Conference Agenda

While globalisation has increased mobility and demographic developments, technological advancements bridge continents and creating arenas for cultural exchanges. Within the Finnish context, these developments have manifested growing demands for intercultural and linguistic competences as student cohorts and population has become increasingly diverse (e.g., Calenda et al., 2018; Hummelstedt-Djedou et al., 2018). This development can be also seen in the polarisation and populistic tendencies of public arenas and political interactions. Attempts to counter the precautions are slow, but our objectives, strategies, and expectations for higher education institutions call for cultural and linguistic competences understanding diversity.

Even though digital tools and solutions, including AI agents and automated translations, are beneficial in addressing various linguistic and even cultural challenges, there is an increased and almost overwhelming need for increased intercultural and linguistic awareness training in education and professional development (e.g. Helm, 2015). In Finland, the educational field and profession – including pedagogical qualifications – remains protected with restricted access typically granted only through rigorous application processes that have historically required proficiency in Finnish or Swedish (Saarinen, 2014). While importance of national languages has not diminished, quite on the contrary, this creates a dichotomy and division that separates competences and interests while the previously emphasised competences are no longer sufficient in the contemporary environment. For an attempt to create a sustainable society and educational system, we need something more.

Contemporary discussions and developments increasingly emphasise the need for internationalisation and home internationalisation (e.g. Weimer et al., 2019). This has created a slow development in options and offerings that have emerged and are often emphasised and called for in strategy, mission and vision statements of e.g. universities. But still, too many in student populations as well as staff still mistakenly conflate international, intercultural and linguistic competences as something not important for teachers. At times, internationalisation is simply conflated with exchange programs. In a performance-oriented culture, directing our attention, energy, and focus, we need to explicitly address and almost enforce our values and attitudes in policy papers. Especially, if we wish to fill the task to educate students to serve their country and humanity at large as the universities act directs.

As of November 21^st, 2025, the StudyInfo.fi portal lists eight programmes found with search term ‘pedagogical studies’ in English and twenty-four in Finnish. However, these initiatives are often separate and disconnected from one another and especially disconnected from Finnish-medium programmes creating a dichotomy of competences. We talk about diversity but cannot facilitate a genuine interaction and exchange to address and educate competences related to it. This has also been the situation at our university, where long tradition in providing pedagogical training in Finnish exists, but only lately, broader attempts to do same in other linguistic arrangements have emerged. It is important to make a deliberate attempt to critically reflect and rethink, rearrange and even unlearn existing conflated meanings and interpretations relating linguistic and intercultural competences relating internationalisation (e.g. Aarnikoivu et al., 2025).

This study investigates the experiences and interpretations of students in a year-long pedagogical intermediate studies programme that provides teachers qualification in Finland, which utilises a mix of bilingual (Finnish and English), flexible language, and monolingual practices and interactions within one programme. This marks the first occasion on which English-medium instruction and interaction have been introduced to the programme at this level. By employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), aim is to understand the lived experiences and interpretations of students (Hartman & Squires, 2024). The findings will contribute to the educational design and development of this teacher education programme, as well as further elaborate adult pedagogical theory and practice.

This study examines how subject-based instruction contributes to language development and tolerance formation in a multicultural upper secondary classroom within a trilingual educational context. The study addresses the following research questions: How does sustained subject teaching support students’ adaptation to Kazakh-medium instruction? In what ways do subject lessons contribute to the development of tolerance and intercultural understanding in a multilingual classroom?

The research is grounded in theoretical perspectives on content-based language learning and sociocultural theory. Content-based and subject-based language learning frameworks emphasise the integration of language development with disciplinary knowledge, suggesting that academic language emerges most effectively through meaningful engagement with subject content. From a sociocultural perspective, learning is understood as a socially mediated process in which interaction, collaboration, and guided participation play central roles in cognitive and linguistic development.

The study is further informed by theories of intercultural education and value-oriented pedagogy, which highlight the role of schooling in fostering mutual respect, civic responsibility, and inclusive social relations in culturally diverse contexts. Within this framework, tolerance is conceptualised not as a passive attitude but as an outcome of sustained pedagogical practice, reflective dialogue, and structured interaction among learners.

