Vertailututkimus opetussuunnitelmien ja opetusmäärien vaikutuksesta ruotsin kielen oppimiseen
A comparison study of the effect of curricula and amount of teaching on learning Swedish
Avainsanat:
ruotsin kielen osaaminen, ruotsin opiskelu, opetussuunnitelmien perusteet, opetussuunnitelmauudistusAbstrakti
Swedish as a second national language is a compulsory subject for all pupils in Finnish-medium basic education and even beyond. In 2016, along with a curriculum reform, learning Swedish was changed to start earlier in Grade 6 instead of the previous Grade 7. Nowadays, pupils study Swedish in four years (Gr. 6–9) instead of three years, but usually still in total 6 weekly lessons. In some municipalities, however, the number of weekly lessons has been raised to a total of 8 in four years. We examined with a Swedish test how pupils’ learning results differ either with an increased number of lessons or with a different number of lessons. We examined pupils’ learning in one school in Helsinki before and after the curriculum reform (6 and 8 weekly lessons), and in one University of Helsinki teacher training school after the reform (6 weekly lessons). The results show that pupils’ Swedish proficiency is on average weak even after the increased number of lessons. The extra hours in the city school have yet supported pupils’ learning, although not in all areas. A slightly larger percentage of pupils in the teacher training school reached the level of good competence compared to the city school, while the situation was exactly opposite with those pupils who exceeded the level of good competence. In a curriculum reform, it would be important to utilize language education research so that the changes support and enhance language learning.
