Search results

Chapter 1: Introduction: Conceptualising language policy and higher education in new nationalism -- Chapter 2: Language and long nation building in Finnish higher education -- Chapter 3: The short and intense post-nationalist period in Finnish higher education -- Chapter 4: Language and new nationalism in higher education (in Finland and a bit elsewhere) -- Chapter 5: New nationalism and higher education.

The article examines the language policy developments of Finnish higher education in historical and contemporary perspective. It is part of an Academy of Finland funded project (2011-2013) on the role of language in Finnish higher education internationalisation. The article first presents an historical overview of the language policy developments in Finnish universities and then goes on to discuss the latest developments in Finnish university and language legislation. Two cases illustrate the role of language in internationalisation strategies on one hand, and the ideologies made visible by hierarchisations of English as native and non-native on the other. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the complex role of English in the setting of the equally complex Finnish constitutional bilingualism. ; peerReviewed

Taina Saarinen tarkasteli väitöskirjassaan laadun ja eurooppalaisen korkeakoulupolitiikan erilaisia merkityksiä. Millaista korkeakoulupolitiikkaa laadun nimissä on viime vuosikymmeninä tuotettu ja pidetty yllä, ja keiden toimijoiden tarpeita tämä laadun politiikka tukee?- Laatu on tyhjä taulu, johon voidaan heijastaa erilaisia käsityksiä halutusta korkeakoulupolitiikasta, Saarinen määrittelee.Saarinen osoittaa, että ei ole olemassa vain yhtä laatupolitiikkaa vaan useita. Näennäisesti samaan politiikkaan kohdistuu eri tilanteissa erilaisia odotuksia, ja kukin toimintaympäristö on erilainen. Tämä väistämättä taas vaikuttaa politiikkatoimien vastaanottoon. Koulutuksen globalisaatio ei olekaan yksiselitteistä, vaan kansallisvaltiolla on edelleen – ainakin toistaiseksi – mahdollisuus omanlaiseensa koulutuspolitiikkaan. ; The study analysed higher education policy from the point of view of quality as a discursively constructed higher education policy phenomenon. Theoretically, the aim was to investigate (higher education) policy as a discursive process. Methodologically, the study applied discourse analytical methods in the study of higher education policy texts. The practical purpose of the study was to learn more about current European higher education policies from the point of view of quality and quality policy in higher education. The data consisted of higher education policy documentation from Finland, the European union, the OECD and the Bologna process. The analysis concentrated on the occurrences of quality. A Critical Discourse Analytical frame was applied. In a series of five articles, quality as a concept is examined by drawing on different textual approaches.Quality is mostly taken for granted and it is presented as a self-evident good in present European higher education policies. This might suggest an argumentative tactic to persuade the reader that quality and the activities connected to it are shared, common understanding.Some metaphors refer, for instance, to quality as some kind of force-of-nature, others to its fragile nature and the consequent need for regulation and control. As an evasive concept, quality receives meanings by the operationalisations attached to it. Also, different actors are presented in different ways in the context of quality.Historically, the word quality is practically not used in policy texts until the turn of the 1980s. This might imply that the quality of higher education was either held self-evident, or it was considered to be a marginal concern of the academic community. The dominant values seem to be those of the economy, competition, and regulation. The voice of the academic community is more subdued, and consequently, its values less clearly presented.(Critical) discourse analysis is helpful in raising issues, and making visible policy processes, their development and the values and power relations behind them. In the future, this approach could benefit from complementing it with analyses of situations where policy makers, administrators and the academics engage with these discourses.

The chapter discusses discourses of "language" indexing social tasks of universities. We are interested in how talk of "language" is used to index the political, economic, educational, cultural etc. nature of higher education; in other words, what we talk about when we think we talk about language. We are mainly focusing on the position Swedish in the tensions of national language policies, higher education policies and internationalisation. In the chapter, we show the various ways in which higher education policies and language policies are intertwined, producing both intended and unintended language policy outcomes. ; peerReviewed

