Abstract 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… Click to show full abstract
Abstract 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.
               
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