Literacy Domains in Reception Education: Institutional, Instructional and Temporal Conditions for Academic Participation

Drawing on a social literacy perspective, this article investigates how literacy domains in Danish as a second language (basic) are constituted through institutional, instructional, and temporal arrangements in primary education in Denmark. Using a qualitative ethnographic research design, the study examines three organisational configurations of reception education: a traditional reception class, a direct enrolment model with supplementary language support and a reception class established under temporary protection legislation for displaced Ukrainian students. Comparison is used heuristically to explore how literacy domains and academic participation opportunities are constituted across these organisational arrangements. Across models, opportunities to engage with academic work were shaped not only by students’ linguistic proficiency but also by how access to subject-related literacies was organised through classroom practices and broader institutional arrangements. By conceptualising literacy domains as constituted through institutional, instructional and temporal conditions, the article contributes a framework for analysing how these conditions shape academic participation opportunities in linguistically diverse educational settings. Through its comparison of organisational configurations within a Nordic educational context, the study connects local instructional practices with wider debates on how policy and organisational conditions shape teaching and learning in diverse societies.