Språköverskridande policy och verksamhet på ett samlokaliserat daghem

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation is a qualitative case study on language policy in a co-located kindergarten with Finnish- and Swedish-language groups located in the same building. In this dissertation, I explore language policy through the actions of early childhood education teachers in particular. In addition, I examine how national and institutional level language policies are reflected in the language practices of these teachers. The aim is to explore what kind of an effect language planning and language ideologies have on teachers’ language use, language choice and discourses. The aim includes to examine if teacher collaboration across the language groups influences the language policy of the kindergarten. Four kindergarten teachers – two of them working in the Swedish-language groups and two in the Finnish-language groups – participated in this study. Based on ethnographic language policy research, the data include observations from the co-located kindergarten, a research diary, video- and audio-recordings, teacher interviews, and a sample of steering documents. The data have been analysed with the help of triangulation methods and discourse analysis. The results indicate that even though quite a monolingual picture of early childhood education is created in the steering documents, an opportunity to emphasize the local features is given to the teachers and the kindergartens. As bilingualism and collaboration are seen as important parts of the focus kindergarten, the language policy has become a bilingual policy rather than one that separates the two languages. The results show that the teachers make their language choices according to the language background of the child, as well as the kindergarten group they belong to, but choices are also based on the teachers’ own language skills, contextual understanding, and values. This dissertation shows that both national level and institutional level language policies as well as the teachers’ own language policies have an effect on how languages are used by the teachers. The language policy of the kindergarten can be seen as holistic: the monolingual activities support children’s language development and language learning, but the shared spaces, the joint activities as well as the cooperation between the groups and teachers support and promote bilingualism. The results also show that the co-located kindergartens have a great potential for activities and cooperation that overrides language borders.