LIM Language, Integration, Media

LIM (Language, Integration, Media) har utviklet innovative og engasjerende læremidler for norske elever og elever med migrantbakgrunn, med formålet å bidra til både integrering og akademiske prestasjoner. LIM har utviklet følgende kurs: Et nettbasert kurs, Norsk for ungdom, innen norsk som andrespråk, med unge migranter som målgruppe. Et samfunnsfagskurs, Vi er alle vandrere, som oppfordrer til kritisk tenkning om migrasjon, tilpasset elever i videregående skole med og uten migrantbakgrunn. Kurset inkluderer et opplegg der elevene arbeider med digitale fortellinger, og det er lagt opp til samarbeid mellom elever med og uten migrantbakgrunn. Prosjektet har basis ved Institutt for språk og litteratur. Prosjektet er finansiert av Norges Forskningsråd (NFR) gjennom programmet Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren (FINNUT) i perioden 2017 ? 2021, med støtte fra Orkdal Kommune, Trondheim Kommune og Trøndelag fylkeskommune. LIM-forskerne har arbeidet tett med lokale skolepartnere i utviklingen av kursene.

Outcomes: LIM has produced 1) a Norwegian as a second language course (A1-B1) aimed at the needs of the target group of newly arrived adolescent migrants; and 2) a social studies course that combines online resources with classroom teaching in order to foster critical thinking on migration for the two target groups of VGS and GS students. Both courses will contribute to improving students' academic performance and to fostering better social integration. The project has fostered increased interdisciplinarity by producing co-authored publications from researchers in teacher education, gender and diversity studies, Norwegian as a second language and digital culture. It has also fostered cooperation between the university and school sectors.

Although European educational institutions have long histories of serving migrant and language-minority students, the unexpected timing and size of recent immigration flows have emphasized existing shortfalls in systems and competencies. In Norway, the unprecedented growth in the numbers of newly arrived migrant adolescents has firmly placed them on Norway's immigration political agenda. This situation has brought new pedagogical and social integration challenges not only for teachers of Norwegian as a second language, but for the entire education sector. In particular, it has impacted on upper secondary schools (VGS) and on Adult Education establishments which have received these migrants. Addressing these new challenges requires a process of two-way integration involving both migrants and their peers in VGS. In response to these challenges, the project will develop engaging and innovative pedagogical strategies designed to promote both curricular learning and inclusion for both VGS students and for migrants. In doing so, it will foster new competences and praxes across three key knowledge domains: Norwegian as a second language (NSL), social studies in migration, and migration-and language related digitalized learning. It will harness academic research in these domains to produce a three-way educational course package (MiLe) that includes a NSL language course for adolescent migrants; social science courses on migration for both VGS students and migrants; and a digitalized course bringing both groups together via storytelling and computer game design. This project has a lofty aim: to change the educational approach to migration; to better account for its complexity and to its nearness to all of us. To reach such a goal we argue requires the kind of multisited and interdisciplinary effort across school communities which this project seeks to build.