The reformed Finnish vocational education and training (VET) system is a competence-based, customer-oriented educational programme with two overarching aims: to develop a skilled labour force and to promote social inclusion. Support and guidance have become increasingly important in Finnish VET in recent decades. This study focuses on how…

Finnish queer teachers work in an esteemed profession but also belong to a marginalized minority group. This article analyses interview data focusing on non-heterosexual teachers' understanding of their language use in schools, drawing from sociolinguistic research with queer linguistics. Methodologically, Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to…

In today's multilingual and multicultural societies, different languages and cultural orientations converge for complex purposes. This study examines how Spanish language students and their native peers (L1 peer = L1P) experiment with dynamic and culturally embedded language uses in higher education. The data included conversation recordings…

The paper explores the "in situ" negotiation of in/exclusion in and through language in a multilingual professional setting, paying special attention to the relationship between language and space. We argue that multilingual practices and material space are co-constitutive; individuals enact group membership and professional roles…

This article presents findings from an empirical study in which we investigated Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) students' linguistic resources in the L2 (English) to convey different Cognitive Discourse Functions (Dalton-Puffer 2013; 2016)--"Describe, Compare (Categorize), Report, Evaluate" and "Explore"--in two…

Our study examines interpersonal functions enacted through a stance marker in spoken ELF academic discourse. We specifically focus on investigating the functions of "I don't know" in an academic speech event by embracing an interpersonal pragmatics and sociolinguistics perspective to figure out how it contributes to the act of…

Researchers often find themselves reflecting on either/or questions. This article examines the multiple discursive reality of gender equality, a topic comprising several juxtapositions connected to either/or thinking which also provide the topic its legitimacy. The examples come from the context of gender equality work and gender equality policy,…

This article sets out to analyze how landscape functions in an educational context. It examines how landscape functions as an irreducible totality and as a nexus of discourse. The article focuses on the materialization of de jure and de facto discourses pertaining to languages in a primary level school in Southwest Finland. It also examines the…

This article examines social practices within classroom discourse in two different Finnish religious educational contexts. The article critically observes the construction of certain positions and identities as part of the school discourse and the inclusive vs exclusive practices of language. The research material consists of classroom…

One of the most studied forms of multilingual language use is "code-switching," the use of more than one language within a speech exchange. Some forms of code-switching may also be regarded as instances of "translation," but the relation between these notions in studies of multilingual discourse remains underspecified. The…

As policy agents, teachers are involved in representing and reproducing language education policies in their talk, practices and classroom interaction. Contemporary Finland and its education system are experiencing times of change from the increased globalisation and dynamic flows of migration. This has affected the most recent Finnish curriculum…

The current study examines bilingual children as language policy agents in the interplay between official language policy and education policy at three Swedish-medium preschools in Finland. For this purpose we monitored nine Finnish-Swedish bilingual children aged 3 to 5 years for 18 months. The preschools were located in three different parts of…

This article analyses language policies in higher education (HE) in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, as well as the European Union (EU). We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the intertwined nature of local, national, and international language policies in HE. We are particularly interested in the construction of…

Educational partnerships occur at the intersection of early childhood education and care (ECEC), families, and the surrounding community, and have been shown to play a significant role in student success rates in education. There is, however, a gap in research on the role and potential of "partnership" in the case of bilingual families…

This article examines relations to knowledge among novice teachers educated in a research-based program in Finland and a general professional program in Norway. The curricula of the 2 programs differ in distinct ways with regard to selection and organization of knowledge. We ask whether such differences also play out in the relations to knowledge…