Although inclusive education is a strong trend in education policy around the globe, there are different definitions and variations used in different nations. The case of Finland is interesting, because the long-term direction of the Finnish school system has supported every child’s right to participate in education, but inclusive education is not mentioned or defined anywhere in education legislation. This absence of definition not only leaves the defining to the parties concerned, but also adds to creating inclusive myths and varying realities in everyday life. Meanwhile, in public discussion, there has been a constant and quite polarised debate about putting students with support needs in regular classrooms. The recent Government Program (2019) in Finland states that special education legislation should be investigated from the point of view of students as well as teachers’ wellbeing. In order to define the current state and equality of the Finnish support system, the Ministry of Education and Culture has established a working group as part of the “Right to Learn” initiative 2020–2022. In this chapter, we discuss the historical development of Finnish inclusion and contrast myths and realities of the Finnish model in supporting students with support needs in the light of international trends in inclusive and special education. We also discuss possible future trends of inclusive education in the Finnish context.

This study reports on an investigation of the differences in results between students with special educational needs assigned to special classes or regular classes in lower secondary education. Cognitive competencies were measured using curricular Finnish and mathematics tasks, school achievement using grade point average (GPA), and learning motivation by using self-reported goal-orientation scales. Propensity score matching was utilized to match the students according to their propensity to be placed in special classes, and 134 pairs were produced out of 860 available students with SEN from which 477 were assigned to special classes. Results of students assigned to special classes did not differ in curricular Finnish and mathematics in ninth grade when compared to their closely-matched peers in regular classes. However, students in special classes had higher GPAs and a higher performance-approach orientation and mastery-extrinsic orientation than students assigned to regular classes.

The SAGE Handbook of Inclusion and Diversity in Education examines policy and practice from around the world, with respect to broadly conceived notions of in

This study responds to the demands of the rapidly changing landscape of education, the 21st century competencies and development of curriculum. Those competences are being interpreted all over the world resulting to differing curricular changes. In the Finnish National Core Curriculum 2016 they are presented as seven transversal competences that guide all subject-specific instruction and must also be addressed through multidisciplinary learning modules. Our analysis aims to connect the relevant curriculum theory and new perspectives to everyday school practices. The perspective is that of the teacher education students: how the student teachers experience the demands and possibilities of the new national curriculum. A science teaching/learning module for promoting the Big ideas of Science education was introduced to them in an out-of-school environment. The results show how confident the student teachers (N = 108) were when facing the challenge of integrating the competences into teaching. The future use of this type of pedagogy was predicted by the Structural Equation path model. The results show that in general integration of the competences was not experienced as hard, but it was more challenging to figure out how to fit them into the daily school routines and timetables.

Teaching and learning experienced a rapid change in spring 2020, and the learning environments for university students changed almost overnight. An integrative science centre education informal learning course for Finnish teaching students has been arranged for over 20 years with latest technologies and innovations. This cross-sectional study compared survey data of teaching students between four time points: in 2019 (n = 108), in 2020 (n = 115), in 2021 (n = 110), and in 2022 (n = 90). The course content was the same, only the implementation differed. In the spring of 2019 and 2022 the course was implemented as contact-teaching, but during the critical phase of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 as distant teaching. Data were analysed by using ANOVA and the prediction of possible effects of the contact/distance learning by the structural equation path model (SEM). The analysis showed that the results favoured the first contact instruction course in 2019: their confidence of integrating the learned contents of the science centre into practical school matters differed from all the other groups. This group also appreciated the usefulness of the course more than the other groups. In turn, the first distant course had a more negative opinion of the usability of the course than all the other groups. Despite that the distant group in 2020 and even more so the other distant group in 2021 felt more confidence in the direct integration of the course content into future teaching based on the path analysis. Gender had two kinds of effects, one in the distance learning group in 2020: being a female directly predicted the future use of science centre type pedagogy, and the other in the contact learning group in 2022: being a female predicted the appreciation of the science centre course. As a limitation of the study, more students’ prior experience and attitudes with online learning is needed from future research. The preliminary results and best practises of this study are utilised internationally in several EU-Erasmus+ projects.