Empirically, the study draws on a longitudinal case study conducted at a Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Kazakhstan. The focal group consists of a Grade 11 class of 23 students from diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Kazakh, Russian, Uyghur, Uzbek, Korean, and Chinese learners. A substantial proportion of the students had not previously studied academic subjects in Kazakh, which initially created linguistic and academic challenges in history, geography, and language lessons.

The European and international relevance of the study lies in its contribution to current debates on multilingual and multicultural education. Across European educational systems, schools increasingly face the challenge of integrating linguistically and culturally diverse learners into mainstream subject instruction. The study offers insights into how subject-based teaching can function as a bridge between language learning and value education, supporting both academic achievement and social cohesion.

By linking teachers’ instructional decisions to students’ evolving linguistic and social outcomes, the study aligns closely with the ECER 2026 theme “Knowing and Acting” and contributes to international discussions on teacher agency, inclusive education, and the transformative potential of subject teaching in multilingual learning environments.

The study presented in this paper is set in one of Europe’s linguistically most diverse regions: Germany’s Ruhr Area in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), where about half of all learners at school age speak a home language other than the language of instruction (LIT NRW 2024). Local demands and the discourse surrounding the necessity to prepare future teachers for multilingual learner groups differ immensely across the globe (Wernicke et al. 2021). In NRW, all pre-service teachers are obligated to attend courses on German as an additional language (GAL) and multilingualism during their university education. This paper addresses a programme for prospective middle school teachers, in which pre-service teachers attend two compulsory modules with an overall workload of 360 hours (12 CP/ECTS). The GAL module typically covers topics such as multilingual and second language acquisition, specialised language (e.g. BICS and CALP), language diagnostics, different approaches and methods of language education or linguistically-responsive teaching (amongst others).

The study is based on an inclusive understanding of multilingualism (Schroedler 2021), including the overall linguistic diversity of learning groups, for example migration related multilingualism, but also register differences within one language. Research shows that especially those learners who struggle to meet the monolingual norms of school systems experience educational inequality (Henschel et al. 2022).

We use Kaiser & König‘s (2019) model of teacher competence as the main reference to describe competence development. This model divides competence into cognitive, affective-motivational competence (beliefs are part of this category) and teaching practice. Borg (2001) describes beliefs as a mental state of propositions. Regarding the change of teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism, there are several studies that report a positive development of beliefs related to teacher education (Kirsch & Aleksić 2018, Schroedler et al. 2023). A number of studies point out that teachers’ beliefs depict a complex personal interweaving (Fives & Buehl 2012). This implies that the development of affective-motivational competence needs to be understood in a more precise manner. From the theoretical and empirical framework described above, we generate the following research question for this paper:

1. How do different facets of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism develop throughout their university education?
2. Which background factors of their (professional) biography affect the development and how?

We assume that pre-service teachers’ competence concerning teaching in multilingual contexts, in particular professional beliefs, become more welcoming towards multilingualism across their teacher education programme. The study aims to create a better understanding of pre-service teachers’ affective-motivational competence development with regard to teaching in multilingual classroom settings. Furthermore, the systematic data collection provides evidence-based information on how the teacher education curriculum can be improved in terms of its components addressing linguistic diversity in education.

Two full cohorts of pre-service teachers (n=504) in a large German teacher education programme participated in four measurements across their five-year university course. Beliefs about multilingualism at school were measured with an instrument by Fischer (2018) that operationalises beliefs in three scales: 1) multilingualism in the home, 2) multilingualism in teaching and 3) teacher responsibility for providing language support (research question one). In addition, correlations between pre-service teachers’ competence development and their biography have been analysed (research question 2).

While all scales’ development between t1 and t3 turns out to be significant, development between t3 and t4 is only significant for scale 2 (question one). The most striking correlation lies between the students’ motivation at t1 and their development of beliefs in scale 2 and scale 3 (question two). The paper will present these results in further detail, critically discuss the findings and relate them to research on teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism in different international settings.