The purpose of this study was to investigate how the underlying values of the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 were viewed by English language teachers in Finnish upper elementary schools and how they applied the underlying values in their English teaching. Four teachers were interviewed separately in a semi-structured interview. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed with content analysis.

The teachers expressed clear agreement with the underlying values, and considered them good and respectable. There were some differences of opinion about which underlying values were the most important, but no value was mentioned as bad or harmful in any way by the teachers. The underlying values were considered important enough to be the primary aims of education, but they were not commonly thought about in the daily routine of the teachers. Rather, the values were mainly present in their teaching as a side effect of trying to take pupils into account, planning relevant and diverse lessons, and by trying to be a good role model of an adult for the pupils.

When the values written in the underlying values were discussed explicitly, the discussions were initiated by subject content and the values were considered as a part of the phenomenon in question in ordinary language learning exercises or conversations. Some discussions related to said values were initiated by the pupils’ comments or behaviour. The teaching of the values was limited by inadequate funding for schools, which manifested in large group sizes, a demanding workload for teachers, and inadequate learning materials. Another limitation was the varying capacity of individual pupils and groups to engage in abstract thinking.