4 Multilingualism in Finnish Teacher Education

Abstract

Jokainen yhteisö ja yhteisön jäsen on monikielinen. Eri kielten käyttö rinnakkain koulun arjessa nähdään luontevana ja kieliä arvostetaan.(Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet 2014: 28) Varje gemenskap och varje medlem i gemenskapen är flerspråkig. Det ska vara naturligt att använda olika språk parallellt i skolans vardag och språk ska värdesättas.(Grunderna för läroplanen för den grundläggande utbildning 2014: 28

‘Somewhere Between Engineering and Humanities’: Discourses of Investment in Additional Language Learning Among Students of Higher Education in Finland

“…The two national languages of Finland, Finnish and Swedish (see Frick, Räisänen & Ylikoski, this volume), are the main media of mainstream education, while English has become a language of instruction (referred to as English-medium instruction, EMI, see Macaro et al, 2018) in higher education in various programmes (Ylönen, 2015). As society has become increasingly multilingual through immigration, all levels of education have had to adapt to this change (Szabó et al, 2021; see also Kalaja & Pitkänen-Huhta, 2020). According to Szabó et al (2021), pupils have traditionally studied various languages in Finnish schools.…”

“…As society has become increasingly multilingual through immigration, all levels of education have had to adapt to this change (Szabó et al, 2021; see also Kalaja & Pitkänen-Huhta, 2020). According to Szabó et al (2021), pupils have traditionally studied various languages in Finnish schools. Most of this learning is mandatory, since pupils are required to learn at least one foreign language and the national language of Finland that is not the students' first language (Swedish for students who take part in Finnish-medium education, starting from grade six at the latest, and similarly, Finnish for those students studying in Swedish-medium programmes) (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2019).…”

“…Most often the main other language needed is the global lingua franca, English, which is also the foreign language that most pupils in Finland choose to study (Hakulinen et al, 2009;Leppänen et al, 2011;Statistics Finland, 2019). As a result of the multilingualism of Finnish society, education is influenced by multilingualism, too (Szabó et al, 2021). This is apparent in the multicultural backgrounds of the pupils and manifests in the foreign language learning domain and in Finnish pupils' learning of foreign languages, both compulsorily and voluntarily.…”