Historians of political discourse and language policy researchers should join forces to develop methods of textual analysis that help to integrate political and intellectual history. They could do so by focusing their analysis on interconnections between material realities, human physical action, practices and structures, as well as institutions and ideologies as discursive constructs. Such a version of soft constructivism underscoring the discursive nature of much of politics encourages historians to analyse past political discourses more systematically. Concepts such as nexus, historical body, mobility and discursive transfers borrowed from language research deepen our analytical understanding of the multi-level dynamics of policy-making, directing attention to links between various debates as well as to transnational transfers. Our empirical examples are derived from Swedish and Finnish constitutional debates in the last phase of the First World War, but similar research strategies are applicable to the analysis of political discourse in any context. ; peerReviewed

In this article, we analyse the construction of Finnish constitutional bilingualism in the aftermath of gaining independence, a traumatic civil war and during the construction of a new republican polity based on regulated parliamentarism in 1917–1919. We take a multi-sited and historically informed approach to the dynamics of political discourse at the parliamentary level, analysing the discursive cycles of people, nationality and nation. We demonstrate the interconnectedness of language policy discourses with historically and spatially multi-sited and highly complex contexts and show how language policy confrontations can add important dimensions to increase our understanding of power struggles concerning other aspects of politics. Both sides of the debate utilized a set of nationalistic discourses, derived from the nineteenth century and reactivated by the discursive trends of the post-war situation. These discourses reinforced the ideas of national self-determination and the opening of politics to the people at large—though with a set of limitations to majority democracy. Indeed, the language paragraphs of the Finnish republican constitution of 1919 can be seen as a further set of minority provisions needed in search said ideals and reconstruction of normalcy after a crisis. ; peerReviewed

In this article, we discuss the position of Finnish constitutional bilingualism in higher education in the context of internationalisation in English, by focusing on two universities: one dominantly monolingual (Finnish), one dominantly bilingual (Finnish–Swedish); in addition, both teach in English. This article investigates how discourses around language choices (language policy documents, selected staff and student interviews) construe these universities as monolingual, bilingual or trilingual, and what these discourses say about the universities as organisations themselves. Results suggest that, although lack of clarity remains regarding language choices in many practical situations, Finnish and English are seen as self-evident primary languages of the universities; Swedish, as the third language, occupies a more contested place. ; Dans cet article, nous discutons de la position du bilinguisme constitutionnel finlandais dans l'enseignement supérieur dans le contexte de l'internationalisation en anglais, en nous concentrant sur deux universités: l'une à dominante monolingue (langue finnoise), l'autre majoritairement bilingue (finno-suédoise); en outre, les deux enseignent en anglais. Cet article étudie comment les discours sur les choix linguistiques (documents de politique linguistique, personnel sélectionné et entrevues avec les étudiants) interprètent ces universités comme monolingues, bilingues ou trilingues, et ce que ces discours laissent voir à propos des universités en tant qu'organisations elles-mêmes. Les résultats suggèrent que, malgré le manque de clarté concernant les choix de langue dans de nombreuses situations pratiques, le finnois et l'anglais sont considérés comme des langues primaires évidentes des universités. Le suédois, en tant que troisième langue, occupe une place plus contestée. ; peerReviewed

This article examines the construction of"native"and"non-native"English use in Finnish higher education. Previous studies on the Finnish situationimplicate not just language ideological but political hierarchies which favour stu-dents from the traditional, hegemonic"Inner circle"countries such as the UnitedKingdom, United States, Australia, Anglophone Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.This hegemonic position of the inner circle variants is being challenged by anemerging normative ELF ideology. Our article tackles the meeting point ofthese ideological positions. We aim to understand how native English speakerideologies might be changing as a result of globalization. We have combineddata from our individual research projects, based on interviews with studentsand staffwith a variety of L1 backgrounds at two Finnish universities and oneuniversity of applied sciences, and using particularly the data extracts whereconstructions of native/non-native appear regarding English. Our results indi-cate that while there are strong norms still in favour of native-like English,different political and pedagogical factors are challenging the native norm.We conclude by discussing the potential implications of this development tolanguage policies in the internationalization of (Finnish) higher education. ; peerReviewed

The concept of bilingualism in Finnish political discourse is predominantly used in the meaning of official or state bilingualism, focussing on the two constitutionally defined 'national languages'; i.e. Finnish and Swedish. Legally, both Finnish and Swedish speakers have a right for public services, such as schooling or health care, in their first language. On the other hand, several language ideological debates have taken place in recent years, challenging especially the status of Swedish in administration and education. These debates have reshaped the discourses on what counts as bilingualism. This paper analyses on one hand the historical discursive development of the "official will" presented in the Finnish Government programmes on the concept of bilingualism and the current language ideological debates that take place in an Internet discussion site, offered by a Finnish newspaper, on the other. These two discourses seem to operate on separate fields and among different actors. We show that language policy discourses are essentially multi‐sited: they confirm, contest and challenge views that are produced by various stakeholders over time. ; peerReviewed

The purpose of the article is to problematize the relationship between the Nordic democratic public higher education tradition and transnational market driven knowledge economy policies. The article illustrates this development with two cases -- quality assurance and internationalisation policies -- where external demands, based mostly on market ideologies, have been introduced with apparently transnational incentives but having national implementations. These transnational pressures are related to a kind of soft governance of higher education policy, characterized by networked decision making and use of expert consultants, which possibly promotes flexible decision-making and efficiency, but may simultaneously produce adverse outcomes to transparent and democratic decision-making. ; peerReviewed

The ambivalence of English manifests itself in the discourses that surround it. English may be a resource and consume resources; it empowers and oppresses. The dichotomous discussion around the usefulness or dangers of English as a "global" or "world" language erases problematizations of the layered societal implications of English in localised contexts. English needs to be analysed not (only) as a language but (also) as the ideologies and societal structures intertwined with it. We examine English in two higher education contexts. Our first case deals with the so-called Accent Reduction courses offered for international students in US universities. The second one analyses English as a language political catalyst in a nation state context. We conclude with a discussion of the nativist and nation-state-centred role of global English. We argue that to discuss English as a language oversimplifies the societal implications of the debate. When we think we talk about English, we are, in fact, talking about the various societal, political, economic, cultural and historical power dynamics that accompany it. ; peerReviewed

In this volume, authors from four disciplines join forces to develop an analysis of political discourse on a comparative and multidisciplinary basis. Theoretically the book draws on the concept of language policy, operationalising it through the politics and policies of Finland and Sweden

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 national language(s) and the language(s) of internationalisation in our case countries. Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share common features as relatively small non-Anglophone countries in the Baltic region, while simultaneously having somewhat differing political and cultural histories. The results of our discursive analysis indicate that while the three countries have relatively different national language policies, regarding, for example, the position of the national language(s), the institutional policies are more similar in the three cases. For universities, the positioning of English as the de facto language of internationalisation turns the ideology of language choice in HE into a practical rather than political question. However, at the state level, the promotion of English runs contrary to national policies. The EU HE language policy seems to acknowledge the institutional level's practical demands of English as de facto language of internationalisation rather than follow its own formal language policy of official languages. ; peerReviewed

In 2015, military conflicts and related humanitarian crises neighbouring areas of Europe made millions of people leave their homes. Europe, including Finland, experienced a rapid increase in the number of asylum seekers. In this article, we examine the reception of asylum seekers by Finnish higher education institutions mainly by analysing media data written about and written by universities and universities of applied sciences in Finland. The higher education institutions, in keeping with their societal role, spontaneously developed various kinds of pop-up courses, co-operation projects and other activities for asylum seekers. These activities range from crisis work to medical clinics and sports events to language teaching. This led us to ask in this article, whether new tasks were emerging in the Finnish higher education institutions' understanding of the societal role of higher education. This main question is operationalised in three subquestions. Firstly, we are interested in seeing how higher education institutions motivate their actions on developing activities for asylum seekers. Secondly, we analyse the goals and gainers of these activities. Thirdly, we discuss the challenges faced by the higher education institutions in their refugee and asylum seeker activities. Based on our findings, we suggest that new kinds of voluntary and humanitarian activities appear to be emerging at Finnish higher education institutions, as they responded to the increase in the number of asylum seekers, suggesting a change in the traditions of societal impact of Finnish higher education. Our analysis also shows an apparent paradox in the activities of the institutions: while they had no way of knowing how many asylum seekers will remain in Finland, they still organised activities that implied staying in Finland for a longer time. The higher education institutions themselves benefitted from the activities: they could exhibit their expertise and previous research in the area of immigrant studies, and aspects of service-learning system of societal activity could be taken into their curricula. Helping the asylum seekers brought the university community together while the asylum seekers themselves remained passive objects of the activities. ; peerReviewed