Browsing by Subject "normality"

Finland has seen an increase of immigrants in the past twenty years. Currently, newly arrived immigrant students are placed in preparatory classrooms for up to a year to provide them with the language skills they need to integrate into regular Finnish classrooms. However, municipalities can choose whether they would like to offer preparatory education, as well as how they would like to structure it. This creates possible gaps for inequities to exist within preparatory classrooms. In the 2018 PISA results, Finland had the highest gap in reading scores between immigrant and non-immigrant students out of all OECD countries with an immigrant population of higher than five percent. This demonstrates that Finland has fallen behind other countries in educating its immigrant students. Therefore, this study attempts to examine how Finnish and non-Finnish cultures are viewed and discussed in preparatory classrooms, as well as how preparatory classrooms support the well-being of students and prepare students to succeed in school. This study consisted of semi-structured interviews of students and staff members within one lower secondary school in Southern Finland. This school had two preparatory classrooms, as well as one special “P2” classroom. Interviews were analyzed using an inductive approach to thematic analysis, where four themes and five subthemes were found by using a constructionist paradigm. The results of this study were that the preparatory classrooms at this school valued and appreciated non- Finnish cultures during discussions in class, but Finnish behaviors and ideologies were seen as normal and what students should adapt to when moving to Finland. Additionally, while teachers were able to provide a positive and supportive learning environment for students, the school did not provide enough emotional support or resources for students. Finally, a lack of resources and funding meant that students were not able to get the support they needed to properly develop the Finnish language skills required to succeed in school. This study indicates there is a need for more funding and resources to be allocated to preparatory classrooms, as well as larger-scale research on the benefits and shortcomings of Finnish preparatory education.