As the demographic and linguistic diversity within Finnish higher education grows, institutions face increasing demands to address linguistic inclusivity and equity in multilingual contexts. University language centres are sites where these demands are negotiated in everyday professional practice, alongside their role in offering language and communication courses, as well as translation and language consultation services. This study examines how staff describe and make sense of the linguistic spaces they navigate in their everyday work. The research question is: How do language centre staff report and reflect on their experiences of navigating linguistic spaces within a Finnish language centre? The data consist of workshop discussions in which staff shared language-related experiences. Using thematic content analysis and a narrative-based approach, the study highlights two themes: situations marked by ambiguity and unease when expectations and linguistic resources do not align, and reflexive reorientation in which participants adjust or reimagine language practices. These themes are read through the spatial theories of Doreen Massey and Suresh Canagarajah, which conceptualize space as a dynamic field where power relations are negotiated. The results are brought into dialogue with discussions of the safer space concept, which offers a frame for considering how equity and inclusion can be supported. The study foregrounds the need for reflexivity not only among students but also among educators and other actors in positions of authority, whose language practices shape the communicative conditions of academia. The paper offers language-safer space as a tentative exploratory concept for future theoretical and practical development.
This study examines teachers’ views concerning multilingualism in Finnish-language and Swedish-language schools in Finland. Using the concepts of linguistically responsive teaching and sustainable translanguaging, the following research questions were posed: 1. How do teachers in Finnish-language and Swedish-language schools perceive multilingualism as reflected in their language use? 2. How do teachers in Finnish-language and Swedish-language schools perceive multilingualism as reflected in their guidance of the students’ language use? The data were collected through an online survey (N = 2 865) conducted in schools located in 291 municipalities across Finland, covering the entire country. Participants included primary school teachers, subject teachers, and special needs teachers. Almost a third of the participating schools reported no students with home languages other than Finnish, Swedish, or Saami. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted. The results reveal that the teachers in Finnish-language schools relate the concept of linguistic diversity to all languages, whereas the teachers in Swedish-language schools often embrace the national languages within that concept. Furthermore, the results confirm the outcomes of previous research, reporting that Swedish-language schools have a dual role: to safeguard the use of the school language, which has a minority position in the Finnish society, and to acknowledge growing linguistic diversity. Teachers in both school types partially embrace multilingualism but need further support to implement linguistically responsive teaching. The results also suggest that to help teachers develop strategies for linguistically responsive teaching, the connection between teachers’ orientations and pedagogical knowledge needs to be further emphasised.
This article investigates how food and drink may facilitate educational and relational encounters with Arabic-speaking adult students and open up possibilities for transpositioning (Hawkins & Tiwari, 2024; Li Wei & Lee, 2024) in adult basic education (ABE). Drawing on sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015), we analyze how food, drink, and communication across Arabic, Nordic languages, and English created joint emplacement and relational reciprocity in adult basic education settings in Finland and Norway. Adult students from South-West Asia and North Africa used educational spaces to act as teachers and hosts, in settings where they are often positioned as guests or even social clients. These encounters may allow for greater reciprocity than what is common in adult migrant education, as food and drink connect to transnational histories, affective and sociomaterial realities, and lived experiences.
