Abstract
The purpose of this article is to discuss how religious and non-religious diversity are addressed in the current national core curriculum for religious education (RE) in basic education in Finland. We first discuss the educational developments behind the Finnish curricular reform, and then focus on issues related to RE and RE research in Finland. We then describe the key contextual contributors to the current RE curriculum in basic education before proceeding to examine how diversity is addressed in the curriculum. Based on our examination, we identify four themes in the curriculum: inter-religious diversity, religious and non-religious worldviews, cultural diversity, and dialogue skills. In RE, diversity is largely addressed within a framework of religion and multiculturality. The article ends with a call for renewal of research foci in RE.
Highlights
The aim of this article is to discuss how religious and non-religious diversity is addressed in Finnish religious education (RE) in the current National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (NCCBE 2014).The Finnish basic education consists of grades 1 to 9 and covers ages 7 to 16
We examined the question of diversity in the national core curriculum with a primary emphasis on inductive exploration
Dialogue skills is the fourth theme related to diversity that we have identified in the national core curriculum for religious education (NCCBE 2014)
Summary
The aim of this article is to discuss how religious and non-religious diversity is addressed in Finnish religious education (RE) in the current National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (NCCBE 2014). The first fully integrative Worldview Education (WE) experiment took place at the European School of Helsinki (Korkeakoski and Ubani 2018) This was possible due to the European School having an independent curriculum, which enabled the incorporation of new school subjects in their instruction (Kallioniemi 2013), whereas other schools were, and still are, obligated to follow the national Basic. The several initiatives carried out by municipalities toward integrated instruction have been grounded on the needs of the constantly pluralizing and secularizing environment (Åhs et al 2016; Kimanen 2016c) These initiatives can be seen as an attempt to respond to the pressure with regard to dialogue: since the early 2000s there has been a recognition that the Finnish model of RE lacks opportunities for dialogue between pupils from different religious or non-religious worldview backgrounds (Ubani and Tirri 2014; Kallioniemi and Siitonen 2003; Franken 2017). Appeals have questioned whether integrated instruction can fulfil the aims and contents of the curriculum of RE and ethics (National Ombudsman of Finland 2017)
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