Venekeelsete gümnaasiumide üleminek eesti õppekeelele eesti- ja venekeelses Delfis 2007—2011
Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
The Transition of Russian-language Secondary Schools to Estonian-language Tuition in
Estonian and Russian Delfi 2007—2012.
Keywords: mediaspace, educational change, bilingual education, Russian-language schools,
transition to Estonian-language tuition.
The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis was:
• to compare the manner of how the topic of educational change was mediated in
different mediaspaces, based on the example of Estonian and Russian Delfi;
• to analyse the inner cultural-communicative specialities of two different mediaspaces,
based on the example of the individual understandings of internet commentators in
Estonian and Russian Delfi.
The empirical material consisted of articles and internet comments published both in the
Estonian-language and Russian-language news site Delfi. All articles and comments were
published between 7 June 2007 and 31 August 2011, and they were focused on the transition
of Russian-language schools to Estonian-language tuition. 117 articles in Estonian and 298
articles in Russian met those criteria. I picked 100 articles from Estonian Delfi and 100
articles form Russian Delfi to form a sample for a standardised content analysis. However, I
narrowed the sample even more to analyse the internet comments. I chose eight pairs of
translated articles, which had 477 comments in Estonian and 902 comments in Russian.
According to the results, the coverage of Estonian and Russian Delfi was the bulkiest from
autumn 2010 to summer 2011. During this period particularly, but also in some instances
before, politicians dominated as the main sources in both news sites. The Ministry of
Education and Research, and local government politicians expressed their standpoints the
most. At the same time, the opinions of Russian-language secondary school headmasters,
teachers, students, and parents often remained overlooked.
Both in the articles, and in the internet comments, problems were discussed more often than
advantages in connection with the transition. Furthermore, negative opinions were a little bit
more common in Russian Delfi than in Estonian Delfi. The shortage of Russian-language
secondary school teachers with sufficient Estonian language skills was seen as the main issue.
The strong opposition to the Minister of Education and Research among Russian-language
Delfi’s commentators also indirectly pointed to negativity towards the transistion.
Commentators expected from many other participants of the educational change to adopt the
standpoints of some certain lingual community’s majority. Based on the fulfilment of those
expectations, commentators sometimes concluded, whether those participants wanted to
belong to that community or not. For example, when some Russian-language secondary
school headmasters had agreed to accelerate the transition, it was interpreted, in some
instances, as if the headmasters had turned their back on Russian students, teachers, and
parents, or to their community in general.
To sum up, although, there were various differences between Estonian and Russian Delfi, the
two mediaspaces were not strictly separated, but they also had many similiraties both in their
media coverage and internet comments.