Looking for Hidden Notebooks: Analysing Social Exclusion Experienced by Teachers of Minority Religions in Finnish Schools

This chapter investigates the relational and multidimensional aspects of social exclusion experienced by teachers of minority Religious Education (RE) in Finnish primary, secondary, and upper secondary schools. The analysis in this chapter is based on interviews with nine of these teachers. The research in this chapter reveals that religious minorities form their own groups in schools, retaining a certain position of power, compared to other minorities. However, a discrepancy surrounds such groups. This discrepancy is characterised by the fact that these religious minorities are entitled to a strong legal position in school granted by the law at the national level and the curriculum. Nonetheless, what is granted by law on the national level appears to be implemented poorly in practice at the local level. Since this discrepancy drives the motivation of this research, this chapter investigates the character of social exclusion that emerges from it as experienced by these minority Religious Education teachers in the schools they are affiliated with in Finland.