Språkmedvetenhet inom småbarnspedagogik: pedagogernas reflektioner över begreppet

This study aims to examine how practitioners of Swedish-medium early childhood education and care in Finland reflect on languageawareness (LA). The study is conducted within in-service training on language awareness and language stimulating working methods. The data consist o fnine group discussions on a SWOT-task, with 41 primary participants participating the in-service trainingand 165 secondary participants from primary participants’ respective professional learning communities (PLCs). In the SWOT-task the participants reflected on six language-policy themes on LA in national policy documents that were presented as an introduction to the task. The practitioners discussed them first in their respective PLCs and then in small groups within the in-service training. The group discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed for qualitative content analysis. The analysis focus on the topics Finnish-Swedish bilingualism, bilingual education, and early language instruction in relation to i) starting points for language aware working methods, ii) language aware operational culture,and iii) minority-majority positions. The results show that the same insights often were treated as both strengths and (potential) weaknesses, and accentuate a needfor support to implement into practice the language-aware educational policy highlighted in the steering documents.