Browsing by Author "Cimili, Dorentina"

The aim of this research is to clarify experiences of six teachers with different qualifications about Language awareness in a simultaneous teaching -pilot program. This program has been implemented in schools in Helsinki. My objective in this research is to sort out teachers’ experiences about planning, implementation, possible effects, or changes within this program and how translanguaging has been used in teaching. Important theoretical concepts of this research are language awareness and translanguaging. In addition, I examine mother tongue teaching, Finnish as a second language teaching, preparatory teaching for newly arrived students and multilingualism in Finnish schools from the perspectives of Finnish school system and Finnish primary school curriculum. The character of this research is qualitative content analysis. In this research I will specify the material which I have collected by using semi-structured interviews and I will present themes that were established from the material. The material contains interviews of six teachers which have been part of the pilot program. In the material we can hear experiences of mother tongue teachers, class teacher, subject teacher, and Finnish as a second language -teacher, from the middle and elementary school point of view. The results of my research give indication about capabilities of language awareness simultaneous teaching in practice and what types of thoughts teachers have about multilingual, language awareness and translanguaging utilised in teaching during this pilot program. The main results of my research indicate that middle and elementary schools have differences between teachers pedagogical planning which depend on the qualifications of the teachers. In planning, structural challenges and difficulties occurred during scheduling. In the implementation there were differences in using different languages, for example the languages were centre of the teaching or part of teaching to support learning. Experiences of possible effects of the pilot program were developed in language skills, changes in motivation, individual and peer attitude in language skills, learning and support in work, knowing students, interests of teachers outside of the pilot program and parents’ varying feedback. Utilizing translanguaging and various types of languages in classes appeared dissimilar and the teacher’s role in multilingual interaction differed based on the qualifications of the teacher. The teachers experienced the pilot program overall as a positive, useful, and necessary matter. The need for this kind of language awareness simultaneous teaching in which mother tongue teachers work together with other teachers were reflected within the teachers’ experiences. There were many advantages which display that there might be a lack or shortage in linguistic support and in multilingualism becoming a norm in the Finnish comprehensive school.