Lärarnas uppfattningar av att inleda undervisningen i A1-språk i årskurs 1

Since 2020, the teaching of the A1 language starts in grade 1. In order to study the shift to an earlier start to the teaching of the A1 language, a survey of the teaching of A1 languages in grade 1 was carried out with the focus on the most common A1 languages: Finnish in the Swedish-medium schools and English in the Finnish-medium schools. The article examines the teachers’ perceptions of starting the teaching of A1 languages in grade 1. The data consists of 644 answers to an online questionnaire, of which 94 apply to A1 Finnish and 550 to A1 English. The results show that the teachers generally have a positive perception of early language teaching and consider starting the language in grade 1 to be a change in the right direction, but that they also identify challenges and call for support for the practical implementation, such as for example age-appropriate learning materials and in-service training.