School principals’ diversity ideologies in fostering the inclusion of Muslims in Finnish and Swedish schools

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cree20 Race Ethnicity and Education ISSN: 1361-3324 (Print) 1470-109X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cree20 School principals’ diversity ideologies in fostering the inclusion of Muslims in Finnish and Swedish schools Inkeri Rissanen To cite this article: Inkeri Rissanen (2019): School principals’ diversity ideologies in fostering the inclusion of Muslims in Finnish and Swedish schools, Race Ethnicity and Education, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2019.1599340 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1599340 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 04 Apr 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 585 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles School principals’diversity ideologies in fostering the inclusion of Muslims in Finnish and Swedish schools Inkeri Rissanen Faculty of Education and Culture, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland ABSTRACT Mainstream scholarly approaches to improving equity in education, including culturally responsive education, promote multicultural recognition of diversity and abandon color-blindness as an ineffective strategy. The social psychological literature affords a more nuanced understanding of the merits of different diversity ideologies. However, these research strands rarely address religion. It is vital to study the actualization and influences of different diversity ideologies with respect to different forms of diversity and different contexts. This study analyzes Finnish and Swedish principals’diversity ideologies in fostering Muslim inclusion. The principals rely mainly on color-blind ideology, but assimilation into the secular normativity of the school is also commonly pursued. Multicultural ideology commonly applies to linguistic diversity, while Islam is excluded from the multiculturalist discourse. Reflexivity regarding the complex dynamics of recognizing individual vs. group identities in education as well as understanding of the implications of religion-blindness is called for. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 26 March 2018 Accepted 18 December 2018 KEYWORDS Diversity ideologies; culturally responsive education; religionblindness; school principals; Muslims; Finland; Sweden Introduction Much of the research on the development of educational equity in culturally diverse contexts has been conducted under frameworks, which emphasize multiculturalist recognition and respect for diversities. Currently relevant approaches such as culturally relevant and responsive education (e.g. Gay 2010) and critical multicultural education (e.g. Nieto and Bode 2008) push beyond color-blind thinking, affirm the backgrounds of all students and utilize diversity as an asset in order to empower all students, promote social justice and close the achievement gaps. The existing literature amply illuminates the drivers and barriers to the development of culturally responsive classrooms and school cultures (see e.g.Ullman and Hecsh 2011; Lustick 2016; WynterHoyte et al. 2017) yet the vast body of evidence of the impact of these educational approaches is missing (Sleeter 2012), and very little has been written about the particular dynamics concerning their implementation in the case of religion. Both color-blind and multicultural ideologies continue to influence programs and policies for dealing with diversity in education (see e.g. Stuart Wells 2014), and enquiry into the justifications of the underlying ideas of these different educational approaches is CONTACT Inkeri Rissanen inkeri.rissanen@tuni.fi RACE ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1599340 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. needed. Social-psychological knowledge on the flaws and benefits of different diversity ideologies (for reviews see Rattan & Ambady 2013; Rosenthal and Levy 2010) can provide important insight for this task. Principals’significant role in promoting equality, social justice and inclusion in schools has been acknowledged and studied under different theoretical frameworks; culturally responsive is among the most consistently employed terms in this body of literature (Khalifa, Gooden, and Davis 2016). The core idea is that culturally diverse contexts demand culturally responsive teaching, but transformations need to happen in all aspects of education in order to respond to the challenges facing marginalized students (Gay 2010). Principals have access to power and can become transformative agents in challenging inequalities in educational communities. They can develop and prepare the school staffand promote an inclusive and welcoming school climate for all students, tasks that presuppose development of the critical self-awareness of the school leader (Khalifa, Gooden, and Davis 2016; Lopez 2016). In a culturally responsive school leadership framework school leaders’behaviors are evaluated against the standard whether