Conceptions of Diversity Among Finnish Principals

Abstract

Principals have a crucial role when leading the school community towards more responsive and equitable education. Changes in Finnish society have occurred rapidly, and there is a gap in Finnish research concerning diversity in education and leadership. Our aim with this study was to form an understanding of Finnish comprehensive school principals’ conceptions of diversity. Richard Milner’s (2010) outlining of the conceptual repertoires of diversity formed the basis for this examination. This study is a quantitative analysis of the responses of Finnish comprehensive school principals to a questionnaire. The results were obtained through two separate analyses: descriptive analysis about principals’ approaches to conceptions of diversity and cluster analysis to identify the profiles of principals based on their diversity conceptions. As a result, we described Finnish principals’ conceptions of diversity, as well as identifying five profiles: the Encouragers, the Understanders, the Delegators, the Adjusters and the Discreets.