Teachers’ dialect use and the newly arrived learner in a technical VET programme in Norway

For new speakers of Norwegian, oral comprehension in school is significantly challenged by teachers’ use of dialect in oral communication. It can be argued that this is especially pronounced in vocational education and training (VET), where oral skills are both a foundational learning tool during training, and an integral component of professional vocational competence. This study examines VET teachers’ use of dialect in oral communication and its impact on newly arrived students’ participation and learning. Based on a linguistic ethnographic investigation of the linguistic challenges faced by newly arrived students as they transition to mainstream VET classes, the article highlights pedagogical, linguistic, and ideological dimensions inherent in teachers’ dialect use. The main finding is that teachers’ use of dialect runs the risk of jeopardising students’ oral comprehension, and thus their learning and inclusion in school. We conclude that dialect comprehension is largely taken for granted and that there is an underlying preconception that the default learner in Norwegian school is the learner who has a Norwegian-cultural and Norwegian-language background, including long exposure to the Norwegian dialects. It is high time that this preconception is challenged. Theoretically, the study is situated within the critical sociolinguistic tradition and draws on concepts from theory on language ideologies.