Transculturation in Arabic literacy education within and beyond mainstream education in Norway and Sweden

Abstract

In Arabic literacy education in Europe, whether within mainstream education or in supplementary schools, instruction is a translocal endeavour at its core. The socio-historical conditions and ways of knowing embedded in traditional ways of teaching Arabic literacy are still deeply intertwined with the teaching of Arabic literacy in the diaspora. However, European expectations of education in general and literacy education in particular influence the purposes, content and materials of the Arabic literacy classroom, which leads to a process of transculturation. The current study investigates how Arabic literacy education as part of two Arabic heritage language settings in Norway and Sweden serves as a site for transculturation and how the entirely different ways of organising heritage language education in the two settings influence the transculturation processes of Arabic literacy education. This exploratory investigation is carried out through ethnographically inspired fieldwork in three mainstream schools in Sweden and in one supplementary school in Norway. The findings suggest that the inclusion of Arabic literacy education in mainstream schools in Sweden likely leads to an education closely aligned with official Swedish expectations about literacy education, while the supplementary school in Norway, to a greater extent, maintains traditional approaches to Arabic literacy education.