Is worldview education achieved in schools? A study of Finnish teachers’ perceptions of worldview education as a component of basic education

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the concept of ‘worldview’ has resurfaced into the forefront of the international debate among scholars of religious education. With this study, we aim to contribute to the discussion with empirical material having a focus on worldview education in whole school education. The study deals with the Finnish teachers’ perceptions of worldview education in basic education. Teachers (N = 110) responded to a questionnaire concerning their experiences on how they feel about worldview education, how they deal with it and where does worldview education take place in schools according to teachers. The questionnaire included both quantitative and qualitative sections. According to the results, it appears that teachers consider worldview education to be relatively important in schools and that they have a reasonably broad perception of worldview education, including aspects of value education, cultural encounters, and settlement of disputes. What is notable is that the teachers appear to associate worldview education not only with lessons; they also cite activities in the daily life of the school and outside the classrooms, especially celebrations, as incidents associated with worldview education.

KEYWORDS:

• Worldview education
• religion
• school
• teachers

Introduction

The objective of this article is to contribute to the discussion concerning worldview education (WE) in compulsory education with fresh empirical material from Finnish basic education teachers (N = 110). During recent years, ‘worldview’ has resurfaced as a key concept and focus of discussion concerning religion and non-religion in public education (Miedema [2012] 2014; van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema 2013; Valk and Tosun 2016; Riegel and Delling 2019; Åhs, Poulter, and Kallioniemi 2016, 2019; Kavonius and Ubani 2020; Ubani 2019; Freathy and John 2019; Ubani et al. 2021). Much of this recent discussion, especially in Europe, has been initiated by scholars of religious education (RE) in particular and has focused on the respective school subject.

With this study, we aim to broaden the scope and approach WE as a question of comprehensive school education as a whole. Several policies and other outputs have increasingly recognised education about religions, worldviews and values as a topic of relevance to overall school education – and corresponding teacher education; that is, beyond the subject of religious education or its equivalent (ODIHR 2007; Jackson 2014; Ubani and Ojala 2018). Similar to most Western societies, the public education curriculum in Finland has maintained a more or less holistic approach to education (Tirri 2014, 606; NCCBE 2014; Ubani 2017), in the vein of Bildung. For example, the general objective of the Finnish 9-year basic education (pupils between 7 and 16 years of age) is to support pupils’ growth towards humanity and ethically responsible membership of society and to provide them with the knowledge and skills needed in life. (Niemi et al. 2018, 48). However, there is little recent empirical and international knowledge about how WE is perceived and achieved from the viewpoint of teachers in basic education.

The teacher’s professional perceptions of worldviews in public education include several challenges. For example, as Freathy and John (2019) recently argued, ‘worldview’ and ‘religion’ as concepts and phenomena are ‘quite messy’ and ‘fluid’. Regardless of this, public education should provide pupils with adequate knowledge and skills to encounter and understand current and (potential) future religions and worldviews (Freathy and John 2019). At the same time, teachers in basic education vary with regard to facilitated reflection on these topics in their own professional education. As in most Western societies, instruction in basic education in Finland is given both by primary school teachers and lower secondary school subject teachers. What these groups have in common is the integral role of professional reflection in their teacher education: teacher education curricula are generally highly research-based, and the aim has been to educate autonomous and professional teachers who continue to develop throughout their working career (Tirri 2014; Jakku-Sihvonen and Niemi 2006; Niemi and Nevgi 2014). However, in the literature, there has been some concern over the sufficiency of skills gained about religion and worldviews by the relevant teacher groups (Rissanen et al. 2016; Sakaranaho 2018).

To conclude, the empirical research question of this article is:

How do teachers perceive worldview education in basic education?

Worldview education as a whole school endeavour

As has been discussed in the literature (Freathy and John 2019; Riegel and Delling 2019), the question of worldview in education is complex in various ways. We can identify at least four aspects in this complexity. The first aspect is that the concept of worldview in education has multiple meanings. It can, for instance, refer to organised systems, such as religions or ideologies, or to a more personal way of meaning-giving or understanding the world (van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema 2013). van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema (2013) differentiated between organised and personal worldview. According to van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema (2013), organised worldview is a system that has developed over time and has traditions, values, rituals or dogmas and believers that follow or adhere to this view of life. Personal worldview, on the other hand, is a more complex concept: even if it is clear that everyone has a worldview (Gardner, Soules, and Valk 2017), it can be difficult to articulate or explain one’s personal worldview clearly (van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema 2013). Regardless of being personal or organised, worldview consists of the relation between an individual or group of believers and the world around them (Poulter 2019), as well existential questions and moral values (van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema 2013). Everyone has a personal worldview, and whether or not they adhere to an organised worldview, it can be religious or non-religious, and it is reflected in the actions of an individual (even if one is an educator).

