| Abstract [eng] |
This thesis is dedicated to analyse the importance of preserving one's mother tongue in forced migration and the factors influencing migrants' choice to learn or not to learn the national language of the host country. The study aims to reveal the attitude of Lithuanian education experts towards Ukrainians education in Lithuania, assessing the teaching of the Lithuanian state language and the provision of opportunities to learn the native Ukrainian language in Lithuanian educational institutions. The origins of language are analysed based on the ideas of symbolic interactionism theorists – George H. Mead, Herbert Blumer, and Charles H. Cooley, where language is described as one of the three basic aspects of communication, inseparable from meaning and thought. The communicative value of language is discussed as a tool for the formation of the concept of self in social relations with others, which changes accordingly when comparing society's view of the self with the individual's view of the self. Changes in the mother tongue in migration are evaluated in light of possible risks to the child's neurophysiological and socio-emotional development and the national-cultural identity of migrants. The role of the mother tongue in the child's cognitive development is discussed based on Jean Piaget's four stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. An analysis of studies carried out in the field of bilingual education provides an overview of the differences in pupils' academic performance when the opportunity to continue learning their mother tongue is retained during migration. The motivation of migrants to learn the national language of the host country is analysed by assessing how knowledge of the national language affects the success of migrants' integration in the country, how the first language contacts in the host country and the possibility to communicate in another (non-national) language can change migrants' motives. In this context, the possible risks of isolation of migrants in closed communities are assessed. The thesis discusses alternatives of Ukrainian education in Lithuania and in the two countries that have received the largest number of Ukrainian migrants in Europe – Poland and Germany. The case of Ukrainians in Lithuania is reviewed based on Bourdieu's description of social and cultural reproduction in educational environment. The qualitative research accomplished using a semi-structured interview methodology is based on the perspective of Lithuanian education experts. The educational decisions taken in Lithuania to educate Ukrainians are discussed in terms of their fairness in human and formal terms. It discusses the opportunities for Ukrainians in Lithuania to learn in their mother tongue and the mismatch between their mother tongue and the state language. This study reveals the necessity for Ukrainians to learn Lithuanian with the most appropriate learning methodologies. |
