The increased diversity in pupils' cultural and ethnic backgrounds in schools causes urgent demands for the organization of school celebrations in many countries. Celebrations represent the cultural values of the society and it is important to find out how various traditions are expressed in them. This study examines teachers' and other educational staff members' perceptions of Finnish culture, Lutheran religiosity, and intercultural education in Christmas, Independence Day and end-of-term celebrations in Finnish schools. The data of this paper consists of 12 thematic interviews, and two participations in school festivals. The interview data were analyzed qualitatively with content analysis. The analysis of this study shows that festivals are perceived as important parts of education and they can help to create a sense of national or cultural community. However, the intercultural potential of school celebrations is often not put into its full use. There exists an urgent need to create new ways of carrying out celebrations in multicultural school communities so that they would be meaningful for all students.

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The aim of this paper is to explore integrative worldview education as a platform for learning from worldviews in a diverse cultural context. This is done by examining integrative worldview education in a Finnish secondary school context by examining the views of school stakeholders. The stakeholders examined in this article consist of 174 parents of the pupils and a total of 6 teachers and headteachers from two different secondary schools in Helsinki. We use the concept of learning from worldviews to examine the possibilities of the integrative classroom to facilitate learning from both personal and organized worldviews. The results indicate, that the stakeholders view integrative worldview education as an important tool for widening the worldview of the pupil. Although the stakeholders view the sensitivity of the teacher as paramount in teaching an integrative classroom, integrative worldview education is also seen as important in offering tools for forging mutual understandings in an ever more complex world of worldviews.

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