This paper examines discourses on multilingualism and multilingual education in subject teacher education in Finland from the perspectives of the country’s two official national languages, Finnish and Swedish.

Globalisation and increased migration have led to demographic shifts across Europe with Finland being no exception. Approximately 8.9% of Finland’s population is made up of speakers of languages other than Finnish (84.9% of population) and Swedish (5.1% of population), a proportion that has almost doubled in the last ten years (Statistics Finland, 2024). Finnish classrooms are therefore becoming increasingly linguistically diverse.

Recent PISA results for Finland (Programme for International Student Assessment) have highlighted a significant gap in the learning outcomes of immigrant-background pupils compared to non-immigrant-background pupils (OECD, 2023). The gap most notably calls attention to deficiencies in reading performance and literacy of immigrant-background pupils. This suggests that the Finnish education system is failing to provide adequate language and literacy support for immigrant-background pupils, underscoring the urgent need to prioritise the role of language in learning (Repo, 2023).

The Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education explicitly calls on schools to develop multilingual pedagogies to support the literacy and multilingual competences of all pupils (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2014), which actively supports educational language policy guidelines issued by the European Commission (2019:C189/16). These EU and national guidelines fall under the theoretical framework of linguistically responsive pedagogy (Lucas & Villegas, 2013). However, studies have indicated that Finnish teachers may not be sufficiently aware of how to effectively implement multilingual and linguistically responsive pedagogies, with subject teachers especially lacking the appropriate knowledge and skills to do so (Alisaari et al., 2023; Suuriniemi et al., 2021; Harju-Autti & Sinkkonen, 2020).

Finland’s binding language legislation has long established Finland as an officially bilingual country. In practice the Finnish education system functions as a system of parallel monolingualism in which Finnish- and Swedish-speakers are educated separately (Saarinen, 2020). The parallel structure of the education system may, in itself, be an impediment to the successful implementation of multilingual pedagogies in schools. The promotion of multilingualism could directly conflict with the legislation designed to protect and maintain people’s rights to use Finnish and Swedish perpetuating the power dynamics of majority non-immigrant language groups over minority immigrant language groups (From et al., 2023; Repo, 2020; Saarinen, 2020).

This paper focuses on the teacher education policies of four subject teacher education programmes at three Finnish universities of which one conducts subject teacher education monolingually in Finnish, one monolingually in Swedish, and one bilingually with both Finnish- and Swedish-medium subject teacher education programmes. This paper aims to analyse the premises given to subject teachers for working in linguistically diverse classrooms, whilst also contributing to the critical discussion on approaches to multilingualism and multilingual education in subject teacher education internationally. This examination is informed by theoretical frameworks of multilingual education (Cummins, 2021; García, 2017, Lucas & Villegas, 2013), Freire’s educational philosophy (Freire, 1970), education policy (Bell & Stevenson, 2006), and language policy (Shohamy, 2006; Spolsky, 2004; Ruíz, 1984), and is guided by the following two research questions: 1) What kind of discourses on multilingualism and multilingual education can be identified in Finnish subject teacher education programme policies? and 2) What tensions can be identified between multilingual and social justice ideologies and the established policies of the institutions and their subject teacher education programmes?

The data were collected in spring 2024 with the dataset comprising of fourteen policy documents and which are outlined as follows: • 4x subject teacher pedagogical studies curricula (2x Finnish-medium, 2x Swedish-medium) • 3x university strategy • 2x university language policy • 1x university degree regulation policy The analysis is ongoing, and the data are being analysed qualitatively utilising a discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016). The discourse-historical approach centres around the concept of ‘context’ allowing the analysis to recursively orient to the immediate texts, the intertextual and interdiscursive relationships, and the greater social, political, historical and institutional contexts surrounding the subject teacher education programmes. Moreover, the iterative nature of the analysis encourages creative and nuanced interpretations of the data. This allows for the opening up of previously unthought perspectives regarding the power relations of language in Finnish subject teacher education. Ruíz’s (1984) framework of orientations in language planning is the central theoretical lens through which the analysis is being conducted. The framework constitutes three orientations towards language which are understood as language ideologies: language-as-problem, language-as-right, and language-as-resource. These orientations will act as codes for the analysis and will determine what kind of discourses on multilingualism emerge from the data. For example, is multilingualism perceived as a problem to the Finland and its education system? Do groups of certain language speakers have more rights and access to education that others, and how are these rights upheld? Are multilingualism and the diversity of languages perceived as being resourceful to Finland and its education system, and how are they seen as a resource? Moreover, by drawing on other theoretical perspectives and the various contextual dimensions of the research setting, the tensions between the discourses will be identified and examined.

Preliminary findings indicate that discourses on multilingualism will differ across the four subject teacher education programmes. Additionally, it is anticipated that sociolinguistic, sociopolitical and historical contextual factors will impact the kind of discourses that emerge. As previously mentioned, the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education actively calls on schools to develop multilingual pedagogies and acknowledges multilingualism as a resource for school communities. Preliminary findings indicate that this sentiment will be reflected in the discourses of the subject teacher education programmes, aligning with Ruíz’s (1984) ‘language-as-resource’ orientation. Similarly, as universities strive to ensure the international relevance of their research and attract international students as a key source of income, it is expected that their broader institutional policies will also align with the ‘language-as-resource’ orientation. Despite Finland’s progressive curriculum for basic education, the right to use both Finnish and Swedish before state authorities, including the education system, are guaranteed under the Finnish Constitution. As a result, discourses aligning with the ‘language-as-right’ orientation are expected to be prominent, particularly within broader institutional policies. While the ‘language-as-problem’ orientation may also emerge from discourses, it is expected to be much less prevalent. It is within the discourses aligning with these two orientations where tensions and contradictions with multilingual and social justice ideologies are most likely to emerge. A detailed analysis of these findings, along with their implications for Finnish subject teacher education and teacher education globally, will be presented at the conference. The findings of this study invite researchers and educators worldwide to critically examine and reflect on teacher education and the broader policies that may be limiting the development of more sustainable and socially just educational practices to support the learning of linguistic minorities.

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