This study aims to contribute to the school social work practices in a Swedish context. By capturing the life worlds of newly-arrived students and problematizing teachers’ approaches to these pupils underlying competences and continued knowledge development and learning I suggests how social work and education professionals can navigate these life worlds and empower young immigrant pupils in Swedish school.

Theoretical basis consists of translanguaging, principles and ideas about education valuing underlying competencies and seeing them as means for further learning in all areas. Through an ecological (Kramsch, 2008) approach to learning and teaching I examine teachers’ told experiences of teaching in the secondary school program of language introduction in a Swedish context. The analysis shows that the interviewed teachers systematically try to make use of the pupils’ prior knowledge and experiences of instruction. The pupils work in language groups in order to complete assignments.