Abstract
Internationally multicultural education research has pointed to the need to move from superficial to social justice-oriented multicultural education. However, realising this goal in policy and practice is a challenge. This study takes Finland as a case and examines the discursive developments of multicultural education in its national curriculum 1994–2014. Despite being a country which is known for emphasising equity and equality in education, superficial forms of multicultural education have prevailed. However, the results of this study show that the curricular discourse is clearly moving towards social justice education where multicultural perspectives are an integrated part of the curriculum. The 2014 curriculum, which came into effect 2016, emerges as a policy which aims to foster ethical and respectful students with a sense of fairness and an open attitude towards all kinds of diversity. The challenge for Finland is to ensure implementation and advance transformativeness in future curriculum reforms.
Highlights
Superficial understandings of multicultural education that focus narrowly on human relations and celebrating diversity are a wide-spread concern within education in Finland and internationally
The research question of the present paper is: How have the Finnish national curricular discourses on multicultural education developed over the past two decades from 1994 up until the curriculum of 2014? How can this development in educational discourse be interpreted in the context of increasing globalisation and cultural diversity in education? To answer these questions, a discourse analysis was carried out, which in line with a critical multicultural educational perspective was grounded in the ultimate aim to promote equality in education, and to cultivate practices (Tracy, 2016)
Having a curriculum with a multicultural educational perspective represents a normative orientation to curricula, which in its authentic and critical form both includes the support of cultural pluralism and social justice and is rooted in principles such as equality, equity, solidarity, democracy and human rights
Summary
The research material included the Finnish comprehensive school curricula from 1994–2014 (National Core Curriculum, hereafter NCC, 1994, 2004, 2014), including their amendments. The discursive developments from focusing on specific student groups to focusing on all students relates to another change in vocabulary Both in the 1994 and even more strongly in the 2004 curriculum and several contemporary policies (Ministry of Education, 2000, 2004), the normative aim to develop ‘tolerance’ towards other cultures is significant, for instance in the need to develop tolerance for cultural and religious diversity. Multiliteracy refers in the national curriculum to the ability to produce and work with different kinds of texts in various media and environments, and is connected to the ability to understand and interpret cultural diversity This multilingual approach emerges as a new discourse, which reflects an overall learning approach committed to cultural diversity. In looking at the Discourse on curriculum integration in the curriculum of 2014, there is still a lack of guidelines as to how social equality can be promoted
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