they are able to ‘identify, protect, institutionalize, and celebrate all cultural practices’from minoritized students, and colorblind ideology is seen as antithetical for the development of inclusive school environment, for it disturbs the possibilities of appreciation and affirmation of diversity (Khalifa, Gooden, and Davis 2016, 1278). Occasionally this argumentation takes the form of circular reasoning but evinces no evidence of the benefits of affirmation of diversity. However, studies have also associated color-blindness with principals’inability to acknowledge and counter racism and other forms of student marginalization (Mabokela and Madsen 2005; Touré 2008). The social psychological research literature (see e.g. Rattan and Anbady 2013; Rosenthal and Levy 2010) promotes a finely nuanced understanding of the impact of the different diversity ideologies for social relations. The present qualitative case study draws on this strand of research when analyzing Finnish and Swedish principals’ideals and practices of leading multicultural schools and supporting Muslim inclusion. The article does not rely on any specific normative definition of inclusion against which the diversity ideologies would be evaluated but uses the term to indicate the absence of any form of implicit or explicit exclusion experienced by Muslims in Finnish and Swedish schools. The analytical framework of the present study is composed of three commonly identified diversity ideologies: multiculturalism, color-blindness and assimilation. The focus is on how the principals aim to promote inclusive school climates; other leadership roles, such as instructional leadership, are not addressed. The research questions are: (1) What kind of diversity ideologies do the principals endorse and implement? (2) What diversity ideologies do they apply for the inclusion of Muslim students in particular? (3) What kind of differences are there in the diversity ideologies of Finnish and Swedish principals? In what follows I discuss the three diversity ideologies in more detail, present the contemporary issues of inclusion of Muslims in education in Europe and introduce the Finnish and Swedish contexts. Then, after presenting the data and methods of the study, I report the 2I. RISSANEN results by analysing the emergence of each diversity ideology in turn and, as a pervasive theme, discuss how these ideologies are implemented with respect to different forms of diversity. In the discussion section I reflect the results in light of the social-psychological research results concerning the impacts of these diversity ideologies and discuss their implications for further research and educational practice. Assimilation, color-blindness and multiculturalism People relying on color-blindness believe that focusing either on the uniqueness of every person or emphasizing similarities across groups of people, and disregarding group categories, is the best way to fight against prejudices and stereotypes and promote inclusion. Conversely, advocates of the multicultural strategy promote the recognition and maintaining of cultural identities, and see learning about and from diversities as the most efficient way of reducing prejudice. Unlike multicultural and color-blind ideologies that both aim to fight against inequalities but with different strategies, assimilation aims to protect the majority culture and may entail abandoning minority group identities (Rattan and Anbady 2013; Rosenthal and Levy 2010). Assimilation has proved to be the diversity ideology with the most negative effects on intergroup-dynamics: it is associated with greater ethnocentrism and stereotyping and does not have positive effects to compensate for these; furthermore, it is rarely supported by members of minoritized groups (Van Oudenhoven, Prins, and Buunk 1998). Social psychological experimental studies have demonstrated the benefits and weaknesses of both multicultural and color-blind beliefs. In some studies, color-blindness has been associated with less ingroup bias and less stereotyping than multiculturalism (Wolsko et al. 2000,2006). The kind of color-blindness that emphasizes similarity and the creation of a new common ‘we’is sometimes conducive to the development of social cohesion (see e.g. Gaertner and Dovidio 2000). However, at the same time it hampers the recognition of bias and discrimination and therefore fails to fight against existing forms of marginalization (Apfelbaum, Pauker, Sommers & Ambady 2010). Harsh criticism of color-blindness comes from scholars who observe its consequence in natural settings and as a larger socio-politic phenomenon. Where color-blindness has become a normative ideology, it seems to naturalize the identity of the dominant group, maintain its privileges and legitimize inequalities in a way that has led to it being regarded simply as a form of racism (Andersen 2003; Bonilla-Silva 2015). Furthermore, not recognizing group identities sometimes entails that people are compelled to act in a way that compromises their self-definition, which hampers the development of selfesteem and