Finland: A Learning Society with Limited Understanding of Ethnicity in the Everyday Life at School

Abstract

This article offers an analytical review of pedagogical and sociological research in Finland on the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality between 1988 and 2010. As research in this area in Finland is quite rare, only three major perspectives are identified: (1) non-Finnish backgrounds of students as a pedagogical and didactic problem; (2) minority students’ educational paths as parts of marginalized life-courses and (3) ethnic discrimination in secondary education. Most of the research conducted in Finland is written in Finish and to a lesser extent in English and focuses on explaining how cultural differences and poor Finish language skills lead to educational drop outs of minority youth. Students of Russian, Somalian and Roma background have been the main focus of sociological analysis of schooling. Qualitative analyses have been conducted but there is a greater need for more detailed and critical ethnographic studies of the everyday life of ethnic minorities in Finish schools. The majority of studies do not approach learning difficulties of ethnic minorities explicitly from the perspective of discrimination and racism. Instead, the prominent perception puts more emphasis upon cultural, contextual and linguistic factors as causes for these difficulties. There is collaboration between educational sociologists and the government in conducting research in this area in Finland, but so far the emphasis has been mainly on didactics and the formal educational policy.