The second aspect concerns the space for worldviews and religions in public education. The debate on the teaching of religion is, on the other hand, strongly related to the social and political question of the place of religion in the so-called secular public sphere (e.g. Jackson 2008; Hemming 2011; Miedema 2014; Niemi, Kallioniemi, and Ghosh 2019). Discussion about religion’s social position has centred on the question of whether worldview should be considered to be a public or private matter (e.g. Ferrari and Pastorelli 2012; Pessi and Grönlund 2018). For decades, religion, beliefs and personal worldview in education and the public sphere was considered as a private matter when the insight of the modern societies’ future was constructed on the idea of secularisation going forward. The Council of Europe, for instance, for a long time only spoke of intercultural education or dialogue, leaving religions out of the discussion (Moyaert 2018). However, the aftermath of incidents such as 9/11 showed also how ignorance of religions and different kinds of worldviews could lead to discrimination and intolerance and build up or reinforce negative stereotypes (ODIHR 2007). As a result of the recognition of this problem, several international policy documents and recommendations were issued, such as Jackson’s Signposts (2014) and Toledo guiding principles (2007). The same kind of actualisation can also be seen in several domestic policy documents, including CoRE (2018) in the UK and the Finnish National core curriculum for basic education (2004, 2014), that emphasises the importance of the teaching of religions and beliefs.

The third aspect is connected to the previous one, with an emphasis on worldviews as a curricular question. Here, worldviews entail questions related to the nature, objectives and organisation of instruction in relation to religions and worldviews in public schools (e.g. Freathy and John 2019). As stated (8) have partially referred to the concept of ‘messy nature of worldviews’: not only is ‘worldviews’ a broad, layered and evolving term, but the very concept of worldviews in education is ambiguous. The questions of organisation of instruction and curricula include, for example, the issue of whether knowledge about different religions or worldviews is limited to specific school subjects or whether it actually intertwines with several school subjects (see, e.g. Keränen-Pantsu and Heikkinen 2019), or even whether WE should be seen more broadly as touching the activities of the whole school. Here themes such as social sustainability and global citizenship education have been brought up as relevant themes (Miedema and Bertram-Troost 2015), even to the extent that some scholars argue that through them WE could be easier to integrate into the curriculum (see Miedema [2012] 2014). Recently in Finland, ‘worldview education’ in particular has been used context-dependently as an umbrella concept when referring to two school subjects, Religious Education and Secular Ethics (Keränen-Pantsu and Heikkinen 2019; Kavonius, Kuusisto, and Kallioniemi 2015), or to an integrative model in which religious education and secular ethics are taught partly together (Åhs, Poulter, and Kallioniemi 2019), which arguably represents a reduction of religion as a phenomenon to the system of beliefs and values of an individual. In this study, worldview education is seen as a vast umbrella concept that considers both religious and secular worldviews as well as teaching about values, ethics and convictions.

The question of the nature of WE, however, also touches on the very question of fundamental understanding about education and its character. Incidentally, Biesta (2002) concluded in his study that the concept of Bildung can be defined as ‘an answer to the question of how to respond to, how to deal with, how to understand this very world’: this overlaps with what is commonly understood by worldview (e.g. Freathy and John 2019). Further, Biesta (2020) argued how, in the field of education, cultural resources and materials and existing traditions and practices play a role in the personal development processes assumed in Bildung, so that young people can be helped to find their identity and ‘orientation to live their lives in complex, modern societies’ (p. 11) .

Similarly, Miedema (see [2012] 2014) talks about WE’s connection to personhood education. According to Miedema, personhood education is often worldview-laden, whereby fostering worldview education can, from a pedagogical perspective, be considered as a part of personhood education. WE should not be conceptualising exclusively in knowledge-based or cognitive terms, but as a meaning-making process in which students are involved (Cooling 2011; Miedema [2012] 2014). It can be argued that connecting worldview education with the concept of Bildung and personhood education makes education about worldviews a whole school issue rather than a question of RE (see Cooling 2011).

