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Abstract

Towards a Multilingual School Library

The new curriculum for primary schools in Norway underlines that knowledge of several languages is a resource both in school and society, and that the pupils should experience this through their education. In this article we investigate the school library as a multilingual arena, based on a study with a linguistically and culturally diverse pupil group. The material contains observation data from library activities, such as book talks and reading aloud, a semi-structured interview with the school librarian, and photo documentation of the school library room. We base the analysis on an overall perspective on the school library as a schoolscape (Brown). Hence we are interested in the linguistic-visual interior of the school library, as well as the literary and pedagogical activities that take place there. The article investigates how language diversity emerges both in the school library’s semiotic landscape and in various reading activities. Overall, the analysis shows that linguistic diversity appears to be valued on a general level, but that the specific languages of the pupil and teacher groups are represented to a lesser degree in the schoolscape. The analysis also identifies a number of framework factors, including at system levels, such as access to multilingual literature, which clearly hinder the school librarian’s work in developing the library’s multilingual collection.