Migrant students in vocational education: Finnish language proficiency and language ideologies


Main funder


Funds granted by main funder (€)

  • 20 044,00


Project timetable

Project start date01/08/2023

Project end date30/04/2024


Summary

In my doctoral research, I explore language ideologies related to migrant students’ work-life language skills in the vocational education and training (VET) in Finland in curriculum texts and in ethnographic interviews and observations. Furthermore, I will scrutinize which values the teaching and guidance staff construct for migrant students’ Finnish language proficiency. The topic of the research is timely, because of an educational reform that took place in the VET system in Finland in 2018 (L 531/2017). The reform further individualized students’ educational paths, increased learning in workplaces, and the nation-wide language requirements to access the studies were removed. This gave vocational teachers and institutes more power and responsibility to guide the students in their studies and to assess and decide whose linguistic skills are seen as adequate when applying to the studies and work placements.

At the same time, there is a growing number of migrant students in the Finnish VET: in the whole country 23 % and in the capital area of Helsinki 39 % of all students have migrant background (Statistics Finland 2022). In the secondary education in Finland, there are two study tracks: high school and the VET, which is the most common educational choice for migrant students and attracts a lot of adult migrants as it is often difficult to find employment in blue-collar workplaces without a VET degree. The migrant students often wish to find employment fast, but from the point of view of the working life, their proficiency of the Finnish language is often seen as too low. The goal of my research is to further language-aware VET and working life by creating knowledge about language ideologies present in the vocational education.

Language ideologies are beliefs, feelings, and understandings of languages and language practices. They affect on the values constructed for languages and language skills, and the power relationships between languages. (Blommaert, 1999.) In addition to language ideologies, raciolinguistic ideologies play an important role on how the migrant students’ language skills are encountered in education (e.g. Flores, 2020; Flores & Rosa, 2015). Members of a society are often not aware of the ideologies present in the community, which is why it is important to bring them up by research. In my analysis about the values constructed for the language skills, I make use of Heller and Duchêne’s (2016) views on material and symbolic values of languages; these values are closely related to language ideologies. My study is part of the Building Blocks: Developing language resources for working life research project (PI M. Suni; funded by the Academy of Finland 2019-2023). My PhD project consists of three sub-studies that will be published as separate research articles in peer-reviewed journals.
At the same time, there is a growing number of migrant students in the Finnish VET: in the whole country 23 % and in the capital area of Helsinki 39 % of all students have migrant background (Statistics Finland 2022). In the secondary education in Finland, there are two study tracks: high school and the VET, which is the most common educational choice for migrant students and attracts a lot of adult migrants as it is often difficult to find employment in blue-collar workplaces without a VET degree. The migrant students often wish to find employment fast, but from the point of view of the working life, their proficiency of the Finnish language is often seen as too low. The goal of my research is to further language-aware VET and working life by creating knowledge about language ideologies present in the vocational education.

Language ideologies are beliefs, feelings, and understandings of languages and language practices. They affect on the values constructed for languages and language skills, and the power relationships between languages. (Blommaert, 1999.) In addition to language ideologies, raciolinguistic ideologies play an important role on how the migrant students’ language skills are encountered in education (e.g. Flores, 2020; Flores & Rosa, 2015). Members of a society are often not aware of the ideologies present in the community, which is why it is important to bring them up by research. In my analysis about the values constructed for the language skills, I make use of Heller and Duchêne’s (2016) views on material and symbolic values of languages; these values are closely related to language ideologies. My study is part of the Building Blocks: Developing language resources for working life research project (PI M. Suni; funded by the Academy of Finland 2019-2023). My PhD project consists of three sub-studies that will be published as separate research articles in peer-reviewed journals.


Principal Investigator


Primary responsible unit


Internal follow-up group

Profiling areaSchool of Wellbeing (University of Jyväskylä JYU) JYU.Well


Keywords (YSO)


Last updated on 2023-24-08 at 20:50