The fourth aspect relates to teachers and their education. Approaching WE as a whole school issue also brings teacher education under scrutiny. It has been discussed elsewhere that the goal of teacher education in Finland is to educate pedagogically thinking and reflective teachers (Toom et al. 2010; Tirri 2014) who can recognise and embrace the increasing diversities in society (Rissanen, Kuusisto, and Kuusisto 2016). Previous studies of student teachers imply that the most reflective and values-aware teacher group among their peers are the RE student teachers, and with the emphasis on Theology and Religious Studies in their formal studies and the nature of their school subject, there is little reason not to expect this to be true among in-service teachers, too (see Räsänen and Ubani 2009). Apart from RE teachers, however, the support of teacher education for WE is scanty. In Finland, primary teacher education includes a course of didactics of religious education or ethics (Kallioniemi and Ubani 2010), and the pedagogical studies for all teacher groups often include multicultural or diversity education. While some primary school student teachers can also take a minor of religion or ethics, and secondary school religious teachers have a major in theology, it is questionable whether these studies transform to professional pedagogical knowledge (Viinikka and Ubani 2019; Viinikka et al. 2019) about worldviews or religion suitable for the practice of teaching in an increasingly multicultural, plural and diverse society.

Finally, previous studies in Finland indicate that subject teacher students of RE have difficulty relying on their knowledge and skills when teaching religion (Tirri and Ubani 2013), and the lack of teacher training for religious education has also been acknowledged elsewhere (CoRE 2018; Jafralie and Zaver 2019). In general, subject-teacher students of different subjects appear to take responsibility for the holistic education of students, including their ethical growth. However, there seem to be some differences between teachers of different subjects about what things they emphasise in the teaching. For example, only future teachers of religious education emphasised the personal nature of their subject, specifying that teachers need to be aware of their own religious identity in order to discuss different worldviews with students. (Tirri and Ubani 2013) One recent study also found that most Finnish teachers in principle accept cultural differences and are in favour of the equal visibility of different traditions, but they may not have the skills and real willingness to recognise and encounter diversity, especially religious diversity. (Rissanen, Tirri, and Kuusisto 2015; Kuusisto et al. 2015; Niemi, Kallioniemi, and Ghosh 2019). This implies that it would be plausible to re-evaluate the continuing professional development of teachers, and whether the educators are adequately equipped to train and provide tools for teachers for dealing with beliefs and values.

Research procedures

The data was gathered via questionnaire from the 110 basic education teachers in three different areas of Eastern and Southern Finland, one being the metropolitan area (n = 47), second a regional centre (n = 28) and third a small town in a rural area (n = 35). The questionnaire consisted of questions about the teachers’ attitudes and perceptions on values and worldviews in education. In order to avoid misconceptions, ‘worldview’ was described in the questionnaire to the participants in the following way: ‘This study concerns worldview education. It does not mean just religious education. In this study “Worldview” means: view of life or worldview, beliefs, values and set of values. It can be religious, non-religious or secular.’

The study represents a mixed-method study (Creswell and Tashakkori 2007). This means that the data is collected and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively for a broader understanding of the studied phenomenon (Creswell and Plano Clark 2007). The data gathered was mainly quantitative, but qualitative data was also collected in the same questionnaire in order to enrich the information on the topic. We approached the question of teachers’ perceptions of WE from three viewpoints. The viewpoints were the teachers’ general approach to the topic, pedagogical perceptions and the role of schools with regard to WE.

In the quantitative portion, means and standard deviations are reported. The actual differences between groups were analysed using non-parametric tests (Kruskal-Wallis; Mann-Whitney) which focus on median values. The following subgroups were included in the analysis: gender and work experience. In the comparison of means based on gender, the option ‘other’ was left out due to the small number identifying with this option (n = 4). The participants were also divided according to their working experience into the following groups (workXp_group): 0–5 years ‘1’, 6–12 years = ‘2’, 13–25 years = ‘3’, over 25 years = ‘4’. The sizes of the groups based on work experience were fairly similar (between 22 and 29.4%).

