Chapter 24: Finnish Teachers and Diversity: The Case of Muslim Students

The purpose of this chapter is to report on Finnish teachers’ (N = 864) attitudes to Muslim student integration in schools. Finland represents a homogeneous European country with Protestant values and high-quality teacher education. Challenges to Finnish teachers today involve diverse student populations that include Muslims. We provide an overview of our empirical studies related to teacher readiness to encounter diversity, using Muslim students as a case in point. Our survey instrument, “Teacher Attitudes toward Muslim Student Integration,” is adopted from an earlier cross-cultural study on teacher attitudes to Muslim student integration into civil society (Sharpes et al., 2010). Our results indicate that Finnish teachers are willing to encounter diversity in their teaching in general, but have less positive attitudes to Muslim students. Female teachers are more oriented to promoting commonality and teaching about diversity than males. Furthermore, experienced teachers are more oriented to promoting commonality and teaching tolerance than novice teachers. However, what seems to have the most effect on teachers’ attitudes to Muslim students is their previous involvement with other cultures and with Muslims and the grade they teach.