Our new publication on schoolscape research

With my colleague Petteri Laihonen, we have just published a paper on schoolscape research, focusing on language ideologies and organizational cultures in different sociocultural settings:

Laihonen, P. & T. P. Szabó 2017. Investigating visual practices in educational settings: schoolscapes, language ideologies and organizational cultures. In: M. Martin-Jones & D. Martin (eds.), Researching multilingualism: Critical and ethnographic approaches. Routledge, pp. 121–138.

Book cover from the publisher's website

In our introduction we summarized the aims of the paper as follows:

My new paper on Hungarian schoolscapes

Recently I published a paper on agency and the management of diversity in Hungarian schoolscapes. In this paper I study agency from two points of view. First, I investigate how reflections on the schoolscape help us to reconstruct educational practices and understand the role of various agents (students, teachers, parents, external agents like politicians, publishing companies, etc.) in processes of teaching and learning. Second, I am interested how the researcher's agency influences the fieldwork situation in which we generate the data together with the research participants. I analyze walking tours in four Hungarian school buildings (I wrote about my walking-based method tourist guide technique earlier in another paper as well). 

Multilingual schoolscape – Multilingual learning environment

I co-organize the following workshop – welcome!

Monikielinen koulumaisema – monikielinen oppimisympäristö

Mångspråkigt språklandskap – mångspråkig inlärningsmiljö

Multilingual schoolscape – Multilingual learning environment

We invite you to discuss current issues in the development and research of co-located Finnish and Swedish medium schools in Finland to a workshop at the University of Jyväskylä on 2 December 2016 from 11:00 to 15:30.

Co-located schools (kieliparikoulut/samlokaliserade skolor) are cases where a Finnish and a Swedish medium school have moved together. Currently there are 35–45 such schools in Finland, and their number is growing. We see co-located schools as clear examples of educational institutions where a multilingual learning environment is given. In this workshop we explore good practices and visions of how such cases could be used as a resource for language practice and learning.

Participation is free of charge, the language of the presentations is English.

The registration period is over.

Preliminary program (updated on November 26)

My Marie Curie project report summary is published

I spent two fantastic years with working on my Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship project Finding own words: in the search of non-authoritative education in Hungary between April 2014 and March 2016. The project report got accepted, and the report summary is now published on the website of the European Commission.

The grant brought me to several places and made me more mobile than ever. Locations marked on the map: Finland (Jyväskylä [marked with yellow], Oulu, Turku, Helsinki, Tampere, Vaasa, Joensuu); Hungary (Budapest, Szeged); Norway (Tromsø, Oslo); Estonia (Tallinn); UK (Leeds, Loughborough); Slovakia (Bratislava, Nitra); Austria (Vienna); US (Berkeley, Cal) and Canada (Calgary)

Opening Learning Environment: the school of the future

"We invite you to explore the new premises of Valteri Centre for Learning and Consulting, Onerva which manifests how teachers, students and architects created the school of the future which makes education accessible for all" – this was the invitation to a program I co-organized at the science popularization event Researchers' Night on 30 September. 

The logo of Researchers' Night (in Finnish: Tutkijoiden yö; in Swedish: Forskarnatten)

My guest post on TLANG blog: gaining new approaches to the study of school environments

The UK research blog TLANG blog invited me to summarize my visit to the University of Leeds in December 2016 and I was happy to write about contemporary approaches to the study of school environments. TLANG is the title of a research project and stands for Translation and Translanguaging: Investigating Linguistic and Cultural Transformations in Superdiverse Wards in Four UK Cities. Team members summarized their main goals on the blog as follows:

We will look closely and over time at language practices in public and private settings in Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, and London. We will investigate how communication occurs (or fails) when people bring different histories and languages into contact. Outcomes will impact on policy on economic growth, migration, health and well-being, sport, cultural heritage, and law, by informing the work of policy-makers and public, private and third sector organisations. 

My impressions from the Leeds campus

In Leeds, I gave two invited presentations on schoolscape research and had very inspiring meetings with TLANG team members James Simpson, Mike Baynham, John Callaghan, Jolana Hanusova, Jessica Bradley and Emilee Moore De Luca. I enjoyed their company and received insightful feedback on my work which helped me a lot. I hope I can visit them again soon.

