More immigrants studying to become teachers in Finland
Helsinki University doubles quota for multicultural teachers
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Increasing numbers of Finnish residents with foreign backgrounds are to be trained as teachers.
The University of Helsinki is doubling the quota for new students to be taken into the multicultural class teacher training programme next year. A similar scheme is also under consideration to recruit more immigrants to become kindergarten teachers.
The University of Jyväskylä has started a training programme for guidance counsellors with an immigrant background.
The Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK) plans to start a multicultural teachers’ training programme next autumn. "There is definitely demand for it", says Olli Luukkainen, director of the Vocational Teacher Education Unit.
A few polytechnics already offer teachers’ training in English, but at HAMK all teaching is in Finnish.
The aim is to take 20 students of foreign origin to study elementary education. Two assistants have already been hired, one of whom is of Russian origin, and the other is from Iraq.
At the University of Helsinki the multicultural quota was first used in choosing students to train as class teachers in 2002. Each year up to ten new students have been taken into the programme. Now this is being raised to 20.
Applicants are expected to have a language other than Finnish or Swedish as their a mother tongue or home language. Oral and written skills of Finnish should be good.
In other respects, the training programme follows the curriculum for students studying to be class teachers, and those who are chosen through the quota study with the others.
There are now 43 students taking part in the programme. Two of the fastest, who had studied previously, have already graduated, while a few others have also dropped out.
"Perhaps it is the Finnish language that has brought the most difficulty in the training", says Dr. Mirja Talig.
Six students studying at the library of the Department of Education at the University of Helsinki all speak fluent Finnish. They come from a variety of different countries - The Netherlands, Germany, Cambodia, Somalia, and Vietnam.
Most of them have come to Finland already as children and attended school here.
"Finnish was really difficult. I cried many times", recalls Dalen Sok, 23, who came to Finland from Cambodia at the age of six.
Now she is doing well training for the profession of her dreams, although it is sometimes difficult. Sok earns money working as a sales clerk, and teaches her sisters in the evenings.
Although Muong Tran, 25, was not much more than two when he came to Finland from Vietnam, he still remembers how difficult it was to learn the finer details of Finnish grammar.
"When I pop into a class, the pupils are amazed, and half of lesson is spent with them interviewing me", says 23-year-old Ifrah Abdirahman Jama, who came from Somalia in 1990.
He has been a school assistant for a couple of years and has occasionally worked as s substitute teacher.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 20.11.2006 - TODAY |
 More immigrants studying to become teachers in Finland
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