cohesion - European Centre for Modern Languages

The background of teachers
First they were asked to describe their educational and professional backgrounds. The
responses revealed that 85% had obtained a degree in higher education outside of
Estonia, with two of the three who had studied in Estonia currently still at university.
Majors ranged from economics, physics or history to journalism, with three teachers
having studied philology, one of them in the language they were teaching. 60% of the
teachers had a background in pedagogical education. 60% speak the language that they
teach fluently or as their native language (Russian or Ukrainian) and 40% at elementary
or intermediate levels. It can be assumed from this that culture is taught in some cases
in Russian rather than the target language.
To all but one of those surveyed, teaching their native language and/or culture
represented a sideline, with their main employment taking the form of school teaching
(not as a teacher of a national minority language or culture but as a teacher of another
subject), private business, college and university administration or retirement. In
summary it can be said that the people who are teaching national minority native
languages and culture had not received any specialist training prior to this course and
that such teaching is a sideline to their main employment. 30% of people had taken part
in short in-service training courses, some of them in their country of origin, and three in
courses organised by the country of origin (Ukraine, Israel and Russia). Taking into
consideration the current requirements for teachers in Estonia, three of the people who
took the course and completed the survey would be qualified to teach their native
language and ten to teach their culture.
The range of subjects taught at national minority Sunday schools is diverse: the native
language, national dance, culture, history, folklore, music, art and the situation of the
national group in Estonia. Two subjects are generally taught, with each subject being
taught for two hours per week. The number of students in a group can be anywhere
from 6 to 30, but most have around 10. This means that the curricula of national
minority Sunday schools are fuller than would be required for them to be taught as an
elective subject in a general education school (two hours per week), but in all but two
cases the number of students would be sufficient to create classes in general education
schools.
Feedback on the content of the training course
In developing a training programme for national minority native language and culture
teachers, the institution doing so needed to take into account the conditions listed
above. It was for this reason that the emphasis in Module I was on language teaching
methodology, the Estonian education system and education legislation, including the
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