Here you can read my post:

8th Linguistic Landscapes International Workshop, Liverpool

I attended the 8th Linguistic Landscapes International Workshop from 27 to 29 April 2016 at the University of Liverpool. The workshop was organized around the keywords regeneration, revitalisation and re-territorialisation. The event included more than forty presentations so I decided not to report on all of them. Rather I focus on issues that seem to be the most relevant to my own research: agency in the linguistic landscape and methodological developments in linguistic landscape studies. In brief, I am interested in what, who and how contributes to the creation and interpretation of linguistic landscapes in various societal settings, including research encounters and academic discussions.

Liverpool's Albert Dock as seen from the Ferris wheel

Exploratory Workshop for Participatory Visual Methods

I was among the organizers and presenters of the first Exploratory Workshop for Participatory Visual Methods at our university. The full-day workshop was held on 13 May 2016 as a cooperation of researchers from the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, the Centre for Applied Language Studies and the Department of Languages. Six papers, three exhibitions and 77 registered participants were included in discussions of societally engaged scholarly work. By the end of the day, the significance of the relationship between researchers and participants was underlined. That is, visual methods do not only explore stories about the people investigated, but also reflect on the researcher's position.

An attractive poster invited the attendees to the venue

My article on university language policies

I wrote an article about my lived experiences with some tensions between de iure and de facto language policies at my university from an international staff member point of view. I often experience that international researchers with limited proficiency in Finnish are excluded from discussions at meetings and various other events. I summarized my goals with the article as follows:

Managing a huge multilingual workplace such a university is [...] challenging. However, negotiating language policies and implementing them in a flexible way would make the barriers between the 'Finns' and the 'international staff' less visible and would create a working environment that is much more comfortable for everyone included in our academic community. I hope that sharing my experience invites others to tell theirs so that we can initiate or extend such negotiations.

Concluding 'Finding own words': a dissemination seminar

My Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship project has arrived to its closing phase. Now it is time to summarize the results and the most important lessons learnt from planning and implementation. With my colleagues, we organized a seminar on 23 March to share our experiences with the project. The event was part of the seminar series From researcher to researcher organized by our university's Research and Innovation Services.

I open the seminar

My trilingual post on Kone Foundation's Boldness blog

I happily accepted the invitation of Kone Foundation's Boldness blog to write about my work on the management of linguistic diversity, with a special regard to my position as a researcher in a minority position. The text was published today in English, Hungarian and Finnish.

A week of schoolscapes: discussions in Tallinn, Helsinki and Jyväskylä

Between 12 and 17 November, I had a great time filled with exciting discussions about schoolscapes. I gave a guest lecture in Tallinn, I led a colloquium together with my colleague Petteri Laihonen in Helsinki, and I presented a conference paper in Jyväskylä. It was very intriguing to think together about the importance of materiality in teaching and learning from various perspectives at three locations.

A view of Tallinn's Old Town

My new article: Researcher ideologies and the dilemma of getting involved “on the field”

I published an article in Hungarian in an edited volume which targets general audience and provides insights into the theory and methodology of different linguistic fields, including applied language studies. Building on my own experience, my self-reflective contribution analyzes the processes of carrying out fieldwork and writing up research papers. Papers based on own fieldwork data raise questions concerning the retelling of lived experiences in a structured order, for certain purposes. 

Ten days in Norway. Part 1: before the workshop

I feel privileged that I could spend ten inspiring and refreshing days in Norway. First I spent a week in Tromsø and then a couple of days in Oslo. This visit gave me a great opportunity for summarizing what I’ve already done in my Marie Curie project, and I also could make some plans for the future. The visit was focused around a two-day international research workshop ‘Contextualizing linguistic diversity in institutional settings’ I organized together with Prof. Hilde Sollid and Florian Hiss at the University of Tromsø – the Arctic University of Norway. In the first part of my post I share what happened before the workshop. In the second part I will write about the topics and discussions of the workshop, and I will write about my Oslo experience as well.

Tromsø harbor

Back to Norway!

Yesterday I arrived to Tromsø for a week. As I mentioned in another post, we organize a two-day workshop with my colleagues, Prof. Hilde Sollid and Florian Hiss on 8–9 October. I'm happy to be here again!

The first morning view of Tromsø from my hotel

My article in the journal of the Finnish Network for Language Education Policies

I happily received the invitation of the editors of Kieli, koulutus ja yhteiskunta (Language, Education and Society) to share my research experience in Finland. In the article that has just been published, I summarize how "moving to Finland two years ago had given new push to my work". In the lead paragraph of the article, I summarized the main changes in my work:

I have been studying Hungarian education for about thirteen years and I have been addressing the general public with popularizing materials for nearly five years now. However, in Finland these activities become more complex than in my native country. Here, I wish to discuss how my research found larger and larger contexts in two steps: first, by starting to make my research available to wider audiences in Hungary, and second, by turning my focus to an international environment. I claim that these two types of re-contextualization are not only beneficial for me as a researcher personally but also serve the researched communities as well as teachers and other practitioners in a rich way.

