Teachers' beliefs related to language choice in immigrant students' homes

This study investigates how Finnish teachers regard immigrant families' home language policies. Of the teachers who responded, 53.3% believed it best for parents to speak their first languages at home, and 31.7% believed that both first language and language of instruction should be used at home. A minority of the teachers believed that only Finnish should be spoken at home. The teachers' justifications for their beliefs reflected Ruiz's (1984) orientations in language planning: language-as-right, language-as resource, and language-as-problem, with most teachers oriented toward language-as-resource. Thus, many teachers' beliefs align with the current educational stance of supporting multilingualism. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

The study found that a majority of Finnish teachers believe parents should speak their first languages at home, supporting multilingual education. Teachers' justifications reflect different orientations towards language as right, resource, and problem.