Good practice in multicultural integration work in Finland: collaborative learning in culturally sensitive projects

Finland is undergoing a rapid change from a homogenous culture to a heterogeneous culture. With immigrants from all over the world making Finland their home, a lot of multicultural integration work is needed. Collaborative learning in peer groups can work as a useful framework for enhancing tolerance toward differences, and consumer education and home economics education offer a fruitful setting for this kind of collaborative teaching of tolerance. In particular, the practical nature of consumer education and home economics makes it suitable to teach multiculturalism in a daily life setting. In this study, 10 integration projects in Finland were examined through a qualitative summary to reveal the key elements in successful multicultural integration work. The focus was on multicultural, collaborative interactions. The results show that problems are bound to arise when people from different cultures meet. Daily life situations, culturally unequal settings, poor participation and a lack of real interaction between different cultural groups can be problematic. These problems need to be overcome before the richness of different cultures can be revealed. People need to learn how to use the tools of multicultural and collaborative learning before the group can act successfully.