Learn more about the journal and the network which publishes it after the photo!

Linguistic Landscape 7 Workshop in Berkeley. Part 2

As promised in the first part of my Berkeley notes, I now share some of my perceptions about the town and the nearby metropolis, San Francisco. I was lucky that I could spend some time before and after the conference with sightseeing. The organizers were also very nice and organized a bus trip to the Muir Woods National Monument; there we could spend great time with a handful of participants. Of course my ears and eyes were wide open for linguistic experiences during my whole trip, especially because it was my first time ever in the States.

Golden Gate Bridge, the ultimate symbol of the Bay region – and probably the inspiration behind the LL7 logo.

Unfortunately I can't reproduce here the audible linguistic diversity that surrounded me, but I can share a couple of pictures about various languages, scripts and semiotic practices that were interesting for me. I also liked the nature, and meeting the Pacific Ocean was a stunning moment of my life. So, let's see the pics!

Linguistic Landscape 7 Workshop in Berkeley. Part 1

In May I had the pleasure to attend the 7th Linguistic Landscape Workshop at the University of California, Berkeley. Since I use the Linguistic Landscape (LL) approach extensively in my research on education-related ideologies, I was happy to learn about new developments in the field. Listening to the presentations, I found two recurring topics being especially relevant for my studies. First: what is the role of the researcher in the documentation and analysis of linguistic landscapes? As it is a field where thousands of photos and videos are analyzed day by day, the question emerges both in a practical sense (how to choose the angle, the scope, the format, etc. for the image we will analyze) and at a theoretical level (what frameworks and analytical methods are available and appropriate for our studies). Secondly, I think numerous contributions made very good points in connection with the relationship between the researchers and the researched communities, raising issues of ethics and social impact. Last but not least, since this was my first visit in the States ever, and I got excited of the cultural heterogeneity I experienced during this wonderful week (but more about this will come in the second part of this post).

Part of the Berkeley campus and the town as seen from the top of Sather Tower or Campanile, a symbol of the university. My image.

Instead of giving a full report, now I try to present some of the ideas that inspired me the most. As you could notice, the workshop was not yesterday, so I had time to think over a couple of issues in the past months.

The papers were presented in three parallel sessions, so it was impossible to listen to all of them. But, thanks to the organizers, you can read a lot about the papers and discussions on a collaborative writing space that contains even photos and handouts. You can also read all the abstracts online.

Contextualizing Linguistic Diversity in Institutional Settings

I am pleased to announce that we are preparing a workshop with two colleagues in Tromsø. In 2013, I presented a paper in Tromsø at the Tromsø International Conference on Language Diversity. There we had very illuminating discussions with Prof. Hilde Sollid who invited me next year to a panel on language ideologies in the classroom at the 20th Sociolinguistics Symposium. As a continuation of our cooperation, I will spend a week in Tromsø this October. The visit includes lectures, a data seminar and the two-day workshop 'Contextualizing Linguistic Diversity in Institutional Settings' that we have just announced and organize together with Hilde and her colleague, Florian Hiss.

Please consider our call for papers that follows after the image!

As I saw Tromsø during my first visit in 2013

Learning Finnish in the sauna

When I arrived to Finland in August 2013, I immediately started to learn Finnish. First I took the staff course 'Survival Finnish', but I was looking for other opportunities as well.


When I went to swimming pools in Hungary, I always liked to take sauna, so from the second day of my stay I regularly went to the public saunas of Kortepohja student village. I'm really happy that I gathered a couple of friends there so I find a good company whenever I go to sauna. Our university has many exchange students and researchers from abroad, so the sauna is a real multicultural place where I always enjoy listening to many languages.

Illustration from the University Yearbook: I, enjoying sauna. – Photo: Petteri Kivimäki (http://www.kamera-petteri.fi/) 

At the beginning, I basically communicated in English, but then I started to use more and more Finnish. Now I have a couple of friends who encourage me in learning Finnish: I can learn a lot from our conversations. However, I think that the situation in itself that I'm exposed to an enormous amount of Finnish talk around me can help me greatly.