Many universities in non-English speaking countries have been adopting English as a medium of instruction to internationalize their education. We set out to compare the language policies of a Finnish and a Japanese university using the lens of language ideology -- a set of normative beliefs about the social dimension of language. Data were…

The study explores Finnish compulsory school language teachers' formative and summative assessment practices. It aims at finding out what formative and summative assessment modes and tools the teachers use and what kind of evidence they collect for students' final grades. The data were gathered through questionnaires administered in national…

This study examines the experiences of two Pakistani doctoral researchers at the University of Jyväskylä (JYU), Finland, highlighting the disconnect between the university's internationalization policies and the realities faced by non-Western students. Employing autoethnography, the study reveals systemic Eurocentric biases and linguistic…

This design case describes three iterative development phases of online integration training design from 2015 to 2021. Online integration training is a public educational service for adult immigrants who are registered as unemployed in Finland. The learners are from diverse backgrounds, typically residing in sparsely populated areas or unable to…

This article examines the foreign language learning biographies of six Finnish English speakers who reflect on their journey towards a bilingual identity. In this article language learning is examined as a process that is intrinsically emotional as emotion connects individuals with the world as well as being a movement within oneself. The data…

This book critically analyses early school foreign language teaching policy and practice, foregrounding the influence of the socioeducational and cultural context on how policies are implemented and assessing the factors which either promote or constrain their effectiveness. It focuses on four Asian contexts -- Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and…

This article focuses on how Finnish CLIL teachers and students orient to and experience diversity in CLIL. The data consist of teacher and student interviews that were analysed using qualitative content analysis to identify recurrent themes with regard to diversity. The findings indicate that the theme of equality in the sense of 'the same for…

Internationalisation is an important part of higher education. An increasing number of higher education institutions offer online degree programmes that enable studying in intercultural, global online contexts. This design-based research paper focuses on the holistic design of international online degree programmes. It investigates how students in…

It is common practice for K-12 schools to assess multilingual students' language proficiency to determine language support program placement. Because such programs can provide essential scaffolding, the policies guiding these assessments merit careful consideration. It is well accepted that quality assessments must be valid (representative of 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…

This conceptual paper advances the notion of "English as corporate language" in the multilingual reality of multinational companies (MNC) with novel insights from the English as lingua franca (ELF) paradigm of sociolinguistics. Inspired by Goffman, Erving. 1959. "The presentation of self in everyday life." New York: Doubleday.…

Plurilingual skills are among the key skills required in international business communication. Employees working in international business operations use multiple languages concurrently, switch between them, and mediate between different languages and cultures. Up until now however, the language teaching accompanying business studies at…

Due to the history of assimilation, power relations, and their sociolinguistic situation, the Sámi languages are categorized as endangered. The position of the Sámi languages in Sámi education is reviewed, and language immersion as a teaching method and as a means of language maintenance is discussed. Sámi language learning is described through…

The present study explored data from a survey of students' performance in English at the end of compulsory school in 6 European countries. The aim was to gain deeper knowledge of the internal structure of the test and to discuss similarities and differences between the different settings regarding patterns in language proficiency. The analyses,…

This study investigated the relationship between the English language competence of Finnish bilingual pupils and school-external factors such as parental expectations, home involvement, and exposure to English outside the classroom. Data on the pupils' language competence was collected from n?=?122 6th graders in bilingual education, and compared…