The answers to the qualitative questions were analysed using qualitative content analysis. More precisely, the study included two qualitative sub-analyses. Both analyses were conducted in a similar manner. The data was first divided into groups and then to sub-categories that described the situations where worldviews were recognised by teachers and the things that were important in relation to worldviews education. The qualitative data was quantified by summing the frequencies of the categories in the analysis.

The inter-rater reliability of the qualitative analysis was checked (Cohen, Manion, Morrison, Bell, Martin and O'Sullivan 2013). In practice, 25 statements from both data sets of the qualitative questions ‘Mention three things that you think are important in worldview education’ and ‘What kind of worldview-related situations take place in school? Name three.’ were selected and asked to place in the analysis categories. In the data focusing on the first question, the inter-rater reliability of the sub-categories was .80, and in the data focusing on the second question, the inter-rater reliability was .84. The statements which were placed in different sub-category were re-evaluated and re-placed when appropriate.

Results

How do teachers approach worldview education?

On the basis of quantitative data, it can be said that the teachers considered WE relatively important in school and seemed to be indifferent to the difficulty of the topic (Table 1). This was shown in their answers to the item ‘How important do you think worldview education is at school?’ (M = 4.09, SD = .888; ‘1’ = not important at all, ‘5’ = very important). In this respect, the male (n = 30) and female (n = 75) participants had similar views: there was no statistically significant difference in the perceptions (U = 1251,500, p = .276). Both female (M = 4.14, SD = .833) and male (M = 3.90, SD = .995) rated the importance of WE in schools as relatively high. Interestingly, the small sub-group of four which identified their gender as ‘other’, seemed to rate the item highest (M = 5, SD = .000), but due to the small size of the group, this could be a measurement error. Also, teachers with varying in-service years seemed to have similar views on the importance of WE at school: there was no statistically significant difference in this claim based on working experience (x2(3) = 1.724, p = .632).

Table 1. The distribution of participants based on work experience

Work experience	N = 110
0–5 years	32
6–12 years	24
13–25 years	35
over 25 years	18

The personal sentiments of whether giving instruction about worldviews were considered difficult was asked next. In short, the teachers did not seem to view the instruction either as difficult nor easy: the mean of the whole group in the claim ‘How do you feel about teaching about worldviews?’ (‘1’ = very difficult – ‘5’ = very easy) was 3.41 (SD = .796). Here also the teachers held quite similar views regardless of their gender or work experience. There was no statistically significant difference detected based on gender (x2(2) = 5.129, p = .077) or based on working experience (x2(3) = 4.723, p = .193) in how difficult participants personally felt about WE.

What are their pedagogical perceptions about worldview education like?

The pedagogical perceptions of the teachers about WE were studied by both quantitative and qualitative questions. The quantitative question in this segment was ‘To what extent do the following issues affect the worldview education given by you?’. Here the teachers were to evaluate the impact of 12 different contributors (Table 2). Among the contributors to WE, the participants emphasised especially the pedagogical aims of the school. Such contributors were. for instance, ‘School subject/content of instruction’ (M = 4.01, SD = .952), ‘National core curriculum for basic education’ (M = 4.07, SD = .908) and to some extent ‘Values of one’s own school’ (M = 3.91; SD = .881). There were no statistically significant differences at .05 level between male and female, except for two items. These were ‘Student group’ (U = 1397,500, p = .027), which female (M = 3.92, SD = .918) participants rated higher than male (M = 3.50, SD = .74), and ‘Compensation from work’ (U = 831, p = .039), which male rated higher (M = 2.20, SD = 1.095), but still relatively low, compared to female (M = 1.75, SD = .983) (Table 3).

Table 2. How do teachers perceive worldview education?

	N	Mean	Std. Deviation
How important do you think worldview education is at school?	109	4.09	.888
How do you feel about worldview education?	109	3.41	.796

Table 3. To what extent do the following issues affect the worldview education given by you?

