Teachers’ perceptions on the changing role of language in the curriculum

Abstract

This article is concerned with the role of language(s) in education from the viewpoint of secondary school subject teachers in Finland at the time of transition to a new curriculum. The curriculum highlights the role of language throughout education and makes reference to changes in society that foreground multilingualism. Seven mainstream and CLIL content teachers of different subjects were interviewed and employing qualitative content analysis, the data were scrutinised under four language-related themes: multilingualism, multiliteracy, subject-specific language, and the role of language in knowledge construction. The results indicate teachers as reasonably well aware of subject-specific language of their field and of the value of multiliteracy practices. Multilingualism as the diversity of students’ languages and its impact on pedagogical practices received less attention. Overall, the teachers’ orientation to the language ideological statements in the new curriculum were widely agreed upon even if the ideas still remained somewhat abstract in the transition phase before actual implementation to the praxis.