Spatial ideologies on official bilingualism and co-located schools in Finland and South Tyrol, Italy

Abstract

In countries with several official languages, language separation often remains a structural principle in institutional education. Co-located schools, in which two autonomously administered schools with different languages of instruction share a physical space, may challenge this separation. Such schools have existed for a long time, but increasingly insert themselves into an architectural trend that leans toward multipurpose spaces. In this paper, we utilize previous research to analyze policy discourses and educational practices that arise around bilingualism in Finland and the Italian province of South Tyrol. We introduce and analyze co-located schools through the notion of spatial ideologies, i.e. beliefs about the connection between language policies and the material organization of space. We show that in both contexts, the separation of the official languages – Finnish and Swedish in Finland and Italian and German in most of South Tyrol – is reconstructed through policy, public discourse, and material practices. The educational system maintains separate tracks for the recognized language groups. While attempts to deconstruct the parallel system are often deemed problematic, the premise of language separation is also increasingly questioned and renegotiated. Therefore, co-located schools can be viewed as contested spaces where discourses and practices promoting linguistic diversity but also parallel monolingualism circulate.