Swedish teachers’ views on the use of personalised learning technologies for teaching children reading in the English classroom

Abstract The present study aims to understand Swedish primary school teachers’; views on a prospective system for children’s personalised reading skill development in the English classroom. This study was performed within the context of a larger EU funded project called iRead. This project aims to develop personalised learning technologies for reading. Understanding the context in which such technologies are aimed to be embedded is important if we want them to be adopted and used successfully by teachers. We address this question through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 11 primary school teachers. Our analysis shows that Swedish teachers experience large competence differences in English between children. The teachers consider personalised learning technologies a promising way to mitigate these differences. However, they also acknowledge that the Swedish’ curricular focus on communication, seen as mainly acquired through human-to-human dialogue, does not match the fundamental idea behind many personalised learning technologies. Based on these findings we discuss the potential and problems when aiming to introduce personalised learning technologies for learning English in Swedish schools.