Finland is a bilingual country, with a parallel monolingual school system majority Finnish and minority Swedish speaking students. There is no bilingual teaching, and by law the school language has to be either Finnish or Swedish. Interestingly from a research point of view there are three recent, inter-related and ongoing developments: the rapidly increasing Swedish-Finnish bilingualism in the everyday language use of young Swedish-speaking Finns, where in the Helsinki region, the majority of the students in the Swedish-medium schools come from bilingual homes; the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in Finnish, and a national curriculum reform coming into effect in August 2016, strongly aiming for and prescribing a view of diversity as possessed by all students, and viewing diversities of all kind as resources for teaching and learning, rather than as challenges and obstacles. In order to prepare future teachers for the demands of teaching bilingual and multilingual students, the University of Helsinki has designed a new teacher education program in the Swedish minority language with focus on multilingualism, diversity and social justice. The new teacher education program will, both in its content and in its methods, provide future teachers with resources for supporting and developing ways of teaching, which at the same time can support and develop the Swedish minority language in Finland, and support and develop students’ diverse linguistic, cultural and social abilities and identities. The purpose is for future teachers to consider all teaching as language teaching and to be able to support the development of strong language skills in all of the students’ languages. How to support language and diversity issues will saturate all courses and in addition certain courses will focus specifically on multilingualism and diversity. Part of the teacher education will be carried out in bilingual contexts, and students are expected to focus their Master’s thesis research projects on diversities and social justice in teaching and learning. The new teacher education program is hiring all new faculty members who will start by participating in a university pedagogy course focused on infusing multilingualism and diversity into all courses. The new lecturers will participate in a self-study research project from the beginning of the program in order to explore how to best infuse multilingualism and diversity in teacher education in order to prepare new teachers for whom multilingualism and diversity as a social justice issue will be part of their daily teaching and thinking.

Boyd, S. & Palviainen, Å. (2015). Building walls or bridges? A language ideological debate about bilingual schools in Finland. In: M. Halonen, P. Ihalainen & T. Saarinen (eds.) Language policies in Finland and Sweden. Interdisciplinary and multi-sited comparisons. Bristol: Multilingual matters. pp. 57–89. Evaldsson, A., & Sahlström, F. (2012). Metasociolinguistic stance taking and the appropriation of bilingual identities in everyday peer language practices. In Cekaite, A., Blum-Kulka, S., Aukrust, V., & Teubal, E. (editors), Children’s peer discourse, Cambridge University Press. From, T. & Sahlström, F. (in press) Shared places, separate spaces. Constructing cultural spaces through two national languages in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. García, O. and Li Wei. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Harju-Luukkainen, Heidi & Tainio, Liisa (2013: Kaksikielinen koulu – Tulevaisuuden monikielinen Suomi, Tvåspråkig skola- ett flerspråkigt Finland i framtiden. Kasvatusalantutkimuksia 62. (s. 221–244). Jyväskylä: Suomenkasvatustieteellinenseura. Palviainen, Åsa (2013). “National Identity and a Transnational Space: The Strength of Tradition in a Time of Change.” Sociolinguistica 27: 1–18. Saukkonen, P. (2013) Erilaisuuksien Suomi. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.