	N	Mean	Std. Deviation
Student’s own worldview	108	2.91	1.081
The worldview of a student’s family	108	2.69	1.115
Own personal worldview	108	2.93	1.100
Own personal set of values	108	3.80	.873
Values of one’s own school	108	3.91	.881
School subject/content of instruction	108	4.01	.952
Current topics (e.g. news)	107	3.55	.934
Time available	108	3.70	1.052
Student group	108	3.80	.955
National core curriculum for basic education	107	4.07	.908
Compensation from work	107	1.90	1.036
Own ability to cope	108	3.07	1.133
Something else	28	1.79	1.258

Work experience was connected to the claim ‘The worldview of a student’s family’ (x2(3) = 9.616, p = .022): the difference was statistically significant at .05 level. Here the experienced teachers with over 26 years of experience (M = 3.25, SD = 1.152) rated the effect of students’ family to the instruction considerably higher than their younger counterparts. The increment in the emphasis on this item seemed to be somewhat connected to working experience (M1 = 2.34, SD = 1.004; M2 = 2.46; SD = 1.018; M3 = 2.82; SD = 1.124). The ‘Own personal set of values’ seemed most important to teachers with 6–12 years of teaching experience (M = 4.21, SD = .779). The difference between groups in this claim was also statistically significant at .05 level (x2(3) = 9.106, p = .028).

The pedagogical perceptions were also studied with qualitative data. First, the teachers were asked to ‘Mention three things that you think are important in worldview education?’. In total, 280 statements were given to this question by the teachers. In general, it can be said that the statements represent broadly various aspects related to teaching. In the analysis, the teachers’ views of the important things in WE were divided under two main categories: 1) Pedagogical practices (about 40% of statements) and 2) Values of education (60% of statements). When summed up, the main categories included seven sub-categories (Figure 1).

Figure 1. ‘Mention three things that you think are important in worldview education.’

In the qualitative data, about two-thirds of the teachers’ responses to things considered important in worldview education belonged to the category dealing with the Values of education (f = 162). These responses could be divided into three sub-categories: Support students’ ethical growth (f = 103), Universal values (f = 49), and Cultural heritage (f = 10). Support students ethical growth was seen by teachers as clearly the most important thing in WE. The teachers mentioned a total of 103 things that could be seen as things that support a student’s growth into a member of society. These educational values referred to topics such as support for the student’s ethical growth, the relationship between each other and social skills and the students’ relationship with themselves. In addition, teachers saw that it was important in WE to give students tools to ethics and moral development and an opportunity to reflect on their own values. WE is also seen as a topic under which to learn tolerance, understanding others and accepting difference. According to the data, the teachers also seemed to place importance on WE as a place to learn social skills and humanity as well as reflect on self-image.

In the statements belonging to the Universal values sub-category, the teachers highlighted values not exclusively related to religion such as ‘equality’, ‘parity’, ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’. Here teachers also associated WE with values related to a sustainable lifestyle, things like the uniqueness of life, appreciation of nature and ecology, which we can see which we can see as generally accepted values. Finally, WE was also seen as part of sharing cultural heritage: teachers emphasised WE as an opportunity to discuss both the cultural diversity and Finnish Christian culture.

The other main category of the meanings referring to important things in worldview education was called ‘Pedagogical practices’. This category consists of statements concerning teachers’ actions and teaching methods, e.g. didactics. Most of the statements in this category were explicitly related to the classroom (f = 49): how teachers think teaching takes place in classrooms, and what teaching methods they find important in teaching about worldviews. Here dialogue and interactive teaching methods (f = 20) were emphasised strongly in the teachers’ statements. The statement related to the students (f = 20) dealt with taking into account the students’ world of experience, interests and backgrounds. When the participants described issues that were important in worldview education referring to the teacher (sub-category teacher-related; f = 17) they highlighted teacher activities such as equal treatment of students, consistent teaching and honesty with students.

What is the role that the school has in worldview education and development?

Then, the perceptions of the teachers on the role of the school in worldview education and the development of worldview were examined. This was done both with quantitative and qualitative data. The role of different sources in WE was studied with a quantitative question: ‘In what extent do you think that the issues mentioned below have an effect on the development of the worldview and value systems of a student?’ (1 = little, 5 = a lot of). The teachers emphasised the influence of closest relationships in the development of the students’ worldviews (Table 4). According to the teachers, ‘Parents/Home’ (M = 4.76, SD = .468) and ‘Friends’ (M = 4.44, SD = .628) were most influential. The teacher (M = 3.65, SD = .903) and school (M = 3.45, SD = .8.30) had only moderate effect, if any. A little bit more effect was attributed to ‘Social media’ (M = 3.88, SD = .798) and ‘Religious/ideological community’ (M = 3.72, SD = 1.017). Similarly to the previous, with regards to this item, there was no statistically significant difference at .05 level between male and female participants, nor between teachers of different working experience.

