Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

Finland has the last 20 years experienced increased immigration. The immigration to Finland
is still very small in comparison to most other European countries, but for Finland the
increased immigration has had a significant impact on, for example, educational policy.
Approximately half the immigrants to Finland settle in the Helsinki metropolitan region.
Most of the immigrants become Finnish speakers but there is substantial interest among
Swedish politicians to increase the number of immigrants who become Swedish speakers
and whose children will thereby attend Swedish schools. This would also decrease the risk
that the Swedish speaking community would become isolated from the general societal
trend of increasing diversity. Altogether about 8% of children younger than 7 are of
immigrant background in the Helsinki metropolitan region (Advisory board of early
childhood education and care, 2008).
Finland as a country is quite nature oriented and the daycares and their activities are often
connected to nature in many ways. However, this is a bit more difficult in the bigger cities.
On the other hand the cities have a larger palette of cultural activities and resources. This is
an aspect that we want to take advantage of in our program.
The first theme, multilingualism, consists of three subthemes namely bi- and multilingualism,
language immersion programs, and language stimulation activities. The language immersion
program part of the program is left to be developed later. The multilingualism and the
language stimulation go hand in hand. The most current research on bilingualism strongly
supports early language learning (see, for example, the work of Judith Kroll; Janet Werker;
Linda Bialystok). In the Swedish daycare centers bilingualism is a part of daily life and the
teachers need to know how to stimulate the bilingual children’s Swedish skills which can be
very weak. The daycare center is many times the only completely Swedish speaking
environment in a child’s life. Interestingly it is not enough for the teachers who in many
cases themselves have weak Finnish skills to know how to support the children’s language
because they also have to have fairly good Finnish skills in order to communicate with
parents who maybe speaking only Finnish. Therefore most of the teacher education students
will take their minor subject in Finnish. This way they not only improve their own Finnish
skills but they also become exposed to the Finnish way of thinking about early childhood
education. This connects also to the second theme identity and diversity.
This theme consists of multicultural education, gender and the Swedish culture in Finland.
The identity as a Swedish speaking Finn is an interesting subtheme in the sense that the
program has an expanded notion of what it might mean to be a Swedish speaker.
Traditionally it has meant that a person is a Swedish speaker and comes from a Swedish
speaking family. However, due to the changing language picture it is important for the
bilingual children as well as those with Finnish as their mother tongue to feel that they are
part of the Swedish speaking community if they so choose. The goal is for the children to
develop a solid Swedish identity without being excluding of others. Here it could be argued
that the goal is a cosmopolitan attitude where one’s own identity is clear but open for
impulses from others in a globalizing and diverse world (Mansikka & Holm, 2011). The goal is
that through multicultural education foster an inquiring and accepting way of looking at
diversity.
The concept multicultural is for this program an inclusive concept in the sense that it does
not only refer to race and ethnicity but also includes gender, social class, religion, disability
and sexual orientation. We have particularly lifted gender to the forefront since gender
stereotyping is quite strong still in Finland and girls and boys perform quite differently in
school as canbe seen in, for example, the recent PISA results (Sulkunen, Välijärvi, Arffman,
Harju-Luukkainen. Kupari, Nissinen, Puhakka & Reinikainen, 2010). However, this does not
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