ETUCE Database of Good Practices

Duration

ongoing

Partnership

TROVO is a public school that in this case offer education for those between 16-20 years of age who need to learn Norwegian or to get primary school education, lack documentation of education from your home country or want to study subjects from the curicula of primary school in Norway to continue in upper secondary in Norway.

Reason it was developed

Multilingual assistants or mother tongue support is a well-known method at various adult education centers in Norway. Research shows that active mother tongue support in educational situations makes it easier to acquire a new target language. Today, it is primarily the municipal part of adult education that has adopted mother tongue support as a method when teaching newly arrived refugees. This has yielded good results in the form of increased learning and faster progression for participants with inadequate learning strategies. We now want to test a similar method in secondary education, as we experience that many of the students struggle with the Norwegian language and lack good strategies for acquiring the academic content of a subject. This affects the learners understanding, which can cause frustration for both students and teachers.

Activities

The project position as multilingual assistant is advertised through the county's channels. The assistants looked for have preferably earlier been student at TROVO High School and have felt the frustration of not understanding everything that is said and taught in the classroom. The assistants will receive training in areas such as adult educational principles, ethics, multilingualism, and adapted education. The ‘training package’ that the school is offering is built on The Rosenhof Mode (language practice in municipal adult education), as well as our own school's experiences and needs. The assistants are involved in the teaching of common core subjects (Norwegian and social science) in vocational study programmes. Currently the vocational programmes included are healthcare worker, medical secretary, child and youth worker, and sales and service. So far there has been a challenge to attract assistants with knowledge and competence in vocational subjects or programme for general studies.

Results

Assistants are requested by teachers and students at TROVO. They can be compared to a bridge between teacher and students, both when it comes to language learning and cultural competence and understanding. The assistant and teacher are equals in the classroom, the teachers have though the academic responsibility. To make this teaching model successful the cooperation between teacher and assistant is essential. The aim is to utilize the multilingual assistant the best way in each class. The multilingual assistant gives students the possibility to use their own language as a resource for learning and understanding a new language, subjects, and subject conceptions.

Funding

Public school funding