Table 4. In what extent do you think that the issues mentioned below have an effect on the development of the worldview and value systems of a student?

	N	Mean	Std. Deviation
Teacher	110	3.65	.903
School	110	3.45	.830
Parents/Home	110	4.76	.468
Friends	110	4.44	.628
Religious/ideological community	109	3.72	1.017
World events	110	3.29	.758
Books	110	2.96	.947
Hobby/Interest	110	3.39	.959
Social media	110	3.88	.798
Something else	27	2.26	1.196

Then, we examined the role of different subjects in WE (1 = little, 5 = a lot of). With regards to the school subjects, the role of subjects in the vicinity of religious education and ethics were emphasised in worldview education of schools. As expected, ‘Religion’ (M = 4.72, SD = .579) and ‘Ethics’ (M = 4.75, SD = .603) were rated high as subjects in giving worldview education. Other subjects that stood out were ‘Social studies’ (M = 4.07, SD = .898) and, perhaps to some extent, ‘History’ (M = 3.85, SD. = .859). ‘Mathematics’ was considered as giving worldview education the least (M = 1.61, SD = .815). In the perceptions about the school subjects’ role in giving worldview education, there was no statistically significant difference at .05 level between male and female participants. However, the working years of teachers seemed connected to their perceptions about whether worldview education was given in Music (x2(3) = 8.473, p = .037) and Crafts (x2(3) = 8.473, p = .037). The role of Music (M = 3.19, SD = .680) and Crafts (M = 2.74, SD = .964) was emphasised by teachers with the most working experience (over 26 years) over their peers (Table 5).

Table 5. The role of different subjects in worldview education

	N	Mean	Std. Deviation
Mathematics	109	1.61	.815
Mother tongue and literature	109	3.36	.877
Foreign language teaching	101	2.93	.972
Environmental studies	109	3.71	.994
History	109	3.85	.859
Social studies	107	4.07	.898
Religion	109	4.72	.579
Ethics	106	4.75	.603
Music	105	2.74	.877
Crafts	109	2.21	.963
Physical education	109	2.61	1.121
Visual arts	108	2.84	.968
Finnish as a second language and literature	101	3.39	1.131
Other mother tongue (e.g. Russian/Arabic)	89	3.39	1.083

The role of school in WE was also examined with a qualitative question ‘What kind of worldview-related situations take place in school? Name three.’ The total number of statements given by the teachers for this question was 248. In the analysis, the statements were divided into four categories. Their frequencies are listed in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Worldview-related situations in school

Based on the analysis, it seems that the teachers associate WE with much of the activities taking place in school. For instance, the teachers associated the discussion about worldviews most with situations which deal with moral norms (f = 95), such as behaviour (f = 51) or resolving conflicts between students (f = 44). In addition, the teachers also strongly linked the handling of worldviews in lessons and teaching contents. The most common statement in Classroom situations was ‘lessons’ (f = 41), but in particular religion and ethics lessons were also mentioned separately. This category also included teachers’ responses (f = 8) on how to deal with current societal and global events with students. Teachers seemed to feel that, for example, dealing with natural disasters or terrorist attacks was related to worldviews. Furthermore, worldviews were also seen to emerge in very common everyday interaction (f = 49) between people. Teachers mentioned here, for example, encounters between people of different religious and cultural backgrounds and discussions between teachers, students and parents.

Discussion

In general, even with its limitations, the study seems to indicate that teachers from basic education, in general, seem to consider WE to be part of basic education and hold a reasonably broad perception of worldview education so that it includes aspects of value education, cultural encounters and settlement of disputes, not just contents related to what van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema (2013) call organised or personal worldviews. In addition, the study indicates that lessons, in general, are often identified as situations where students and teachers discuss and encounter issues related to worldviews and values. The teachers did not associate worldview education only with lessons in religion or ethics, but with other subjects, too.

