The role of linguistics in language teaching: the case of two, less widely taught languages - Finnish and Hungarian

This paper discusses the role of various linguistic sub-disciplines in teaching Finnish and Hungarian. We explain the status of Finnish and Hungarian at University College London and in the UK, and present the principle difficulties in learning and teaching these two languages. We also introduce our courses and student profiles. With the support of examples from our own teaching, we argue that a linguistically oriented approach is well suited for less widely used and less taught languages as it enables students to draw comparative and historical parallels, question terminologies and raise their sociolinguistic and pragmatic awareness. A linguistic approach also provides students with skills for further language learning

Organic and conventional public food procurement for youth in Finland

Public catering in Finland has strong historical roots from the 19th century, connected with the rise of the national state, industrialisation, democracy and modern times in general. The school meal system developed hand in hand with work place meal services, and inherently the aim was to offer lateral support for workers' and pupils' activities by healthy and wholesome nutrition. The public catering had initially a strong label of welfare services and implied economical use of ingredients. Later on, the character of public service of the welfare state was emphasised, as public catering was perceived as a way to promote equality between citizens. The public meal system, and school meal system as part of it, represented not a self-evident and 'natural' developmental path, but can be seen as a result of extensive political, economic and organisational efforts, even fights. Further on, the nutritional and cultural orientations were strengthened when the public school meal system was made a statutory free service for all pupils, first in basic education, and later in secondary education. Today the Finnish welfare state meets the challenge of greying societies and decreasing labour force, and the school meal system, as all public provision systems, in confronted with the trend for increased efficiency and economical operations, including food procurement. Even within these restrictive organisational environments, there is interest in environmentally friendly food and sustainable development by public caterers, municipal officials and politicians of all parties. While the conventional meal system is the prevailing one, there are also movements towards sustainable catering in hundreds of schools around Finland, connected to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) program. The report is produced within the project “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth”, iPOPY, and will be updated and revised during the project period (2007-2010)

Cost-effectiveness of managing Natura 2000 sites: an exploratory study for Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland

Natura 2000 sites are expected to assure the long-term survival of Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats. It follows that successful management of the sites is of great importance. Next to goal attainment, cost-effectiveness is increasingly recognised as a key requirement for gaining social and political acceptance for costly conservation measures. We identify and qualitatively examine issues of cost-effectiveness related to the design and implementation of management measures in Natura 2000 sites in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. Given the wide variety of management design and implementation options within the four countries, our study is purely of an exploratory nature. We derive recommendations for improving the cost-effectiveness of management in Natura 2000 sites and for future research. Examples of policy recommendations include guaranteeing the availability of funds for longer periods, and ensuring the appropriate allocation of funds between the different tasks of designing and implementing management plans. Further research should examine the cost-effectiveness of controversial suggestions such as, for example, more tailored payment schemes for conservation measures that result in higher ecological outputs but are costly to administer. Moreover, more research is needed to better understand how rules for administrations, as well as rules and governance structures for tasks within administrations, should be designed

Tracing Food Education for Sustainable Development in iPOPY countries. Recommendations for learning about sustainability and organic food within educational contexts.

Food Education for Sustainable Development (FESD) is evolving into a topical entity included in education in European countries due to the growing focus on environmental and health problems, which cause a ‘sustainability deficit’ within the food system. This paper presents qualitative and exploratory research results from iPOPY project, carried out in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway regarding FESD and organic food in public food service for young people. The national core curricula in the studied countries seem to allow FESD although it is addressed in school contexts in varying ways through different school subjects; to some extent, the implementation depends on teachers’ other school activities and school food culture. There are teachers who engage in innovative FESD with students, creating new connections between conceptual, practical and experiential education by networking with other teachers and food system actors. Results suggest that pupils and students would achieve more profound learning outcomes if a whole school approach with integrative and coherent educational strategies would be applied and school food culture would be considered from the point of view of SD. The school caterers seem not to be too much involved in FESD but their and their organization’s roles are becoming more important. For successful learning about sustainability and organic food among young people, teachers, caterers, students and school administration have to be included in the process

Evaluating the Impact of Alternative Policy Scenarios on Multifunctionality: A Case Study of Finland. CEPS ENARPRI Working Papers No. 13, 1 July 2005

This paper provides first results of the sector-model approach to analysing the effects of alternative policy scenarios on the multifunctional role of Finnish agriculture. In terms of environmental non-commodity outputs, this study focuses on nutrient runoffs, landscape diversity and biodiversity. As regards other non-commodity outputs, the paper considers rural socio-economic viability. The results suggest that, on the whole, reform of the common agricultural policy is not likely to result in any drastic decline of agricultural production in Finland. The amount of green fallow will increase considerably when agricultural support payments are decoupled from production, and as a result the remaining cultivated agricultural land will become biologically richer. The agricultural labour force is likely to decrease substantially irrespective of agricultural policy. The study concludes that the credibility of the production economics and biological relationships of the economic model determine the validity of the results of the many indicators examined. Further, the economic logic of microeconomic simulation models provides a consistent assessment of the many aspects of multifunctionality

Comparing “cosmopolitanism” : taste, nation and global culture in Finland and the UK

This paper adds a comparative perspective to the study of taste, cosmopolitanism and social organisation. Drawing on material provided by two similar projects in the UK and Finland it explores the relationships between national and cosmopolitan taste cultures. Whilst there have been some recent attempts to study taste in a comparative perspective, the weight of sociological inquiry into taste is focussed on specific national spaces, including the France of Bourdieu’s (1984) seminal contribution. This tendency persists even as the production and circulation of culture is increasingly accepted as global. Global culture is assumed to be the driver of cosmopolitan ways of being, but is also interpreted as a threat to distinct national cultures. Studies of taste provide an empirical setting where the lived experience of global culture and the ambiguities of cosmopolitanism can be observed. Based on interviews and focus group discussions from the UK and Finland, the paper broadly concurs with those critics who see cosmopolitanism in the context of the maintenance of privileged political or symbolic positions of classes/status groups

An analysis of the Graduate Labour Market in Finland: the impact of Spatial Agglomeration and Skill-Job Mismatches

The recent history of Finland has been shaped by the rollercoaster of the 1990s when the economy went from deep recession to becoming among the most innovative and competitive within merely a decade. Economic recovery driven by the surge of ICT-related industries with the active support of the higher education system gave way also to growing inequalities among regions, especially within graduate workers. The paper elaborates an empirical analysis of the returns to education of a cohort entering the labour force between 1995 and 2005; our objective is to capture the extent of spatial and occupational determinants on income distribution as Finland slid from its most troubled to most prosperous times.Regional Development; Earning Distribution; Education and Skills; Spatial Inequalities