The Concept of Language Awareness in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for the Upper Secondary School
Hautakoski, Tuulia (2022)
2022
Englannin kielen ja kirjallisuuden maisteriohjelma - Master's Programme in English Language and Literature
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-06-27
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202206075553
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202206075553
Tiivistelmä
The topic of this research is the abstract concept of language awareness, which is used and described in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for the Upper Secondary School 2019. The first research question of the study is how the concept of language awareness is described in the curriculum for the upper secondary school 2019. The curriculum also includes a paragraph that defines the concept of language awareness. As the research progressed, comparing this definition to the rest of the document became an additional research question.
The material of the study consists of the Finnish National Core Curriculum for the Upper Secondary School 2019, excluding the parts that give a detailed description of the contents of the study units. The method of study is qualitative content analysis. The theoretical background of the analysis is based on the five-dimension model created by Krogager Andersen and Ruohotie-Lyhty (2019). For the purposes of this research, the model is modified based on research literature. The final theoretical framework includes six categories in which the instances of language awareness are categorized. The categories are: linguistic, cognitive, multilingual, social, creative and other.
The results of the research indicate that the definition of language awareness found in the curriculum emphasizes to an equal proportion the first four categories. The multilingual and social categories are highlighted in the chapter of the curriculum that concentrates on minorities. The category of linguistic creativity is only found in the curriculum text for Swedish as a second national language and foreign languages. These two subjects offer the widest view on language awareness, since they mention all the other categories as well. The subjects mother tongue and literature and Finnish as a second language and literature mention all the other categories except the creative category. Mathematics, natural sciences and humanities subjects, on the other hand, give a rather narrow understanding of language awareness, because they only mention, with a few exceptions, the linguistic perspective.
The material of the study consists of the Finnish National Core Curriculum for the Upper Secondary School 2019, excluding the parts that give a detailed description of the contents of the study units. The method of study is qualitative content analysis. The theoretical background of the analysis is based on the five-dimension model created by Krogager Andersen and Ruohotie-Lyhty (2019). For the purposes of this research, the model is modified based on research literature. The final theoretical framework includes six categories in which the instances of language awareness are categorized. The categories are: linguistic, cognitive, multilingual, social, creative and other.
The results of the research indicate that the definition of language awareness found in the curriculum emphasizes to an equal proportion the first four categories. The multilingual and social categories are highlighted in the chapter of the curriculum that concentrates on minorities. The category of linguistic creativity is only found in the curriculum text for Swedish as a second national language and foreign languages. These two subjects offer the widest view on language awareness, since they mention all the other categories as well. The subjects mother tongue and literature and Finnish as a second language and literature mention all the other categories except the creative category. Mathematics, natural sciences and humanities subjects, on the other hand, give a rather narrow understanding of language awareness, because they only mention, with a few exceptions, the linguistic perspective.