Special issue of Estonian Journal of Education focuses on early second language instruction and promoting language skills

On 1 November, the special issue of Estonian Journal of Education (Eesti Haridusteaduste Ajakiri) will be published, focusing on early second language instruction and promoting language skills in kindergarten and school.

Multilingualism has become the norm, and acquiring a second language is as natural a process as learning a first language. In the opening article, Annick De Houwer, long-time President of the International Association for the Study of Child Language and Professor emerita at the University of Erfurt, highlights the importance of achieving harmonious bilingualism in early childhood education.

Four articles examine the transition to Estonian-language instruction in Estonia’s early childhood education institutions, which began in 2024. Natalja Gusjuk, Maire Tuul and Tiia Õun explore the expectations, challenges, and concerns of preschool leaders, teachers, and parents in institutions with Russian or Estonian-Russian language of instruction regarding this transition. Anne-Mai Meesak and Krista Uibu present the development process of 101 language learning games created through a collaborative project between the institutes of education of Tallinn University and the University of Tartu, along with preschool teachers’ ratings of the games. Mare Kitsnik and Lili Kängsepp-Puun investigate the potential of gamified language learning in their article “Developing children and young people’s Estonian as a second language speaking skills through gamified active learning”. Anna Maria Ülviste, Kristiine Suurorg, Roman Balõtšev,Marika Padrik and Triin Peek assess the suitability of the questionnaire “Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six” (FOCUS) for identifying Estonian children’s communication difficulties in various communication situations.

Three articles address the development of language skills in primary and secondary schools. Piret Baird, Reili Argus and Kristiina Bernhardt present the results of a test on the use of grammatical categories and phrase types among 7–9-year-old children, analysed across different language learning models used at schools. In the article “Why could the first foreign language in Estonia be Finnish and Estonian in Finland?”, Lecturer of the University of Helsinki Annekatrin Kaivapalu discusses the experiences of Estonian primary and secondary school students learning Finnish and Finnish secondary school students learning Estonian. Mare Kitsnik and Victoria Toome examine students’ and teachers’ evaluations of active learning methods used in an intervention study in their article “Film-based communicative teaching of Estonian as a second language: supporting the interest, active participation, and development of basic school students”.

The special issue on early second language learning concludes with a presentation of the 2024 book The Ecological Perspectives in Early Language Education: Parent, Teacher, Peer, and Child Agency in Interaction by Professor Mila Schwartz from Oranim Academic College of Education in Israel. The book builds on language ecology, human ecology theory, and the concept of agency in language learning, and highlights the interdependent nature of ecological factors influencing early language learning and education.

The editors of the special issue are Professor of Primary Education Krista Uibu (University of Tartu), Professor of Estonian Language Reili Argus (Tallinn University) and Associate Professor of Estonian as Foreign Language Mare Kitsnik (University of Tartu). The next special issue will be published in May 2026, focusing on international cooperation in Estonian educational sciences.

The journal is published by the University of Tartu Press in the open-access publishing environment Open Journal Systems. The online edition and information for authors are available at eha.ut.ee.