Today, quality reviews of education for newly arrived students show major deficiencies in the Swedish school system. The newly arrived students do not get equal opportunities to achieve goals as other students in the classroom. Thus, an intervention study has started at two primary schools in central Sweden, where the purpose is to investigate whether cooperative methods can benefit students' participation and vocabulary learning in Swedish teaching. Therefore, the questions in this study are “in what ways can cooperative learning contribute to the participation of newly arrived students in Swedish teaching?” and “does cooperative learning have any visible effect on newly arrived students' vocabulary learning in Swedish?”. To answer the study questions a qualitative research method was conducted, with structured classroom observations, in two different primary schools. The participants in the study werefive newly arrived students in fourth and sixth grade. The results were analyzed using three theories, such as social constructivism, a participation model and vocabulary learning as a theoretical concept.  

The analysis of the results showed that there are several advantages for the newly arrived students' communicative and linguistic development in cooperative learning, at the same time as it opens up for an increased participation in Swedish lessons. Didactically, the results of the study imply that the work with cooperative teaching methods leads to a progression in vocabulary learning and participation. This can be modeled in different ways, by grouping the newly arrived students in mixed groups or with other newly arrived students. What is further made visible in the study is that the newly arrived students are more active and involved when they are allowed to work and use the language in playful environments.