This paper presents the findings of a survey on research activities and research cultures across the CercleS network. The survey was conducted under the auspices of the CercleS Focus Group on Leadership and Management and aimed to explore the scope of research in Language Centres; the links between institutional factors such as staff contracts and…

The number of immigrant students in Finland is increasing; thus, this qualitative case study investigates ways of providing targeted support measures for recently arrived Finnish language learners (RAFLLs) in Finnish lower secondary education. Focusing on linguistic responsiveness, the teaching arrangements and support measures are examined not…

This paper addresses 'distractions' in the way English language education is discussed and practiced in one of the most debated systems of education in the world today: Finnish primary education. Distractions are considered as 'makers of disturbance' in educational ideologies by the authors. Examining the 2014 National Core Curriculum and…

Career guidance and counselling (CGC) plays an important role in the 'egalitarian tradition' of the Nordic countries' perspective of education, since it aims to support all students in developing skills and knowledge to access further education and the labour market. Inspired by the critical institutionalism approach and focusing on education…

A compulsory foreign language in Finland starts now in Grade 1 instead of Grade 3. The change has forced teachers to adopt new teaching methods. As young learners are not yet literate, teaching should focus on oral skills and awareness of diversity. Video data from 19 early foreign language lessons of five English, German, or French teachers in…

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…

Linguistic diversity is growing in Higher Education, driven by factors like internationalization and digitalization. This trend necessitates a reevaluation of language practices within academic communities. Language Centres play a crucial role in modelling effective practices and reshaping these practices to address the multilingual needs of…

This study examined the role of writing task types and L2 reading proficiency on young English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' writing performances. The participants were 185 students (Grades 7 and 8) from Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. The students responded to a descriptive and an email writing tasks that assessed their writing…

The topic of language awareness in intercultural music education has received surprisingly little attention in discussions on meaningful and responsive musical practices, despite language being an ubiquitous issue that every music educator encounters when entering a multilingual learning environment. This study explores a language-aware…

This study examines the meanings attributed to literature in language education by Finnish General Upper Secondary teachers of English as a Foreign Language. The study employs a phenomenological research design structured around the concepts of language education, literature and values in education. The phenomenological analysis examines five…

This study explores the dialogical nature of agency when two immigrant pupils, who are learning Finnish as their new target language, are authoring their selves. Bakhtin's dialogism was the inspiration for this examination of the discourses that surround the L2 pupils' agency and how they respond to discourses through their agency.…

To educate multilingual global citizens and follow the multilingual turn in language education, universities are faced with the challenge of developing their language pedagogies. This article reports on a study conducted in the context of university language studies that take a multilingual perspective to learning languages for academic and…

This paper presents a controlled pretest-training-posttest study on using a small membraphone instrument called "kazoo" for L2 pronunciation practice and reducing foreign accentedness. Learners were recorded for free speech before and after a six-week pronunciation and oral skills course including L2 prosody training with personal…

Adopting the methods of multimodal conversation analysis, this study demonstrates that adult second language (L2) users with emergent literacy formulate requests as 'complex multimodal Gestalts' consisting prototypically of deictic or depictive gestures combined with gaze, situationally relevant material, and vocal or linguistic resources. The…

This article examines how second language (L2) interactional competence is manifested in students' use of "and"-prefaced turns when doing meaning-focused oral tasks in pairs and small groups. Drawing on video recordings from English-as-a-foreign-language upper-secondary classes recorded in Czechia and Finland, 86 sequences involving…