solidarity (Hopkins and Blackwood 2011). Members of dominant groups more commonly advocate color-blind ideology, while minorities prefer multiculturalism (e.g. Ryan, Casas, and Thompson 2010). However, multiculturalism is sometimes experienced as threatening by those members of minorities who do not identify strongly with their group (Verkuyten 2009). Maybe the most critical aspect of multiculturalism is that it can lead to more stereotyping, and among minorities it has been observed to strengthen ideas of the homogeneity of the dominant outgroup (Wolsko et al. 2000; Wolsko, Park, and Judd 2006; Ryan, Casas, and Thompson 2010); on the other hand, however, it can counter negative stereotypes through making visible the contributions of different groups. It is known that individuals rarely hold only one RACE ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION 3 diversity ideology; however, there is a lack of studies on the variation in diversity ideologies situationally or with regard to different forms of diversity (Rattan and Anbady 2013). Knowing these strengths and weaknesses of the different diversity ideologies, Rosenthal and Levy (2010) argue for the need also to develop balanced educational approaches that maxmize the benefits and minimize the shortcomings of different diversity ideologies. Muslim inclusion in education Religion is a category of diversity that is at the center of many current diversity debates. Yet, the abovementioned educational frameworks rarely pay attention to religion, nor does the social psychological research on cultural diversity (Verkuyten 2007). However, religious identities may be more non-negotiable than other identities, and the incorporation of religious diversity into secular societal and educational settings without encroaching on religious liberties raises many questions that are negotiated in the everyday lives of schools –and the most difficult cases have been considered by international human rights courts. For instance, the nature of the religious education curriculum in Norway and minorities’right to exemption from the subject were dealt with by the UN Human Rights Committee (Andreassen 2013). Religion is increasingly recognized as an equality strand that has to be protected against discrimination alongside other factors of diversity e.g. gender and sexuality (Catto and Perfect 2016). Muslims, in particular, have been regarded as the critical case of multiculturalism in many liberal societies (Modood 2014). In Europe, Muslim identities are commonly assumed to rival national identities and democratic citizenship, although evidence countering these perceptions has emerged (Grundel and Maliepaard 2012). The discrimination and Islamophobia experienced by Muslims in the West and also in the context of education has been much studied (see, e.g. Bleich 2011; Welply 2017; Wang 2017), and problems of the essentialization of Muslim identities are well known. In the post 9/11 world this essentialization has often taken the form of a discourse that distinguishes between ‘good’and ‘bad’Muslims, and in which ‘good Muslims’are similar to us and share are values and lifestyle, and non-modern ‘bad Muslims’are our enemy (see e.g. Mamdani 2002; Schwartz 2003). Liberal educational values entail an ideal of neutrality and a preference for education that does not promote socialization to any particular value system (Halstead 1996). However, many European countries have recently implemented measures to educate students who have internalized national values that have attained an untouchable and almost sacred position and take precedence over cultural values. This means that the more a religious individual’s values are tightly connected to sacred non-negotiable truths, and the more these values contradict national values, the fewer opportunities this person has to be taken seriously and participate in the democratic decision-making processes (Himanen 2012). In the field of education, criticism of the secular normativity (or religion-blindness) of schools and the liberal-secular foundation of multicultural education have started to emerge. In the Nordic context, for instance, scholars have criticized the othering of non-secular and non-Western worldviews in educational thinking and practices (see e.g. Poulter, Riitaoja, and Kuusisto 2016; Berglund 2017). 4I. RISSANEN The majority of Muslim students in Europe are educated in public schools, which is often considered the best way of promoting integration, even though there is only little research on how integration is promoted in these different types of schools. The fact that some Muslims want their own education invokes suspicions among non-Muslims: Islamic education in the West has even been accused of being a possible cause of Islamic radicalism and hindering the integration of Muslim students into society, even though these arguments are not based on any research evidence (e.g. Meijer 2009, 24). Furthermore, the experiences Islam and Muslims not being appropriately recognized have resulted in the willingness to found Islamic schools, also in Nordic countries (Larsson 2009; Leirvik 2009). The suspicions of some Muslim parents toward public schools are difficult to overcome because Muslims are rarely presented on the school staff, parents’associations or among educational authorities in European schools (Maréchal 2002). While Muslim families view Islam as cultural capital, schools may view it as oppressive and a hindrance to students’academic achievement (GhaffarKucher 2014). In some studies, pupils from Islamic countries have been reported to achieve lower educational performances than other immigrant students (Dronkers and van der Velden 2013); however, the reasons for this have only been speculated. Finnish and swedish contexts Unlike settler societies such as the USA, where multiculturalism is deeply ingrained in the national self-understanding, many European countries have a history with a dominance of one ethnic group and have experienced multiculturalization through immigration much later (Verkuyten 2007). This is also the case in Finland and Sweden, Nordic countries that are becoming increasingly multicultural, albeit a little later and at a slower pace than some of the most multicultural European countries. Although Finland and Sweden are highly secularized countries, the majority of the population belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The present combination of Protestantism and secularism in these countries could be called ‘secular Lutheranism’(Poulter, Riitaoja, and Kuusisto 2016). They are countries with traditionally high levels of social trust, but currently experiencing polarization through increasing social, economic, ethnic, and cultural divides. Sweden has a longer history of immigration and a larger immigrant population: Muslims in Sweden account for approximately 5% of the population (Larsson 2015), while the corresponding figure is 1% in Finland (Pauha 2015). In both countries, the Muslim population is heterogeneous with no dominant ethnic groups. Both Finland and Sweden have been ranked as countries of ‘strong multiculturalism policy’, (Multiculturalism Policy Index 2010) but there are gaps between official multiculturalist orientation and its implementation in practice. Furthermore, Sweden in particular has experienced a backlash of multiculturalism policies with the state taking less responsibility for immigrants’cultures (Byström and Frohnert 2017, vii). Multiculturalist orientation has also replaced assimilationism in educational discourses. There are efforts to meet the cultural needs of different groups in schools; both countries provide mother tongue instruction in the public school system, and Finland also provides religious education ‘according to students’own religion’: Muslim students also receive Islamic religious education in school. However, unlike in Sweden, there are RACE ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION 5 no Islamic schools in Finland. In both countries the vast majority of the students study in mainstream public (not faith-based) schools. Protestant-Christian holidays are included in school calendars, and Muslims commonly have to make an application if they want to have a day offduring the most important Islamic celebrations. Scholars have noted similar tensions in both countries: strong ideals of ideological neutrality in education prevail, while educators regard the mediation of fundamental national values based on liberal Protestant secularism as an important educational aim (Rissanen, Kuusisto, and Tirri 2015; Berglund 2013). Non-religious positions tend to be regarded as ‘normal’or ‘neutral’, while religious positions are seen to be in contradiction with modern, rational and independent thinking; on the other hand, the hegemony of the ‘secular Christian’position also sometimes becomes othering towards purely secular views (Kittelmann-Flensner 2015, 115–120; Poulter, Riitaoja, and Kuusisto 2016). The Swedish national curriculum even continues to describe Swedish identity to be based on Christianity and Western humanism. According to a recent comparative analysis of the current curricular discourses in Finland and Sweden, the Finnish national core curriculum employs a strong nonessentialist discourse of multi-layered cultural identities by articulating diversity as a feature of all students and national identity as multicultural, while the Swedish national curriculum is surprisingly silent about diversity, and makes a distinction between the students’‘own origins’and the ‘common heritage’(the latter including ‘basic values of Swedish society’) in a relatively essentializing manner. Furthermore, the Swedish curriculum posits the students’cultural background as a potential hindrance to the students’education, and advises school personnel to resist these hindrances (Zilliacus, Paulsrud, and Holm 2017). Both Finnish and Swedish curricula recognize various markers of students’identities, and forbid discrimination based on them in education. However, there is a trend towards referring to students through their language identities, which can also be interpreted as an attempt at political correctness and