Finland has often claimed to be culturally and ethnically rather homogeneous (Sahlberg, 2015). However, diversity in terms of ethnicity has increased systematically in the past 15 years in Finland, as well. Following the other Western European countries Finnish educational policy makers have become aware of such change and started to consider new guidelines and practices accordingly; how schools and teachers could better meet the cultural variation of pupil population (Säävälä, 2012). One example is the renewed National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014) that highlights how to deal with people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and how to become familiar with a variety of customs, communal practices and beliefs (FNBE, 2014). Anyway, some might claim this situation is not a new one, because every school in Finland can be considered as ‘multicultural’ if we understand this expression referring to diversity that stems from variation in pupils’ socioeconomical background, religion, values, lifestyle and gender (Jokikokko & Järvelä, 2013).  This leads to situation  that the whole concept of ‘culture’ should be critically approached as it has not been interpreted as very appropriate way for classifying people (e.g. Dervin, Paavola & Talib, 2013).

This paper presents a study that looks at one non-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) workshops in Finnish lower secondary schools (7-9 grades). The NGO’s overall operating ideology, and thus the basis for the workshop activity, is to increase intercultural interaction, to influence people’s value systems, and thereby enhance respect and feelings of empathy and responsibility for other people. The more specified themes in the workshops are prejudices, diversity and its acceptance, and discrimination. The instructors of the workshops are Finnish athletes and artists with diverse backgrounds, and the discourse within the 60 minutes workshop is grounded on their own experiences, and, hence, offer 7-9 graders learning experiences that are based on true stories.

The study’s objective is to describe the NGO’s workshops in order to evaluate the activity on three levels: level of objectives, level of content and level of means of influence. The primary focus is on pupils who participated in the workshop activity and their experiences and the level of importance they place on the activity.

In this paper we focus on the following two questions: 1) How pupils perceived the workshops (e.g. their relevance)? 2) How pupils see diversity/its acceptance?

In the framework of this study the NGO’s workshops have been interpret as increasing awareness of diversity in schools; diversity seen as including a wide range of individual-based factors, such as language, gender, religion, socioeconomical status, abilities and ethnicity (e.g. Dervin, Paavola & Talib, 2013). The discussions in workshops approached diversity in a rather wide sense; the school community and pupils’ circles of friends seem to form multidimensional meeting places for different cultures in which the essence of diversity is not always comprised of a variation of the strongest ethnicity – homes and their own communities create their own micro cultures through which a variety of cultural encounters are generated inside the school.  The idea of promoting and supporting intercultural interaction can be seen as encouraging dialogue within schools and among pupils and that is one of the ideas in intercultural education (e.g. Jokikokko & Järvelä, 2013).

Ahtiainen, R., Hienonen, N., Lintuvuori, M. & Hotulainen, R. (2015). Report on KYTKE project of Walter. Broad-mindedness and individual differences as perceived by young people in grades 7-9 of comprehensive school. Research report, October 2015. Finnish National Board of Education. (2014). The National Core Curriculum for Basic Education.. Regulations and Instructions 2014:96. Helsinki: Finnish National Board of Education. Dervin, F., Paavola, H. & Talib, M. (2013). Kohti kasvatuksellista monimuotoisuutta? Monikulttuurinen ja interkulttuurinen kasvatus suomalaisessa koulussa ja opettajankoulutuksessa. [Towards educational diversity? Multicultural and intercultural education in Finnish schools and teacher education.] Kasvatus, 44 (3). Jokikokko, K. & Järvelä, M.-L. (2013). Opettajan interkulttuurinen kompetenssi – produkti vai prosessi? [Teacher’s intercultural competence – a product or a process?] Kasvatus, 44 (3). Sahlberg, P. (2015). Finnish Lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Säävälä, M. (2012). Koti, koulu ja maahan muuttaneiden lapset: Oppilashuolto ja vanhemmat hyvinvointia turvaamasssa. [Home, school and the children of immigrants: Student welfare and parents protecting well-being.] Reports of the Family Federation of Finland E43/2012.