Research at the Centre for Immersion and Multilingualism aims at developing and deepening our knowledge of bi- and multilingualism on the basis of linguistics. It originates from the great interest in the pedagogy of language which characterizes the whole of the Department of Scandinavian Languages of the University of Vaasa. As a result of this interest it was natural that researchers at the Centre followed up immersion teaching according to the Canadian model when early total immersion in Swedish was started in Vaasa in 1987.
Immersion research has ever since then been a very important part of the Centre's activities, and the main part of the research projects that are carried on are directly connected with immersion in Swedish.
Besides the scientific follow-up of the immersion pupils' different languages, language pedagogical aspects of language are characteristic features of different subprojects at the Centre. These are among other things a consequence of the close cooperation that has existed between researchers and immersion teachers ever since immersion was started in 1987.
The cooperation between researchers and teachers provides opportunities of dealing with purely pragmatic aspects which are naturally enough integrated in the type of action and classroom research that is carried on today at different levels (day nurseries/preschools, comprehensive school, adult education). Interest in linguistic development, teaching strategies, interaction and communication in the classroom often in addition provide an interdisciplinary orientation (pedagogy, sociology, psychology) for the various subprojects, which also contributes to results which can be immediately applied in teaching.
The comprehensive goals of on-going subprojects are:
- to explain the different stages of language acquisition on the basis of scientific theories and hypotheses in the field of bi- and multilingualism and at the same time critically examine the validity of these hypotheses.
- to evaluate different teaching situations from a linguistic point of view
- to arrive at an understanding of different aspects of language acquisition through research and as a result of this knowledge contribute to a change and renewal of language teaching
