In this chapter, I use the dominant language constellation as an approach to engage a group of student teachers within Swedish-medium teacher education in Finland to discuss institutional multilingualism. Through student teachers’ reflections on the use of languages in the institution, in this study, I aim to analyse how the participants identify and make use of the dominant language constellation as an instrument with which to identify dominant and nondominant languages in educational institutions. Studies have shown that student teachers identify themselves as speakers of multiple language, whereas there seems to be no explicit effect on the part of the individual use of languages on awareness on how individual and institutional multilingualism can best be made use of in the classroom. Data were collected using two methods. Firstly, the informants were asked to complete a simple dominant language constellation chart regarding the use, frequency, and functions of various languages in the institution. Secondly, a short linguistic walk was conducted to identify the institutional linguistic landscape. Results show that a limited amount of time to introduce and use the concept of the dominant language constellation among the participants generated a versatile understanding of it and an interest in using it as a low-threshold instrument to focus on institutional multilingualism.

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The Dominant Language Constellation as a Concept with Which to Increase Student Teachers’ Awareness of Institutional Language Diversity: A Case Study from Finland

  • Siv Björklund

摘要

In this chapter, I use the dominant language constellation as an approach to engage a group of student teachers within Swedish-medium teacher education in Finland to discuss institutional multilingualism. Through student teachers’ reflections on the use of languages in the institution, in this study, I aim to analyse how the participants identify and make use of the dominant language constellation as an instrument with which to identify dominant and nondominant languages in educational institutions. Studies have shown that student teachers identify themselves as speakers of multiple language, whereas there seems to be no explicit effect on the part of the individual use of languages on awareness on how individual and institutional multilingualism can best be made use of in the classroom. Data were collected using two methods. Firstly, the informants were asked to complete a simple dominant language constellation chart regarding the use, frequency, and functions of various languages in the institution. Secondly, a short linguistic walk was conducted to identify the institutional linguistic landscape. Results show that a limited amount of time to introduce and use the concept of the dominant language constellation among the participants generated a versatile understanding of it and an interest in using it as a low-threshold instrument to focus on institutional multilingualism.