What is also notable is that the teachers brought up activities in the daily life of the school and outside of classrooms, especially celebrations, as incidents connected with worldviews and worldview education. The strong emphasis of the celebrations in the identification of worldview-related situations at school could be connected to the fact that the question of how schools should organise and accommodate different religious and non-religious traditions and celebrations in their daily life has been high in the public discussion agenda recently in Finland (Niemi and Nevgi 2014; Niemi 2019). Quite often, this debate has also shown the ambiguous position of Lutheranism and Christianity in the Finnish cultural heritage and subsequently in public schooling (Ubani, Poulter, and Rissanen 2019). The Evangelical Lutheranism has had a strong role in the formation of the Finnish nation-state, society, cultural traditions and values but also with the development of the educational system (Buchardt et al. 2013;Ubani et al. 2021). Today, the Finnish Constitution recognises all religions as equal, but still, in 2019 about 70% of Finns were members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Practices connected with Lutheranism in public schools – which are legislated as non-confessional (NCCBE 2014) – are often justified by education professionals as primarily cultural, not religious incidents. But still, for instance, exemptions from morning devotions, school celebrations at Church and such are given on the basis of the integrity of conflicting worldviews (Poulter 2013; Rissanen et al. 2020).

In terms of professional conduct in teaching, it is another question whether identifying, recognising or being conscious of or sensitive to the presence of worldviews and the potential of encounters in different aspects of school life as presented by the teachers translates into sound pedagogical practice. We argue that for sound practice with regards to religions and worldviews in public schools, all teachers should learn to know their own values and beliefs, formulate the goals of their teaching and evaluate the rationale behind these decisions already as part of their pre-service training (Tirri 2014, 603). In the Nordic context, this also entails a thorough examination of the connection of Lutheranism and Christianity in society, national heritage and value basis. A study on Finnish subject teachers shows that, in terms of reflection skills and educational awareness, teachers of different subjects differ substantially (Tirri and Ubani 2013). Especially with regards to dealing with religions and worldviews as a ‘whole school endeavour’ (Ubani and Ojala 2018; Ubani 2019) supporting professional reflection skills in teacher education is extremely important.

As indicated earlier, reflection on one’s own activities and predispositions has been long agreed upon as the key skill in becoming and being a teacher (Schön 1988). Teacher’s personal qualities, positions and values characterise what they teach or how they teach: their professional performance is strongly influenced by who they are and what they keep valuable (Chant 2002; Levin and He 2008; Toom and Husu 2018). However, researchers in Finland have pointed out that despite its acclaimed status, in teacher education developing every teachers’ competence in handling cultural and religious diversities requires substantially more attention (Räsänen, Jokikokko, and Lampinen 2018; Rissanen et al. 2020). One topic that should be systematically reflected upon in teacher education is what several scholars have discussed in terms of Lutheran Protestant and even secularist conceptions of religion (Berglund 2013; Slotte 2011; Rissanen et al. 2020; Ubani 2018, 2019): it arguably hinders the religious literacy of teachers in Finland and thus the handling of religions and worldviews in school practice (Rissanen et al. 2020).

Finally, if we are to develop good practices with regards to religions and worldviews in public education, the whole concept of what is education also needs to be re-examined in teacher education. In Finland, for instance, teacher education has had a strong research orientation since the 1970s when the responsibility for primary and secondary school teacher education was given to the universities. (Tirri 2014; Rissanen, Kuusisto, and Kuusisto 2016). Not only in Finland but also in other countries with a similar outlook on teacher education, it should be explored whether teacher education has lost some of its educational dimension or awareness of Bildung in taking a turn to research-based teacher education. In other words, it should be elaborated whether a comprehensive understanding of what it means to become and be a teacher and, on the other hand, to become educated and educate, is not developed to its full potential in a time where firm foundations for professional practice are needed perhaps more than ever.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the OLVI-Säätiö [201920096].

Notes on contributors

Jenni Lemettinen

Jenni Lemettinen, MEd, is a Junior Researcher at the School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research interests include worldviews, values and Finnish basic education. She has a qualification for Primary School teacher and has specialised in RE.

Elina Hirvonen

Elina Hirvonen, MEd, Junior Researcher, School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education at the University of Eastern Finland. Elina has previous experience as a project researcher and a primary school teacher. Beliefs, worldviews and dialogues in education are her research interests.

Martin Ubani

Martin Ubani, PhD, MTheol, holds the chair of Professor of Religious Education at the School of Theology & the School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education at the University of Eastern Finland. His research interests include religion, multiculturalism and education, RE teacher education and didactics of RE. He holds several Academic positions of trust. Since 2017, he has been a library fellow at the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem.