This paper focuses on a subproject of "New Finnish Languages of East Helsinki" project. In this subproject, linguists, community artists, a journalist, and the teacher and her pupils, who were 9–10 years old at the time, collaboratively painted a mural called "Guardians of Languages" on the school wall.
The project was conducted in 2016–2020 in East Helsinki, Finland, in a linguistically diverse primary school. The general aims of the project were to make linguistic diversity visible, enhance language awareness, and develop pedagogical practices for linguistically asymmetrical groups. The project organized some 40 workshops in the spirit of participatory action research, combining sociolinguistic understanding, community art, and the expertise of the teachers and the pupils. The outcomes of the project were not only scientific, but also journalistic, artistic, societal, and educational. One of the outcomes is an open online material to disseminate good practices (Lehtonen et al. 2020). During the project, ethnographic and multimodal data were gathered for research purposes. The data consist of field notes, photographs, and audio and video recordings, as well as interviews with pupils and teachers.
In this paper, we present one of the mural workshop series of the project. The creation of the mural consisted of collaborative multilingual story-telling/poem writing, designing "guardians of languages" as visual characters, painting the poem as well as the characters on the wall, and a closing discussion about the project with the linguists, the artists, the teacher, and the pupils. The creating process of the multilingual poem as well as the closing discussion were audio- and video recorded. In addition, we interviewed the teacher after the project.
We will explore 1) how pupils express and share their expertise of, affiliation to, and attitudes towards languages in the collaborations as well as the closing discussion of the workshop series, and 2) how the teacher evaluates the effects and outcomes of the participation in the project. We will discuss the advantages of participatory action research and creative inquiry for developing linguistically responsive pedagogy and translanguaging spaces in schools. Our analysis shows that the project had positive outcomes for the class: the pupils began to acknowledge diverse linguistic expertises.
LITERATURE
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Lehtonen, H. & H. Niemelä & H. Hänninen & A. Siirtola & R. Räty & V. Pelkonen & V. Hangaslahti & J. Kalliokoski & J. Saarikivi 2020. Monikielisyys näkyväksi, kielitietoutta kaikille! Online material. Finnish National Agency for Education. https://www.oph.fi/fi/opettajille/monikielisyys-nakyvaksi-kielitietoutta-kaikille
