The Influence of Heritage Language Teachers’ Educational Backgrounds on Their Reasoning About Special Educational Needs in Multilingual Students

Swedish heritage language teachers have diverse educational backgrounds, and collaboration with mainstream and special needs teachers often fails. Consequently, many heritage language teachers must independently assess and support students with special educational needs. This study explores how their educational background shapes their reasoning about such needs in multilingual students. All heritage language teachers in one Swedish municipality completed a questionnaire analyzed through content analysis and from a communicative-relational perspective. Findings show that teachers with Swedish teaching degrees describe students’ needs in nuanced ways, using specialized language while considering individual as well as didactic factors. Those with non-didactic degrees more often generalize groups who need support and attribute their needs mainly to individual factors.