Promoting Reading and Writing Development Among Multilingual Students in Need of Special Educational Support: Collaboration Between Heritage Language Teachers and Special Educational Needs Teachers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General Overview

• The manuscript focuses on exploring Heritage Language teachers’ perspectives on working together with ‘special education needs’ teachers as they support multilingual education students who need special education support.
• This is an ongoing area of study that continues to be relevant.
• The manuscript has many valid points about the need for collaboration but it is not fully developed yet. I recommend a revise and resubmit due to the need for extensive revisions for alignment and clarity.

Theoretical Framework

In terms of the theoretical framework for language acquisition, it was not yet clear where the authors were coming from which may be contributing to the lack of clear focus. Additionally, while they cite research on L1 and L2 language learning, they don’t focus the literature review on heritage language teachers’ perspectives of their collaborations with special education teachers to support students’ learning additional languages. They need to read more in this area and then talk about how these studies are in dialogue with each other (synthesize their review). Finally, they will be better able to make the case for how this study informs or extends the field.

Research Questions and Purpose

• The focus of the study described in the introduction included describing the perspectives of heritage language teachers related to collaborating with special education teachers to support their students.
• This focus could be answered through the methods described (using a survey and in-depth interviews).

Methodology and Design

• The methods need more clarity overall. In the introduction and methods of the study, the two primary data sources are described as two ‘substudies.’ This was a little confusing as they appear to be two forms of data, rather than two studies. The question is the same. The participants overlap, if I'm reading correctly. The findings from the analysis of both data sources overlap as well. When you read the findings, it seems like you could potentially combine the data sources for analysis, resulting in similar/same themes. OR would you consider the interviews to be your primary data source for this analysis?
• It might be clearer to describe these ‘substudies’ as phases of your study, with phase one being the survey and phase two including the purposeful selection of participants for the in-depth interviews (if that is what you did). The fact that you have two sources of data is important and helps strengthen your study.
• Clarity of research design is needed. The in-depth survey included teachers who work with students who are not all identified as special education students. Yet, it wasn’t clear how researchers remove the unnecessary data from the analysis. I was concerned that the questions asked in the survey and interview did not lend themselves to answering the researchers’ questions. For example, one question asked for identifying students the teachers believed might need special education services. This could violate IRB if the interviewer is not permitted to gather student data. It also doesn’t help answer your research question.

Findings

The findings could be developed further with more thick description and clearer organization around thematic findings.

As an example, the following heading, question, and quote are not detailed enough to demonstrate how they help answer your questions / focus on the HLT's perspectives of collaboration: 

5.3. Promoting CALP 341

In their role of mother tongue teachers, all the HL teachers reported supporting their 342 students in L1 and L2 CALP. 343

Interviewer: How do you, as a mother tongue teacher and multilingual study ... tutor contribute to the student's reading and writing development?

Discussion and Implications

• Once the authors further explore current literature, interpreting the findings in relation to literature would help strengthen the implications for further research or practice. 
• I also recommend having a discussion at the end that weaves in the literature with the findings, and then a separate section that further explores implications.

Contributions of Tables

The tables included aren't all necessary to support the focus on collaboration and HL teachers' perspectives. The variety of languages spoken isn't directly applicable to the study focus and could be summarized briefly in the description of participants. However, the inclusion of the survey and questions is important and helpful for anyone wishing to duplicate the study and helps add to the validity of the findings.

Author Response

Thank  you kindly for your comments and suggestions. We wrote all our responses in the attached document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Suggestions:

• The abstract is overly dense, particularly in its discussion of results. Consider simplifying the language and structure:

  Example edit :
  Original:

  "The findings showed that while HL teachers are highly qualified and motivated to work with multilingual students with special educational needs, they are rarely invited to collaborate with SEN teachers."

  Suggested:

  "Findings reveal that HL teachers, though well-qualified and committed, are often excluded from collaborative planning with SEN teachers."

• Add a clear sentence on the study’s educational relevance, e.g., “This study highlights the systemic barriers and opportunities for improving literacy support through interprofessional collaboration.”

  • 2. Introduction

  • Suggestions:

  • Expand briefly on why literacy development in the heritage language (HL) matters for multilingual students’ broader educational success. This will help international readers understand the contextual stakes.

  • Include specific examples of educational policies or demographic shifts that have increased the need for HL–SEN collaboration.

    Example:
    “As of 2023, over 27% of students in Swedish schools have a home language other than Swedish, amplifying the need for cross-disciplinary literacy strategies.”

  • 3. Literature Review / Theoretical Framing

    Suggestions:

    • Introduce a stronger theoretical framework around collaboration—e.g., Friend & Cook’s collaboration model, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, or communities of practice (Wenger)—to conceptually anchor your findings.

    • Consider distinguishing between formal collaboration (e.g., institutional policies) and informal collaboration (e.g., teacher-initiated exchanges) in the literature.

