The study focused on cultural, contextual, and gender differences in children's peer talk. Same-sex dyads of Estonian (n = 38), Finnish (n = 38), and Swedish (n = 34) preschool age children were videotaped during unstructured and structured play settings. We found only one gender difference in children's talkativeness and in the use of regulatory speech: during free play, Swedish boys used more imperatives per directives than Swedish girls. At the same time there were significant cultural and contextual differences. Estonian children were most directive and Swedish children were least directive. Finnish children were less directive than Estonian children but more directive than Swedish children. It was concluded that cultural and contextual factors strongly influence the likelihood, extent, and nature of gender differences in peer talk.

In recent years, Finnish research-based teaching, according to international surveys, has been shown to lead to excellent results. Previous research has demonstrated that teacher education has often had difficulties in incorporating theory into practice, and that the effects of teacher education on the prior beliefs and views on teaching and learning of student teachers have been weak. The aim of the present qualitative study was to find out how the Finnish teacher education system deals with these problems by investigating the current goals Finnish teacher educators have for their own teaching in theoretical courses. A total of 18 teacher educators were interviewed in five focus groups on different teacher education programmes in Finland. The interview results showed that Finnish teacher educators transmit theoretical and pedagogical aspects by using them in their own teaching, which is research-based. They also aim to educate reflective and exploring teachers by using a variety of methods in their own pedagogy. The exemplary role the Finnish teacher educators have can be helpful in influencing prospective teachers' behaviour and thinking.

The present study compares preschool children in Finland, Estonia and Sweden regarding linguistic structures with which children in dyads elicited talk from each other in a naturalistic play activity Nineteen Finnish (mean age 5.1), 19 Estonian (mean age 5.4) and 17 Swedish (mean age 5.1) same-sex pairs were video-recorded by a native researcher Analyses of the results showed that children in different groups produced quite a similar number of utterances and eliciting talk structures. The Swedish and Finnish children used most yes-no questions, whereas the Estonian children had the highest occurrence of open questions. Imperative as well as elliptic structures were used by the Finnish children to a significantly higher extent than by the Swedish children. In summary, the groups differed less from each than was predicted on the basis of adult-child interaction. The results suggested that the symmetrical child-child free play context affected the choice of eliciting talk structures.

In the present study, the child-rearing goals of mothers of 4- to 6-year-old children from Estonia, Finland, and Sweden were compared. The developed Child-Rearing Goals Questionnaire consisted of three different tasks: open-ended questions, item rating, and item ranking. All mothers were similar in valuing highly self-maximization, but differed in emphasis on traditional child-rearing goals (e.g., conformity, obedience, politeness, being hard-working, etc.). The Swedish mothers tended to stress the characteristics connected with self-maximization as well as self-confidence and children's happiness, but did not value the traditional child-rearing goals. The Estonian mothers attached a great significance both to the traditional characteristics and to self-maximization. The Finnish mothers also stressed both traditional and non-traditional values, but to a lesser extent than the Estonians. The Swedish and Finnish mothers' child-rearing goals were relatively homogeneous. In contrast, the Estonian mothers were generally less focused on any specific goal. Mothers with a lower level of education stressed traditional goals more than mothers with a higher level of education. The results are discussed in the light of the possible effect different cultural contexts have on maternal child-rearing goals: bringing up children in stable welfare societies (such as Sweden and Finland) in contrast to a rapidly changing society (such as Estonia).

The purpose of this study was to examine whether there are cultural differences in topic organization and role-related topic control in dinner conversations; such differences may function as a means for socialization into communicative styles. The research was designed as a comparative study of two geographically close but linguistically very different ethnic groups: Swedes and Finns, including Finns in Sweden as an intermediate group. Previous research has shown Swedes to generate more talk and to produce considerably shorter pauses than Finns. Furthermore, previous studies have indicated that lengthy pauses often precede topic changes. Empirical data were collected by video recording conversations in each of the three cultural groups: 11 Finnish families in Finland, 11 Finnish immigrant families in Sweden, and I I Swedish families in Sweden. Due to the shared setting, the conversations displayed many similarities, but there were also some intercultural differences. The main result was that the Swedish family dinner discourse was significantly more encyclopedic and coherent than the Finnish and Swedish-Finnish one. The findings support the hypothesized connection between pausing and topic organization. The mothers in each group were most active in controlling topic development.

The current study examined maternal control of children across families with early adolescents from different sociocultural backgrounds. The intention was to find out whether belonging to the same ethnic group/language community (i.e., Estonian or Finnish) is more important for determination of child-rearing attitudes and practices than sharing the immediate sociocultural context (i.e., Swedish society). In addition, attention was paid to the relationship between attitudes and behaviour. The results were obtained from three monocultural samples of Estonian, Swedish, and Finnish families living in their country of origin; two bicultural samples consisted of Estonian and Finnish families residing in Sweden. Two types of data-mothers' reported attitudes towards the importance of control over children's behaviour (the Control Scale) and video-recorded real-life verbal behaviour-were used to determine how the mothers' attitudes towards control relate to the behavioural control exhibited in their real-life interactions. The study showed that the Finno-Ugric mothers living in their countries of origin controlled their children's behaviour significantly more frequently than those Finno-Ugric mothers who live in Sweden, but both Estonian samples outperformed Finns in their reported control attitudes. The Swedish mothers were the least directive among monocultural mothers both in maternal beliefs and in real-life behaviour, but they differed from Estonian and Finnish mothers residing in Sweden only in their lower scores on the Control Scale. The study revealed that mothers' real-life control behaviour corresponded rather modestly to their reported attitudes toward the importance of controlling children. Analyses of actual mother-child interaction showed that only the Estonian mothers living in Estonia actually put their relatively high scores on the Control Scale into practice in real-life interactions with their children. Finally, some characteristics of Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish languages and cultures are discussed that might determine the cultural differences in child rearing that emerged.

The aim of this study was to compare some verbal characteristics of family interaction in the stereotypically tongue-tied Nordic region of the Western world. To this end we compared mothers' and early adolescents' talkativeness and monologuing and mothers' conversational dominance emerging in real-life video recordings in Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mono- and bilingual families. All these nations have been characterized by previous research as "silent" and less talkative than other nations. The present study found that the Swedish mothers living in Sweden were talkative, as were the adolescents from Swedish monolingual and Swedish-Estonian bilingual families. In all measures of the amount of speech the mothers and adolescents from monolingual Estonian and Finnish families did not differ. According to our results, little talk seems to be characteristic of Finno-Ugric people, and the rate may be decreasing over time under the influence of a more talk-oriented cultural context.