Revitalisation Processes in Education: Bringing South Saami Forward – (RePrEd)

Indigenous language worldwide have declined for long. Policies that diminished their value made Indigenous peoples resort to majority languages, which alienated them their own culture and way of being. This brought severe damage to Indigenous communities. Also in Scandinavia, the Saami languages have declined, but Saami communities try to bring new vitality to their languages. 

The RePrEd, research project spans the fields of educational linguistics, sociolinguistics, and descriptive linguistics. Its primary objective is to contribute to knowledge on teaching and learning of South Saami in order to bring the language forward. The team explores, develops, and disseminates empirical, methodological, and theoretical tools for researching language revitalisation within the context of Indigenous South Saami communities. We delve into language and language teaching and learning in one part of the South Saami area overlapping the nation state of Norway. Our focus lies in understanding the transition of teacher students' from being students to becoming in-practice teachers. 

We document the development of a South Saami language teacher identity that forms together with experienced teachers. We examine teaching practices developing in South Saami teacher communities, and we scrutinise language ideologies and linguistic landscapes at school and in the society in which the school is located. In RePrEd, we also investigate the evolving South Saami language variety in the local South Saami teaching community and compare it to historical varieties of the South Saami language. 

Ultimately, our goal is to develop practical knowledge for South Saami teachers through collaborative efforts and by supporting curiosity on language among the South Saami speakers.