Preschool teacher’s evaluation on non-native children’s coping in Estonian-speaking kindergarten and preschool teacher evaluation of their own overall preparedness to handle

language teaching.

Lehte Tuuling

Tallinn University Rakvere College

Riga 31st of July 2008

General information

Official language Estonian Capital Tallinn Area 45 226 km² Population 1 342 409 (01.01.2007) Government parliamentary republic President Toomas Hendrik Ilves Prime minister Andrus Ansip Currency crown (EEK) Time zone EET (UTC +2) National anthem Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm

Administrative regions

The Republic of Estonia is divided into fifteen counties (Maakonnad) which are the administrative subdivisions of the country. The first documented mentioning of Estonian political and administrative subdivisions comes from the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, written in the 13th century during the Northern Crusades.

Some facts

There are currently 33 cities and several town-parish towns in the county. More than 70% of the entire population lives in the towns.

Estonia has been a member of the United Nations since 17 September 1991, of the European Union since 1 May 2004, and of NATO since 29 March 2004.

With only 1.3 million inhabitants, it comprises one of the smallest populations of the European Union countries.

Some facts

Estonia is a culturally diverse society, more than 120 different ethnicities are represented here.

One third of our population is made up of people of ethnicity other than Estonian.

The Estonian school system

Estonian children must go to school from the age of 7 to 17.

Most children go to a nursery school or preschool before they start school.

Population of EstoniaEstonians 921,062 68.8%

Russians 344,280 25.6%

Ukrainians 28,158 2.1%

Belarussians 16,134 1.2%

Finns 11,035 0.8%

Tatars 2,487 0.2%

Latvians 2,216 0.2%

Poles 2,216 0.2%

Lithuanians 2,077 0.1%

Jews 1,900 0.1%

Germans 1,900 0.1%

Others 9,084 0.7%

Non natives make up nearly 30% of the population of Estonia.

10% communicate in Estonian only, 48% communicate in several languages 40% communicate in Russian only

In recent years more and more people who do not speak Estonian as a native language have considered it important to learn Estonian. (84% of adults).

National integration policy

Since the year 2000 the basis for the integration policy has been:

1. The State Programme "Integration in Estonian Society 2000-2007“

2. Estonian Integration Strategy 2008-2013

Integration in Estonian society is shaped by two processes:

the social harmonization of society around a strong common national core based on knowledge of the Estonian language and Estonian citizenship

the opportunity to maintain ethnic differences based on the recognition of the cultural rights of ethnic minorities

The following aims was long-term in nature - fully achievable later than 2007:

Linguistic-communicative integration, i.e. a common sphere of information and the re-creation of an Estonian-language environment in Estonia under conditions of cultural diversity and tolerance

Legal-political integration, i.e. the formation of a population loyal to the Estonian state and the

reduction of the number of persons without Estonian citizenship

Socio-economic integration, i.e. the increased competitiveness and social mobility of every member of Estonian society

Estonian Integration Strategy 2008-2013The Integration Strategy is aimed at reaching a situation by the year

2013, in which: Estonian-language proficiency has improved at all levels among

people whose native language is not Estonian (In 2005 22% of 15- to 74-year-olds consider their language skills to be good, 25% regarded it average, 29% poor and 24% could not at all speak Estonian)

The share of people with undetermined citizenship among Estonia’s population has consistently decreased (In 2007 they made up 9% of Estonia’s population) The majority of people whose native language is not Estonian regularly get information from Estonian-language media and trust it (In 2005 26% of people of other nationalities regularly consumed Estonian-language media)

Differences in the employment rate and incomes of employees of different nationalities have decreased (In 2007 31% of Estonians and 19% other nationalities held senior and managerial positions; 35% of Estonians and 53% of other nationalities were employed as skilled or unskilled )

Pre-school education

Goals of the field for the year 2013: 90% of children whose native language is

other than Estonian have the opportunity to participate in Estonian-language studies in kindergarten, pre-school and other children’s institutions (In 2007 75% of children has access to Estonian language training)

A few important activities:

teachers and principles of Estonian and Russian medium schools will participate in training in multicultural education;

some 3-5 new kindergartens and schools will join the language immersion programme every year,

all teachers and heads of schools Russian medium school will pass courses in the Estonian language,

the annual support of about 150 cultural societies of ethnic minorities and 15 Sunday schools will continue,

Things done on a national level

In 2002, a research was conducted to chart the situation in teaching Estonian for pre-school children. The report  pinpoints shortcomings in the methods, resources and available study materials. 2005/2006 a new research was conducted to compare the results.

