Schools in Finland are becoming increasingly diverse in terms of students’ cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. At the same time, 98.4 percent of teachers working in early childhood education, basic education and general upper secondary education come from families in which both parents were born in Finland (Kosunen et al., in press). Hence, there is a growing need to pay attention to the emerging mismatch between teachers’ and students’ backgrounds to ensure that all students, regardless of their backgrounds, have equal access to educational opportunities and safe learning environments.

In this study, subject teachers’ perceptions of diversity are examined through the concept of cultural humility. The concept of cultural humility was originally developed in medical education, as there was a growing need to raise medical staff’s awareness of patients’ diverse cultural backgrounds and the asymmetrical power relations between professionals and patients (Tervalon & Murray-García, 1998). The aim was to distinguish cultural humility from cultural competence, which refers to the acquisition of superficial and stereotypical knowledge about other cultures, and to stress the importance of medical professionals’ lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and critique (Tervalon & Murray-García, 1998). Since then, cultural humility has gained ground in other fields, such as teaching and teacher education. These studies have focused on, for example, teachers’ and teacher-students’ abilities to cope with diversity in schools and to recognise their own biases, prejudices and stereotypical assumptions about other cultures (Cervantes & Clark, 2020; Heikkola et al., 2025; Obery et al., 2024; Tinkler & Tinkler, 2016; Yoo, 2021). Cultural humility holds that teachers must acknowledge the limitations of their cultural knowledge and be willing to interact with students and families from other cultural backgrounds in a respectful and humble manner (Cervantes & Clark, 2020). Practicing cultural humility is a lifelong process (Foronda et al., 2016; Tervalon & Murray-García, 1998). It requires constant reflection from teachers, including awareness of one’s own background, stereotypical perceptions and privileges, as well as power imbalances in society (Obery et al., 2024; Tinkler & Tinkler, 2016).

Cultural humility may have many positive implications for socially just teaching and inclusive classrooms, as it has the potential to, for example, strengthen trust between teachers and students, promote student participation, make visible the skills and potential students possess and facilitate collaboration and respectful encounters with families (Cervantes & Clark, 2020; Foronda et al., 2016; Obery et al., 2024; Yoo, 2021). When a teacher is committed to cultural humility, it may also serve as a tool to challenge racism and support antiracist work in and outside the classroom (Curtiss & Perry, 2024). Cultural humility enables taking a close look at the processes teachers may go through in changing societies and schools and, more precisely, to capture variations in teachers’ work contexts when working with students from diverse cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. This is highly topical both in Finland and internationally.

The 49 teachers who were interviewed for this study live in different parts of Finland, both urban and rural, and work in lower secondary and general upper secondary schools. There is much variation across the country in the extent to which teachers encounter students from different cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds in their daily work. At the same time, the teachers’ accounts of diversity are intertwined with changes occurring in society, such as increasing migration and inequalities between social groups. Consequently, the research questions are: 1) How do subject teachers describe their current work, their students and possible changes in these areas? 2) How is cultural humility, or lack thereof, embedded in the teachers’ accounts? 3) How can cultural humility contribute to socially just education?

The data comprise interviews with 49 subject teachers who worked in lower secondary schools (students aged 13–16) and general upper secondary schools (students aged 16–19) in different parts of Finland. The interviews were conducted as part of a larger research project that aimed to explore teachers’ work and career paths and the segregation of the teaching profession in Finland. The teachers were recruited for the interviews through a survey that they had initially completed. In total, 2,852 teachers across Finland responded to the survey, and those willing to be interviewed were asked to provide contact information. In the end, 244 teachers from early childhood education, basic education and general upper secondary education participated in the interviews, which took place online using Zoom in 2022–2023. The interviews were carried out by several researchers. In the interviews, the teachers were asked, for example, about their experiences in teacher education, qualifications, career paths, current teaching duties and school environment and future aspirations. They were also asked to describe the backgrounds of their students and their families and the surrounding neighbourhoods of their schools. The teachers were not directly asked about themes such as ethnicity, multiculturalism or migration; however, there was a question concerning students’ linguistic backgrounds and how these become visible in teachers’ daily work. The 49 interviews analysed for this study lasted approximately 60–90 minutes. They were transcribed verbatim and uploaded to Atlas.ti software. First, there were two rounds of coding. As the analysis proceeded, the principles of thematic analysis (e.g. Kogen, 2024) and thinking with theory in qualitative research (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013) were followed. The codes were organised under broader themes, after which three categories were constructed. They represented the contexts in which the teachers worked at the time of the interviews. Thematically, these categories included locality (the geographical contexts of schools), the student body (students’ cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds) and the changing societal context (for example, the increasing number of students who had escaped from the war in Ukraine). The final step was to re-read the data through the lens of cultural humility and reorganise the themes into three categories: 1) teachers who encounter little or no cultural, ethnic or linguistic diversity in their work, 2) societal changes that increase diversity in schools and shape teachers’ daily work and 3) teachers working in diverse schools.

The findings of this study indicate that many teachers in Finnish schools are still in the early stages of developing cultural humility (see also Heikkola et al., 2025). Based on the teachers’ accounts, there are schools with essentially no cultural, linguistic or ethnic diversity, even though there may be diversity related to, for example, traditional cultural minorities in Finland or students’ social backgrounds. However, this perceived lack of diversity suggests that, from the teachers’ perspectives, there is no urgent need for them to critically reflect on their own privileged positions, (mis)conceptions and stereotypes or on the existing (unjust) power structures. Teachers whose work changes rapidly or unexpectedly—for example, those who suddenly have an increasing number of students who are still learning Finnish and need more support in their studies—do not necessarily have the tools or willingness to cope with the new situation. This aspect may result in teachers changing jobs or seeing diversity as a threat to meaningful work. Some teachers may even perceive diversity as something that violates native students’ rights to high-quality teaching. Moreover, cultural humility must extend to an institutional level, which requires that school leaders and other professionals in schools also begin engaging in critical reflection about how to promote a culturally humble and socially just school community (see also Coronel & Gómez-Hurtado, 2015). When diversity is, after decades of research and discussion, perceived more as a challenge than a source of richness in Finnish schools, the question posed nearly twenty years ago by the Finnish scholar Mirja-Tytti Talib (2006, p. 139) remains highly topical: ‘Why is it so hard to encounter diversity?’

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