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Teaching discipline-specific literacy skills is every teacher's job

Elisa Repo’s key interests are language awareness and language-aware pedagogy. These play a key role in the linguistically and culturally diverse transformation of Finland’s comprehensive school system, which was originally created for a relatively homogeneous population.

Language-aware teaching was added to the curriculum in 2014. In a nutshell, the concept means understanding that all learning takes place through language. Discipline-specific academic literacy skills are learned simultaneously with the content of each subject.

And that is something the schools must still work on, says Repo.

“Language-aware teaching should be part of all subjects and every teacher’s work,” says Repo. 

"Currently, however, language awareness is easily seen as a matter concerning only Finnish teachers, language teachers, or preparatory education teachers.” 

This change would mean, for example, that the teaching of discipline-specific literacy skills should receive more deliberate attention in all subject lessons.

“If a student hasn’t had access to reading texts typical of the language use situations at school, a teacher will also have to think about a lot of other things besides teaching content,” explains Repo. “What types of texts are read and written in the subjects? How do you teach how to find information in texts from different fields? How to anticipate and conclude by interpreting titles, pictures, and diagrams? What is essential information? How to build a good answer or definition of a key concept?”

Repo wants to remind people that only a few teachers have experience in knowing what it’s like to learn Finnish as a new language. That is why language awareness should be part of the training of new teachers to an even greater extent.

Supporting the students is easier when you understand how language learning really works.”

Language-aware teaching supports the development of literacy

The discussion about multilingualism in schools gained momentum in autumn 2024 when the report on the skills of young people with immigrant backgrounds related to the PISA 2022 study was published. The results of the PISA study indicated that the literacy of 15-year-old students with both immigrant and majority population backgrounds had deteriorated. 

Repo says that language awareness and teaching strategies for engaging with texts typical of different fields in various subjects would help develop literacy.

Your own language is an important part of your identity as well as an important resource for learning,” she says.

Teaching can be made to acknowledge students’ diverse linguistic repertoires in many ways:

“There are several good practices,” says Repo. “The student can be guided to familiarize themselves with the upcoming content in their own language even before the lesson, which may help them then learn the new information more meaningfully.” 

“The student can be encouraged to use their entire linguistic repertoire, for example, when working in pairs or during group discussions. The lesson structure should be transparent to the student: when to anticipate, process, and repeat. Other language-aware methods include collaboratively analyzing “model texts”, dividing the texts into parts and negotiating their meanings with the support of peers and teachers.”

Repo also hopes for new learning materials that better support language awareness.

The books already include exercises on the subjectcontent, but alongside these there could also be exercises guiding students to the practice of discipline-specific literacy skills.”

Interest in advocating for diversity led to work abroad

Before finishing her dissertation and starting her postdoctoral research, Repo worked in research and teaching positions in Finland, Germany, China, and the United States.

Her main experiences with language awareness are strongly linked to her time working in these countries. 

In 2014 in the middle of her master’s degree studies, Repo left to work as a teaching assistant at Indiana University Bloomington in the US. It created a strong memory of what it feels like to be a new arrival. 

Suddenly, I became a part of an international community, and at first, I felt extremely confused.  I was truly impressed by how well I was received and got help with practical issues. I also felt like my prior knowledge and skills were taken seriously.”

After returning to Finland, she started as a teacher in a group for preparatory educationin Espoo.There was an urgent need for new groups after the war in Syria brought a lot of new students to Finland at once. With the group, Repo experienced firsthand how important a thoughtful teacher can be for children who have arrived in a new country and culture.

A moving reminder of this was the birthday cake her students had secretly made for Repo. It was waiting for her in the classroom after recess.

“Many teachers have told me similar stories when I have visited preparatory education groups all over Finland to interview teachers for my research. Basically, the students feel that the teacher values their presence at school, is glad to have them there, is on their side, and treats them as intelligent and linguistically talented from the first day they arrive in school.”

Introducing a new way of thinking into Finnish schools

One of the most important realizations related to language awareness came about in California, where Elisa Repo was finishing up her dissertation at the University of California’s Berkeley Language Center in 2022. This is where the way of thinking originates that Repo would now like to see introduced into Finnish schools. 

“Berkeley Language Center’s Director Kimberly Vinall thought-provokingly said that multilingualism is something that needs to be celebrated,” explains Elisa Repo. “It changed my way of thinking. It is more common to view multilingualism as a challenge and something that needs support. I had also viewed it from the perspective of need for a long time.”

Language awareness is not some isolated phenomenon or a “single pedagogical trick”, but a way of thinking that encompasses the whole education system." 

For language-aware pedagogy to be transferred all the way to classrooms, a new type of collaboration between different subject teachers is needed, along with co-developing practices to support literacy skills and multilingualism in school communities, the renewal of learning materials, the involvement of school principals, and integrating language awareness into teacher education and professional learning across disciplines, not just in language-related fields.

In schools, language awareness could be promoted through special teams formed from teachers of different fields, where the focus is on renewing the school’s working culture together. In addition, language awareness could be promoted by implementing more systematic in-service training for all teachers in schools.

Language awareness should also be more visible at schools on a concrete level.

“One example of this was a building, where the school’s strength, multilingualism, was displayed as greetings, texts, and artwork, as well as heard and acknowledged during morning assemblies and school festivities,” says Repo. In such a spirit that we are proud of our diversity, we know and use several languages, and we can create opportunities for students to take on expert roles on their linguistically culturally diverse backgrounds.”