2003 – 2005 within the framework of the public procurement contract, “Creating the Bases for the Teaching of Estonian as a Second Language in Pre-schools and the Training of Instructors”, was prepared training models and compiled the materials for teachers and children.

Materials

The teaching programme for Estonian as a second language for pre-school children

The teaching module of the curriculum for the basic training of pre-school teachers of Estonian as a second language

The curriculum for supplementary training of teachers of Estonian for pre-schools

Materials

The description of an environment that promote the study and teaching of Estonian as a second language in pre-schools and the description of support materials of its creation

The description of a model regional language training centre

Study materials for pre-school children for learning Estonian as a second language and the accompanying teacher’s book

The study materials for conducting the basic and supplemental training of teachers of Estonian as a second language for pre-school children.

An inadequate integration of numerous non-native speakers is the most complicated political and cultural problem that is affecting the independent Republic of Estonia. The process of integration has been researched a lot; the most important question is how the language environment affects children’s integration and the acquisition of the Estonian language .

A big responsibility in making the integration policy work falls on the pre-school teachers. They are the first ones who introduce Estonian as a second language and also the Estonian culture.

In our College we have done several studies to find out how preschool teachers perceive their overall preparedness to handle language teaching.

    Kindergartens Child

2006 Nursery 10 446

  Kindergarten 510 52574

 Private

kindergarten 3 135

 Kindergarten –

primary school 21 536

 

Kindergarten – elementary school 58 2416

    523 56107

County State owned Private

  Work language Work language  

Estonian RussianEstonian-

Russian Estonian RussianHarju County

127 33 21 16 2

Hiiu County6 1

Ida-Viru County11 33 14 1

Jõgeva County 20 2

Järva County 21

Lääne County 19

Lääne-Viru County 26 1 1

Põlva County 17 1

Pärnu County 41 3

Rapla County 32

Saare County 17 2

Tartu County 47 2 7 4

Valga County 17 2 1

Viljandi County 34 1

Võru County 18  

TOTAL 453 68 50 27 3

Estonian is being thought as a second language in kindergartens by:

Regular teaching – The teaching programme for Estonian as a second language for pre-school children (2–5) times a week, which, if possible is integrated with other learning.

Teaching Estonian in class of immersion language – more than half of teaching is done in Estonia. 5 year old children start learning Estonian during every day activities and games. The teacher speaks only Estonian.

Bilingual teaching – One teacher communicates with the children in their native language and another in Estonian.

Several forms of teaching are often used in the same kindergarten. For example some groups use the immersion technique while others follow the regular teaching programme.

Also kindergartens that have bilingual groups use the regular teaching programme.

Pre-school teachers readiness to teach non Estonian speakers

36,7%

3,3%50,0%

10,0%

ja

ei

mõningal määral

muu

Estonian speaking teachers readiness to teach Estonian as a second language.

yes20%

no15%to some extent

65%

yes

no

to some extent

Training teachers have received for teaching Estonian as a second language in Rakvere.

16,7%

60,0%

21,7%

1,7%

ja

ei

mõningal määral

muu

Training teachers have received for teaching Estonian as a second language in Valga

yes8%

no92%

to some extent0%

yes

no

to some extent

Pre-school teachers self evaluation on teaching Estonian as a second language

10

28

2

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1 2 3 4 5

I manage well

I manage well, but I needadditional training

I could not handle it very well

Conclusion

The research results show that: kindergarten teachers are ready for working with

children with other native language; kindergarten teachers do a lot of individual work with; teachers decorate kindergarten walls with labels,

names, sentence, etc and they also apply many aids for teaching the foreign language;

teachers use materials and teaching aids meant both for teaching Estonian as a native language and a second language.

Conclusion

Teachers cooperate with parents and evaluate their support as satisfactory;

In the teachers opinion the optimal number of non native speakers in a group is 3;

Teachers expect that their workload will increase when teaching non native speakers but not by a lot.

Conclusion

There are only few kindergarten teachers who have received special education on language teaching. However, they try to get more useful information from their colleagues, from libraries or media.

Many kindergarten teachers claim that they need more education and new knowledge.

Thank You!

lehte@tlu.ee