This paper sheds light on linguistic support concerning the language of schooling in multilingual classrooms in Finnish lower secondary education. We ask how the teachers consider knowing their students, what the needs in linguistic and academic support are, and how the needs are met. The data were collected from teachers in eight lower secondary schools in different parts of Finland. The findings show that the means to scaffold Finnish language learners are still in the development phase as there are no uniform ways to support students with an immigrant background in Finnish basic education.
The Declaration of a Nordic Language Policy stipulates that all Nordic residents have the right to preserve and develop their mother tongue and their national minority languages. Hence, this article investigates the question of mother tongue education for linguistic minority students. Through four ‘telling cases’, the article explores how four Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, orient towards mother tongues, Indigenous and national minority languages in their educational policies. Drawing on Ruíz’ (1984) framework of orientations in language planning, we investigate the following question: In what ways are mother tongues framed as rights, resources, or problems in four telling cases of educational policy in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden? The analysis of the telling cases shows that although all four countries provide various forms of mother tongue education, thus apparently aligning with the intentions in the Declaration of a Nordic Language Policy, there are important differences between the provisions. Nevertheless, across the four countries, the official national languages are placed at the top of a language ideological hierarchy. The official national languages are followed by national minority languages as mother tongues. These languages are awarded rights but are not considered resources for the whole population (e.g., Ruíz, 1984). The Danish telling case inserts a supranational layer in the hierarchy, namely mother tongues with status as official languages in the European Union. The hierarchy of mother tongues thus reflects how some types of mother tongues are more readily granted rights and considered to be resources than others.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.