Acknowledging Sámi as indigenous people in early childhood teacher education in Finland – A study in the light of values, knowledge, and competencies

Abstract

The study examines if and how the Sámi, their languages, culture, and rights as indigenous people are acknowledged in early childhood teacher education in Finland. In addition, it assesses what kinds of competencies connected to language, culture and rights are taught in early childhood teacher training programmes and what competencies future teachers need to develop. The data consists of focus group discussions with teacher educators from two universities. The discussions, led by the corresponding authors, included semi-structured questions, analysed using inductive content analysis. The results show that early childhood teacher educators see a discrepancy between the idealistic formulations in the different steering documents and the, at times, more complex real world. While the languages, culture, and rights of the indigenous Sámi people are acknowledged in different courses at both universities, teacher educators find it difficult to have more in-depth discussions because of their position as outsiders and a lack of knowledge. However, they also see the importance of better acknowledging the Sámi and their rights so that future early childhood teachers have a deeper understanding of the Sámi people, linguistic and cultural diversity within Finland, and additional competencies to support children and their identity construction.