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Exploring multilingualism as a complex, context-related, societal and individual phenomenon, this book centres around perspectives on how multiple languages are made (in)visible within educational settings in the Global North. The authors of each chapter compare and contrast findings across geographical contexts with the goal of understanding the facets of multilingualism that, on the one hand, conform across contexts, and on the other, diverge context-specifically. The chapters range from contributions with a focus on national/state planning for the development of sustainable multilingual and intercultural educational policies, to chapters that deal with multilingual practices and identities of students and student teachers as well as the consequences for language practices, strategies and policies in diversifying societies. This cross-contextual, comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of multilingualism will be of great interest to researchers, administrators, practitioners and students within the fields of multilingual education, sociolinguistics, youth culture and identity studies. The book is open access under a CC BYNC ND licence. &nbsp

The aim of this study is to investigate two kindergarten teachers’ bilingual pedagogy by scrutinizing their bilingual interactions during typical ECEC activities. We focus on the teachers’ bilingual language use and its contextualisation. The study is based on an experimental programme under development and, thus, has the character of a case study. The data consist of audio recordings (28 h) of the teachers’ interactions with a group of five-year-old children and were collected on five occasions over one academic year. The results show that Finnish was used in a variety of recurring situations — teacher-led activities, everyday routines, and playtime — especially through concrete topics and contextualization, allowing the teachers to create diverse affordances for children’s language learning and inviting the children to participate without explicitly signalling language switches. The results further illustrate a change over time in the teachers’ language choices when introducing new content and discussing it later, as well as certain individual differences in the teachers’ language use. These insights into bilingual interactions in practice can benefit teachers at different levels of this programme and in similar contexts, as well as contributing to a deeper research-based understanding of bilingual pedagogy in ECEC.

Despite a growing body of research on multimodal writing, scholars still express a need for formal frameworks for discussing multimodal literacy practices and call for research on multimodality in education that develops a vocabulary to approach multimodal texts in teaching. This study answers this call by presenting an analysis that adds to the field of multimodal writing research, and thus furthers the knowledge of different semiotic potentials of modes in student-produced texts. Drawing on a social semiotic approach to multimodality, a total of 299 texts, written by fifth-grade students from three schools in Sweden and Finland, are analyzed. The aim is to explore semiotic modes used in the student-produced written texts. The guiding research questions are: (1) What modes are used in the texts, and (2) what meanings are realized through the different modes in the texts. Results showed that six different modes were used to realize meanings in five categories: create representative meaning; visualize phenomena and assignments; foreground important areas; design the text; and decorate the paper. These categories offer a vocabulary that can describe semiotic potentials of the modes and how they realize different meanings in multimodal texts. Such a vocabulary can aid teachers in cultivating, supporting, and assessing students’ multimodal writings that contain multiple modes. From these results, we suggest that acknowledging the diversity of the modes and their meanings in student texts can help raise the awareness of how students also make meaning in modes beyond writing and image.

By assuring equal conditions to all students, they can achieve educational success, regardless of their first language, culture, social background, origin and age. This is the aim of the project Linguistically sensitive teaching in all classrooms (Listiac); we believe in supporting all teachers in becoming more linguistically sensitive to enable opportunities for equally successful schooling for all students in Europe. An important part of the process is to influence European initial teacher education curricula; we believe that reflection about and awareness of linguistically sensitive teaching should be better integrated during all stages of initial teacher education. The reflection should be done by teacher educators when planning individual courses, practice periods and visions and profile, by student teachers when doing their practice periods and obligatory courses, as well as by in-service teachers when supervising the student teachers. nonPeerReviewed

Globalisoituneessa maailmassa monikielisyys näkyy yhä enemmän myös suomalaisessa varhaiskasvatuksessa. Tämä luo haasteita, mutta samalla myös mahdollisuuksia pohtia, miten Suomen kahta kansalliskieltä voidaan hyödyntää entistä paremmin monikielisyyden esiintuomisessa. Perinteisesti kieltenopetuksessa tavoitteena on ollut syntyperäistä puhujaa vastaava taso (Aronin & Singleton, 2019, xiv), ja täten koko huomio on kohdistunut kohdekielen opetukseen ja hallintaan. Kielirikasteisen ja kaksikielisen opetuksen yhtenä tavoitteena on löytää mielekkäitä tapoja oppia uutta kieltä käyttämällä sitä toiminta- ja opetuskielenä aidoissa vuorovaikutustilanteissa (ks. myös Hahl, Savijärvi & Wallinheimo, 2020). Artikkelissamme emme kuitenkaan tyydy tarkastelemaan vain toisen kotimaisen kielen käyttämistä kielirikasteisessa varhaiskasvatuksessa, vaan kuinka toisen kotimaisen kielen käyttö avaa oven myös muiden kielien huomioimiselle. nonPeerReviewed

The current study examines immersion students’ perceptions of their use of multiple languages and how they identify themselves linguistically. Data were collected through questionnaires and pair and group interviews among students in grades 7–9. In this article we focus on students’ answers to a question about how they identify themselves linguistically. Overall, the results show that immersion students are confident language users and claim to have a multiple language repertoire. A majority of the students (75 %) consider themselves to be multiple language speakers: in their explanations they refer to the number of languages they use and their mastery of those languages. They often mention oral skills in several languages as proof of their multiple language profile but receptive skills and language(s) which they use for thinking are also used as arguments for such a profile. Interestingly enough, the students often list several languages in their multiple language repertoire but only elaborate on the languages they learn in school.

