Segregation, integration, inclusion—the ideology and reality in Finland

Kivirauma, Joel; Klemelä, Kirsi; Rinne, Risto

doi:10.1080/08856250600600729

Cited by 55 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The ideology that guided the comprehensive school reform saw education as an important way to carry out broader social reforms. Comprehensive school reform was aimed at increasing socio-cultural, geographical, and gender equity (Kivirauma et al 2006).…”

Section: Educational Policy For Equity and Excellencementioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to diversity and striving for excellence: The case of Finland

Savolainen

2009

Prospects

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The implementation of inclusive education has become an internationally accepted goal. In this process a substantial challenge is to simultaneously increase both equality and quality in inclusive education. This article discusses ways of achieving this goal in light of recent research findings which indicate that it is possible to meet both goals at once. The findings of various studies on the Finnish comprehensive school reform, along with recent learning outcomes, support this conclusion. During the comprehensive school era, equality has increased, performance gaps have decreased, and student achievement has improved overall. Possible reasons for this are that Finnish educational policy development has not followed international mainstream trends and that flexible and extensive special education provisions have been built into our school system. Internationally acknowledged requirements for a good education are competent teachers and a school system's commitment to take on the responsibility of educating children of all abilities.

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Section: Educational Policy For Equity and Excellencementioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to diversity and striving for excellence: The case of Finland

Savolainen

2009

Prospects

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“…This was also highlighted in the previous national evaluation report (Numminen et al, 2002). The needs for intensive guidance and counselling, as well as special education, increase (Kivirauma et al, 2006) while education budgets are in stagnation and subject to cutbacks. In addition, there are huge regional differences in the numbers of guidance and counselling personnel in schools.…”

Section: Fighting School Exclusion: Some Concluding Remarksmentioning

confidence: 98%

‘Education is important, but …’ Young people outside of schooling and the Finnish policy of ‘education guarantee’

Ahola

Kivelä

2007

Educational Research

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“…Special education programmes serve a heterogeneous group of children and youth with special educational needs, which may include social, ethnic, linguistic, physical and intellectual disadvantages (Kivirauma, Klemelä, and Rinne 2006;Powell 2006). Pupils who are referred to special education merely because of poor language skills or different cultural backgrounds are at risk of remaining less educated in terms of their actual learning potential (see EUMC 2004;UNESCO 2006).…”

Section: Towards Multicultural Education?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiences of Finnish teachers working with immigrant students

Sinkkonen

Kyttälä

2014

European Journal of Special Needs Education

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Compared with many European countries, Finland has a shorter history of immigration. During the last 20 years, Finland has become a more multicultural society. Together with rising levels of immigration, teachers' concerns regarding how to manage an increasingly diverse school population have arisen. There are an increasing number of students with different cultural and native language backgrounds in Finnish schools. However, the school system is far from being an all-encompassing multicultural environment for all. Notwithstanding, there are already many practices that do work. In this study, we aimed to find existing practices that, from the point of view of teachers, make immigrant education work. The data consists of interviews with nine teachers who work with immigrant children in schools where the educational language is Finnish. The interviews have been analysed to classify good practices in Finnish immigrant education. Our results show that in addition to adequate lingual support, fluent co-teaching and co-planning in schools, utilising school assistants' working time and skills in various and creative ways have turned out to be effective for the learning and social integration of multicultural students. Carefully and individually planned transitions from preparatory classes to general education also seem to be important. Most of the good practices that teachers mentioned were associated with transplanting the Finnish language and culture onto the 'others'. Scrutinising the thoughts and attitudes behind these good practices would help to create even better, more multicultural ways of arranging education for cultural diversity, which is inclusive of native Finnish students.

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Segregation, integration, inclusion—the ideology and reality in Finland

Cited by 55 publications

References 5 publications

Responding to diversity and striving for excellence: The case of Finland

Responding to diversity and striving for excellence: The case of Finland

‘Education is important, but …’ Young people outside of schooling and the Finnish policy of ‘education guarantee’

Experiences of Finnish teachers working with immigrant students

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