The Finnish National Agency for Education and the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre organised a half-day workshop for subject teachers of history and mathematics  in connection with the ECML’s Language in subjects project. In total 28 teachers, school administrators and other professionals working with 12/13-year-old students participated. 

The purpose of the workshop was to discuss the language challenges teachers encounter in their classes and to give teachers of different subjects concrete tools to design language aware teaching.

The participants’ feedback showed that subject teachers need training and examples of good practices to be able to better take into account students with learning difficulties caused by insufficient skills in the language of schooling. The issues raised will be further discussed in the network meeting Language in subjects organised in October 2018 in Graz.

Marita Härmälä,
coordinator of the ECML project "Language in subjects"