Nykarleby är en av de tvåspråkiga kommunerna som våren 2017 erhöll statens specialunderstöd för att tidigarelägga språkundervisningen i finska. Finskundervisningen i staden tidigarelades år 2016 till årskurs 1 men denna har redan konstaterats vara otillräcklig i en starkt svenskspråkig miljö. Därför har man under läsåret 2017–2018 planerat Kielistigen, ett språkprogram med målsättningen att stärka den kommunikativa finskan genom att börja med barn i femårsåldern samt integrera språket som en naturlig del av verksamheten från småbarnspedagogiken till grundskolan där språket integreras i övrig undervisning. nonPeerReviewed

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Resumen de los autores Este artículo pretende introducir al lector en los programas de inmersión que se desarrollan en Finlandia, ya que tan solo existe un artículo en castellano sobre dichos programas y hace referencia a los primeros estadios de su puesta en marcha. Para ello, y tras una pequeña introducción sobre el contexto sociolingüístico en el que se desarrolla esta experiencia de aprendizaje, se procede a la definición y caracterización de este tipo de programas, antes de pasar a analizar su establecimiento en la región de Vaasa (en un principio, ya que el éxito obtenido ha conducido sus extensión a otras regiones del país). A continuación se examinan los resultados obtenidos tanto en la L1 (finlandés) como en la L2 (sueco), puesto que consideramos que pueden resultar de interés para todas aquellas personas inmersas en la enseñanza de segundas lenguas y en la educación bilingüe. Madrid ESP

The chapter addresses how multilingual learning can be supported in educational contexts. We argue that all children need support for their languages and opportunities to become familiar with linguistic diversity. We briefly define multilingualism and highlight selected linguistic and cognitive features of multilingual children. Then we zoom in on educational solutions in three very different contexts, two in the EU (Poland and Finland), one in the US (California). With the provided contextual background we discuss some of the challenges that learners might experience at school depending on how support for multilingual learning is implemented in a given context. Finally, we argue that supporting multilingual learning can be enhanced in everyday practices and discuss solutions for supporting multilingual learning from the perspective of teachers and teacher training. The chapter addresses how multilingual learning can be supported in educational contexts. We argue that all children need support for their languages and opportunities to become familiar with linguistic diversity. We briefly define multilingualism and highlight selected linguistic and cognitive features of multilingual children. Then we zoom in on educational solutions in three very different contexts, two in the EU (Poland and Finland) and one in the USA (California). With the provided contextual background we discuss some of the challenges that learners might experi- ence at school, depending on how support for multilingual learning is implemented in a given context. Finally, we argue that supporting multilingual learning can be enhanced in everyday practices and discuss solutions for supporting multilingual learning from the perspective of teachers and teacher training.

This study investigates student teacher discourses on plurilingualism in four European ITE institutions, located in in Spain, Slovenia, and Finland. As a part of the European project called Linguistically sensitive teaching in all classrooms, we collected student group reflections using reflection instruments based on SWOT-analysis. Data from 173 student teachers enrolled in initial teacher education at four universities located in Barcelona, Ljubljana, Vaasa and Jyväskylä are explored using qualitative analysis. By analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats expressed by student teachers we could identify certain contradictions regarding plurilingualism and the use of plurilingual pedagogies. These contradictions relate to the positioning as “being a plurilingual speaker” and “becoming a teacher dealing with plurilingualism” We discuss the similarities and differences between student voices in the light of the wider linguistic landscapes in the three countries and the four universities. This chapter investigates student teacher discourses on plurilingualism in four European initial teacher education (ITE) institutions located in Spain (Catalonia), Slovenia and Finland. As part of the European project called Linguistically Sensitive Teaching in All Classrooms, we collected student group thoughts using reflection instruments based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. Data from 173 student teachers enrolled in ITE at four universities located in Barcelona, Ljubljana, Vaasa and Jyväskylä were explored using qualitative analysis. By analysing the SWOT characteristics expressed by student teachers, we identified certain contradictions regarding plurilingualism and the use of plurilingual pedagogies. These contradictions relate to the positioning as ‘being a plurilingual speaker’ and ‘becoming a teacher dealing with plurilingualism’. We discuss the similarities and differences between student voices in the light of the wider linguistic landscapes in the three countries and four universities.

In this chapter we present and compare two research experiences in the domain of linguistic repertoires (LRs) applied to the field of education. Our aim is to elucidate how we used different combinations of methods for data generation in the trilingual (German, Italian and Ladin) Italian province of South Tyrol and the bilingual (Finnish and Swedish) coastal regions of Finland in order to map the LRs of young multilingual participants aged 10 to 19. We investigated different aspects of their LRs (representations, use and trajectories) with multiple methods, ranging from more traditional sociolinguistic surveys such as questionnaires and inter views to multimodal and task-based methods such as language portraits, photographs and simulated contexts for multilingual interaction. We describe these methods and share some of the insights they enabled us to gain into the LRs of adolescents in two multilingual contexts in Europe. peerReviewed