Multicultural Education in Finland: What Does it Mean?

Author(s):

Monica LondenGunilla Holm

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 04B, Intercultural Education Concepts

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-10

16:00-17:30

Room:

B1 113

Chair:

Chris Gaine

Contribution

This study is situated within the framework of critical multicultural education. Even though multicultural education has been promoted for about three decades in the US and Great Britain as well as elsewhere, research shows that the changes towards an implemented multicultural curriculum have been superficial (Sleeter & Grant, 2006; Boutte, 1999; Banks, 2004; Bennett 1999). Many schools have limited their multicultural education to ethnic foods and festivals, but others are asking for a more critical approach that would focus on social justice and structural changes (Sleeter & Grant, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 2004; Sleeter & Bernal, 2004). Some are also calling for an explicit anti-racist curriculum (Thompson, 2002; Kailin 1998-99) Others are arguing that we need to stop focusing on ‘the other’ and also examine whiteness and white teachers’ understandings of themselves and those who are different from themselves. Finland has a very short history of multicultural education and immigration compared to even neighboring countries such as Sweden. Finland’s short history is reflected in the lack of research in the area of multicultural and immigrant education. In a 2002 review of research in the Nordic countries on adolescents with an immigrant background Finland is not even included (Brekke, 2002). There is, however, some recent research on youth and multicultural youth work in Finland, for example Alitolppa-Niitamo’s (2004) study of a class for Somali immigrant students where she explored the difficulties the students experienced as teenagers and having to focus their education in order to catch up with their Finnish peers. The school was also found to be inflexible, normative and assimilative. Multicultural education is important for all students, but can be crucial for immigrant students. Adaptation to school and staying in school are important predictors of a student’s future well-being, and contribution to society (Suaréz-Orozco & Suaréz-Orozco 2001). However, one major problem reported by teachers in Finland is insufficient knowledge about ethnic groups. In addition, research evidence shows that teachers usually lack the skills, and occasionally the motivation necessary to cope with the challenges posed by the increasing heterogeneity. Many teachers have found themselves in multiethnic classrooms with no training or guidance and experience a culture shock. They are consumed with their own coping and cannot therefore see the importance of multicultural education for immigrant students (Talib, 2005). Interestingly so far in the educational debate in Finland multicultural education is discussed only when a school has first or second generation immigrant students. Multicultural education is not seen as necessary for a mostly white, Finnish or Swedish-speaking student population. There is no straightforward discussion in Finland of the importance of race and social class even though it's clear that much of the achievement gap between students could be better understood and decreased if we took race and social class into account (Rothstein, 2004; Sacks, 2007). The research question for this study is: Do the Finnish national curriculum and official policies for the comprehensive school mandate, support or ignore multicultural education? What is meant in the official documents with multicultural education? Our study is framed within critical multicultural education where we include class, gender, race and religion in addition to ethnicity as important components. We consider multicultural education as including the majority population as well (Sleeter & Grant, 2006). In Finland the policy documents are at first glance talk about multicultural education, but it is unclear what is meant by the term. There has been no systematic analysis of these documents so far. We will do a comprehensive analysis of the documents in order to have the results as a basis for examining what is happening at the curriculum level in the schools studied.

Method

We have done a qualitative content analysis of the official national curriculum and of other educational policy documents. We have examined the documents for requirements and recommendations with regard to the education of immigrants as well as with regard to cultural diversity and multicultural education issues for all students in the Finnish comprehensive school (grades 1-9). The national curriculum, all documents about immigrant education and about teacher education from the Ministry of Education as well as local school curricula from 10 cities and towns have been compared and examined. The national policy documents were searched for definitions and uses of multicultural education (the term intercultural education is not used in Finland). The values described as underlying the curriculum as well as all the different subjects were examined for references to and descriptions of issues related to multicultural education. These documents were compared to the local school level where we anticipated more information about the implementation of a multicultural education curriculum.

Expected Outcomes

In the national curriculum (2004) it is mentioned that other cultures need to be taken into account in teaching, for example, literature, but the focus is on the national culture and its place in the European and in particular in the Nordic context. The most recent documents from 2007 outline the need for in-service training for teachers teaching immigrant students and for educating immigrants as teachers of immigrant students. Overall the educational policy documents are now more inclusive of the education of immigrant students than a few years ago. However, so far the policies concern only education for immigrants. Schools in Finland construct their own curriculum based on the national core curriculum and the guidelines provided by the municipal education departments. An analysis of these school curricula indicates that, when mentioned, multicultural education is specifically aimed at immigrant students in order to support their integration into Finnish school and society. It is stated in several places that immigrant students need to be supported in developing and appreciating a bilingual and bicultural identity and a multilingual and multicultural society. However, Finnish students are not required to develop or learn to appreciate a multilingual multicultural society. Thus, there are no policies for a multicultural education for all students or in-service training in multicultural education for all practicing teachers. Hence, Finland is very far from implementing a multicultural or intercultural education. The first step for Finland will be implementing the policies regarding the education for immigrant students.

References

Alitolppa-Niitamo, A. (2004). Somali youth in the context of schooling in metropolitan Helsinki: A framework for assessing variability in educational performance. Journal of Etnich and Migration Studies, 30(1) 81-106. Bourdieu, P. (1997). ”The forms of capital. In A. H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown, & A. Stuart Wells (Eds.) Education, Culture, Economy, and Society, 46-58. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Banks, J. A. & McGee Banks, C. A. (Eds.) (2004). Multicultural education. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass. Bennett, C. I. (1999) Comprehensive multicultural education. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Boutte, G. (1999) Multicultural education. Raising consciousness. Boston: Wadsworth. Duarte, E. M. & Smith, S. (2000) Foundational perspectives in multicultural education. New York: Longman. Brekke, J.-P. (2002). Children and adolescents with an immigrant background. An overview of Nordic research. TemaNord 562. Hatch, A. (2002). Doing qualitative research in education settings. 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Author Information

Monica Londen

University of Helsinki

Department of Education

00014 University of Helsinki

Gunilla Holm

University of Helsinki

Education

University of Helsinki

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