Luokanopettajaopiskelijoiden käsityksiä äidinkielestä oppiaineena

This article examines language awareness and beliefs of primary teacher students in their first academic year. In this study, language awareness is understood as explicit knowledge about language, and as conscious perception and sensitivity in the learning and use of a language when the language is both a medium of learning and the target of it. The data come from questionnaire surveys based on samples of students (n = 152). The aim of the survey is two-fold because it reflects students’ language awareness as it took shape during their school years and informs us about their language-related knowledge, attitudes and beliefs at the beginning of academic studies. Our findings indicate that first-year teacher students consider the school subject Mother tongue and literature as useful and, to a large extent, also interesting. Students seem to be rather grammar-oriented and they value written skills over oral ones. Finally, we discuss what kind of school teaching the results reflect as well as the challenges of developing teacher education to support the raising of teacher students’ metalinguistic awareness