinking and ways-of-being. It argues that by taking such issues as inspiration in the curation and editing of this double special issue, participatory processes and ways-of-being enabled a contribution to the doing of democracy and diversity in the scholarly enterprise. Such work of democratizing academic publication work calls for unlearning to learn that is closely related to the theme explored in the double special issue. Aligning with analogue-digital languaging in contemporary existence, the paper also traces the journey of how this double special issue has come into being.

This article brings together salient findings regarding communication and identity through studies of everyday social practices, studies of discourses about these practices and policy documents pertaining to special schools from previous and ongoing ethnographic projects based at the KKOM-DS (Communication, Culture and Diversity - Deaf Studies) research group in Sweden. Central findings regarding the complex nature of language usage in these 'bilingual' Swedish-Swedish Sign Language settings are highlighted and the key concept of different types of chaining is empirically explicated. The work presented here also takes its point of departure in how Self and Other are represented in everyday talk, in how the organisation of time and space and how the sociohistorical discourse about language, 'bilingualism' and identity in policy documents mediate a particular world view in terms of an 'imagined and pure homogeneity'. Together, these two empirically grounded analyses highlight a tension between human beings' ways of being or their actions and orientations in social practices and human beings' ways of understanding and conceptualising bilingualism in educational settings. The empirical analyses suggest that understanding linguistic competencies and the organisation of the primary languages in the special schools, on the one hand, and human beings' use of both the languages, on the other hand, are very different phenomena.

Recent shifts in media and digital spaces have created new conditions that frame our lives. For instance, how people engage with information, the visual, the written, the cultural; how they find, engage with, experience the written word and other cultural and intellectual tools. Issues related to time-space explicitly or implicitly frame ways in which identity and language broadly, and literacy specifically gets (re)searched. This study explicates challenges related to timespace – here, there, where, now, then, when and the virtual, mobility – across time-and-space (both geographical and virtual), and identity-positions through empirical examples from on-going ethnographically framed research at institutions in the Global North and South. Taking both a socially oriented perspective and a decolonial framework on language and identity, this contribution juxtaposes data from projects at the CCD research environment in Sweden (projects DoT, LISA-21) and Mumbai, India (project GTGS) where individuals have access to and engage with a number of language varieties including their written modalities. The analysis builds upon (i) video-recordings of mundane activities, (ii) data-prompted discussions and (iii) archives and policy related to institutions.

The analysis illustrates: (i) challenges of doing fieldwork currently; and (ii) contrasting accountings of literacy, learning and identity between individuals and institutions on the one hand, and the doing of these on the other. The doing of fieldwork highlights some important assumptions regarding timespace that have a bearing on ethnographies, including netnographies. The doing of languaging, learning and identity-work illustrates the chained ecology and hybridity of communication and use of technologies in vastly different geopolitical physical and virtual spaces. The latter can be understood in terms of intrinsic performatory hybrid dimensions of individuals-cum-technologies-in-concert-across-time-and-space. Flexibility and the hybridity of languaging in physical as well as digital spaces are both restricted as well as afforded by the glo-cal nature of linguistic landscapes.

Projektet har belyst frågor om ett-samhälle-för-alla för marginaliserade individer och grupper i ett demokratiskt samhälle som Sverige.

Det övergripande syftet har varit att belysa komplexiteten i stöd som erbjuds marginaliserade barn och vuxna via olika institutioner och utifrån detta identifiera framgångsrika faktorer för alla människors delaktighet.

Projektet har därför haft som mål att generera kunskap som kan bidra till förbättrade livsmöjligheter och ökad delaktighet i samhället för marginaliserade personer.

This article attempts to make visible everyday activities and underlines the importance of ethnographic studies of communication in order to allow for expanded understandings of diversity and bilingualism in the context of ”one school for all”. The article is based on studies conducted in visual educational arenas (i e settings for Deaf students that can be understood as ”segregating integrated”). Technological tools are used as resources and a natural part of activities in these arenas. In addition different linguistic systems are used in complex patterned ways. Here different codes and systems are chained  together in two ways: local chaining and event chaining. Demystifying interaction between human beings and between human beings and cultural artefacts and tools in institutional settings enables an understanding of bilingualism in terms of complex discursive-technological practices . This is contrasted against a common reductionistic conceptualisation of bilingualism that is problematic.