    • Add a brief synthesis paragraph at the end of the literature review explicitly stating the gap this study addresses:

      “While co-teaching between general and special educators is well-researched, little is known about how HL teachers participate in literacy support for SEN students, especially within the Scandinavian context.”

    4. Methodology

  • Suggestions:

  • In Study 1, elaborate on how survey items were developed. Were they piloted? Based on existing instruments? What constructs were they meant to capture (e.g., collaboration frequency, institutional support)?

  • For Study 2:

    • Clarify how participants were selected—were they from the same cohort as Study 1?

    • Explain whether saturation was reached in interviews, and how many total hours or sessions were conducted.

  • Consider including a short table summarizing participant demographics, especially for Study 2 (e.g., HL language, years of experience, geographic region). This would help contextualize their perspectives.

  • 5. Results

  • Suggestions:

  • Condense some overly long excerpts. While quotes are powerful, several span multiple sentences and could be shortened while retaining meaning.

  • Consider presenting key themes in a summary table. For example:

• Theme	Description	Supporting Evidence
  Exclusion from Collaboration	HL teachers are not invited to planning meetings with SEN staff.	“I only hear about IEPs after the fact…” (P7)

  • Add more cross-comparison between Study 1 and Study 2 to show how qualitative insights support or nuance the survey findings.

  6. Discussion

  Suggestions:

  • Strengthen the interpretive depth by drawing on sociolinguistic marginalization or professional hierarchies in education. For example:

    “The institutional marginalization of HL teachers mirrors broader issues in multilingual education, where linguistic diversity is often viewed as a deficit rather than a resource.”

  • Clearly articulate how this study extends existing research on teacher collaboration (e.g., beyond the general–special ed dichotomy).

  • Discuss the implications of HL teacher exclusion on students—are literacy goals compromised? Does this impact language maintenance?

  7. Conclusion and Implications

  Suggestions:

  • Be more specific in the implications: e.g., what should municipalities do to promote HL–SEN collaboration? Develop co-planning time? Joint workshops?

  • The conclusion should include a limitations paragraph:

    • Geographic bias (Swedish focus)

    • Absence of student or SEN teacher perspectives

    • Limited generalizability to non-Nordic contexts

  • Offer clear directions for future research, such as:

    • Longitudinal studies on collaborative practices

    • Inclusion of students’ literacy outcomes

    • Comparative studies across multilingual contexts (e.g., Canada, Germany)

Comments on the Quality of English Language

• 8. Language and Style

  Recommendations:

  • While readable, the manuscript would benefit from light copyediting for:

    • Repetitive phrases (e.g., “in order to be able to…”)

    • Long, clause-heavy sentences

    • Minor grammatical issues

  Example edits:

  • Instead of: “Heritage language teachers often feel that they are not considered as part of the educational planning process.”
    Use: “Heritage language teachers report being excluded from educational planning.”

Author Response

Thank  you kindly for your comments and suggestions. We wrote all our responses in the attached document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for submitting your work. Although it is an interesting analysis, further work would be needed.

The article explicitly mentions the relevance of SEN teachers; however, it lacks the perspectives of SEN teachers. The study only reports heritage language (HL) teachers’ views on collaboration but does not gather or triangulate data from SEN teachers themselves. Since collaboration is by definition a two-way process, this is a major missing angle. Without the SEN teachers’ perspectives, you only see half of the picture.

It would also be interesting to include the voices of students or parents. As the study focuses on promoting reading and writing in multilingual students with special needs, the actual experiences of the students or their families are absent. Including their perspectives (even in a limited way) would enrich the understanding of whether and how collaborative practices truly benefit them.

Regarding the methods, more data would support the results better. The methods rely entirely on self-reported questionnaires and interviews. Observations of real collaborative meetings, or co-planning/co-teaching in action, could validate or challenge what teachers say and provide a stronger evidence base.

Although the paper describes how teachers collaborate (or fail to collaborate), it does not connect these collaboration patterns with measurable outcomes for students, such as improvements in literacy levels, motivation, or participation. There is no data on whether the described collaborations actually work to improve literacy, only perceptions.

The two samples come from only two mid-sized municipalities in Sweden, with no real discussion of how generalizable these findings are across the wider Swedish school system or internationally. Furthermore, the small sample sizes (33 and 13 participants) are not acknowledged as a limitation.

Finally, there are missing quantitative literacy data. Although the paper references literacy challenges, it does not present any quantitative data about students’ actual literacy skills (e.g., standardized test results, reading comprehension measures) to contextualize the teachers’ perceptions.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments!

We responded to them in the attached document. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is clearer and approachable after adding extra data. 

Author Response

Comments: Please use "supporting statement" instead of "Supporting Evidence" in the tables.

Answer: This has been changed.  

Comment: Format tables according to the journal template.

Answer: The tables have been formated. 

Comment: Remove bullet points from the reference list.

Answer: The bullet points have been removed from the reference list. 

Author Response File: