In September 2018 the Finnish government decided to increase the number of A1 language lessons within primary education (Ministry of Culture and Education 2018a). According to the new amendment all of the children starting school in 2019 will begin to learn English already from the first grade, during spring term 2020 at the latest. This obligates every primary school in Finland to offer ELL from the first grade onwards. The amendment is part of the education reform that the Ministry of Culture and Education launched in 2015, aiming to develop the Finnish basic education further. This includes renewing the Finnish basic education, learning environments as well as teachers’ abilities. The aim of the reform is to make Finland “the top country in modern and invigorating learning” (Ministry of Culture and Education 2015).
According to the amendment, the number of weekly A1 lessons will increase with two hours that are dedicated to the years 1-2 of basic education. Previously the distribution of weekly A1 language lessons was 16 during primary school, and with the current amendment the total number increases to 18 (Ministry of Culture and Education 2018b). One weekly lesson equals 38 lessons in total (OPH 2014), which increases the total number of A1 language lessons in
primary school from 608 to 684. The increase of weekly lessons means that the lessons do not have to be taken from the existing hours and thus other education will not decrease. The Minister of Culture and Education Sanni Grahn-Laasonen named the new amendment as a historical renewal, as the minimum hours devoted to basic education will increase and children will get more education from year 2020 onwards (Ministry of Culture and Education 2018a).
Ministry of Culture and Education has devoted 7.5 million euros to the new amendment for year 2020 and 12 million euros from year 2021 onwards (Ministry of Culture and Education 2018a). Additional budget has also been targeted for in-service training for teachers.
The reasons behind this amendment vary from the educational benefit to increased equality.
According to the Ministry of Culture and Education (2018b), earlier start to language learning aims to decrease the areal and socio-economical differences within Finland and to offer equal language education possibilities to every child, regardless of their background. Moreover, they argue that children’s natural sensitive period towards learning languages can be utilized better with earlier language learning. Lastly, they suggest that ELL practiced with active learning strategies supports the development of learning skills. The Minister of Education and Culture discusses the importance of diverse language skills and considers children as exceptionally skilled when it comes to acquiring new information (Ministry of Culture and Education 2018a).
The scientific explanations behind these factors have been discussed in more depth in the section 2.
Even though according to the amendment all of the primary schools in Finland are required to offer A1 language(s) from year 1 onwards, the choice of the languages offered is left for the schools/municipalities themselves. Ministry of Culture and Education clarify that the aim of the free choice of languages is to take the different areal needs into account and to ensure that language education can be arranged and offered in a best possible way (Ministry of Culture and Education 2018b). However, in my opinion this can also decrease the variety of languages as the most popular choice is, and undoubtedly will be English. In many of the schools a variety of languages cannot be offered due to economical as well as practical reasons - when there are not enough participants for a language class, it cannot be arranged. However, brain research supports the supply of variety of languages and suggests that children should, if possible, begin to learn more difficult (eg. phonologically distant from the mother tongue) languages due to the elasticity and adaptability of young children’s brains (Skinnari and Sjöberg 2018: 15). English
will undoubtedly dominate the A1 choices in the near future, but it remains to be seen whether other languages, such as French, German and Russian, will increase their popularity.
The early language learning has been tested in practice with the government’s Key Project that began in 2017 (Ministry of Culture and Education 2017). For the project, 96 schools were funded in 2017 in order to provide early language education during the academic year 2017-2018. Additionally, more schools had the opportunity to seek funding for ELL for the academic year 2018-2019. The project is a part of the reform of basic education (see above), aiming to develop the quality of basic education in Finland. The aim of the Key Project is to increase the supply of foreign languages in primary schools as well as to encourage children to begin to study them earlier. In-service training has been offered to teachers of young children to ensure the quality of early language teaching and learning (Ministry of Culture and Education 2017).
The teachers who I interviewed for my paper have taken part in this Key Project. They will be introduced in more detail in the next section.
4 THE PRESENT STUDY
In this chapter, I will shed light to the methodology of the present study. First, the aim for this study will be clarified and the research problem, as well as the questions aimed to solve it, will be presented. Second, the framework for this qualitative style research will be discussed. Third, the whole process of data collection will be explained, including semi-structured interviews as the method for collecting data and the participants whom I interviewed. Finally, the data was analyzed using content analysis as the method, and this process will be introduced in the last section of this chapter.