avoiding the ambiguous concept ‘multicultural student’. Religion is mentioned as identity factor understood to be tied to certain traditions (Zilliacus, Paulsrud, and Holm 2017). It seems that multicultural education in both Finland and Sweden is mainly understood in terms of increasing language participation, and no other barriers than language to achievement are recognized, which is a common trend in the Nordic context (Osler and Lybaek 2014). In contrast to the color-blind tendencies and avoidance of such terms as cultural identity in the Swedish curriculum, the Finnish curriculum is markedly multiculturalist in its orientation and demands that all students’ cultural and religious identities be recognised and supported (Zilliacus, Paulsrud, and Holm 2017). In practice, however, color-blind ideals of concentrating on commonality and restricting religion to the private sphere have been found to be common among teachers in Finland, too (Rissanen, Kuusisto, and Kuusisto 2016; Rissanen, Kuusisto, and Tirri 2015). Data and methods Principals and assistant principals of Finnish and Swedish multicultural comprehensive schools (n = 10 in both countries; PS1-PS10 in Sweden, PF1-PF10 in Finland) were interviewed for this study. They worked in comprehensive schools with significant 6I. RISSANEN numbers of students with immigrant backgrounds: their schools had from 10 per cent to 99 per cent students with Swedish/Finnish as their second language and significant Muslim populations, even though only the Finnish principals were able to give estimates of the number of Muslim students in their schools due to the model of religious education that divides students into different groups according to their religious affiliation. All the principals had previously worked as either subject or class-teachers and had experience of teaching in schools from12 to 30 years; all of them had also several years’experience of serving either as principal or assistant principal. They all were either native Swedes or native Finns, and none of them was Muslim. Nine of them were males and 11 females. The study is part of a larger project where Muslim parents and teachers, who are positioned as mediators or ‘cultural interpreters’in their school communities (n = 8 in both countries), were also interviewed. While this article focuses on presenting the results of the analysis of the principal data, references to the Muslim parent/teacher data are made when considered beneficial. The semi-structured interviews were conducted on the school premises and lasted from 50 to 90 minutes. In the interviews the principals were first asked questions about their ideals of leading multicultural schools in general, then about their ideals related to dealing with religious diversity and fostering Muslim inclusion. The interviews were conducted in Finnish, English and Swedish; they were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The quotes from the interviews conducted in Finnish or Swedish were translated into English by the researcher. The data was analysed using abductive qualitative content analysis (see e.g. Dubois and Gadde 2002; Elo and Kyngäs 2007). The three diversity ideologies (assimilation, multiculturalism and color-blindness) were used as analysis categories, and condensed meaning units (sentences that present principals’ statements in a reduced and clarified form) were grouped under these theory-driven categories. After that, the condensed meaning units under each category were coded and sub-categories formed more inductively. After this categorization process, the prevalences of the strategies identified in dealing with different forms of diversity were analyzed, and comparisons made also between the Swedish and Finnish data. The first idea was to create types or focus more closely on the profiles of the principals; however, even though some principals were inclined towards particular diversity ideologies, they all combined multiple strategies and it was deemed more productive to focus on the ways in which the diversity ideologies vary situationally and according to different forms of diversity. The results are shown in concise form in Table 1. The categories are italicized when they appear in the text. Results Assimilative ideology Assimilative ideals were based on ideals of maintaining the majority culture and the necessity for minorities to adapt to it. Assimilative orientation was not very commoninthedata;therewerefive principals who seemed to rely on assimilation as their main ideology. They were also more likely to express deficit beliefs about minorities. However, the majority of Swedish principals (7 out of 10), did sometimes appeal to majority values as the basis of commonality: most typically, they RACE ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION 7 expressed ‘Swedish values’or ‘Swedish democratic values’as the basis for developing a multicultural school community and society. This is in line with the Swedish curriculum, while the ideals of the Finnish curriculum that base commonality on more multicultural grounds (Zilliacus, Paulsrud, and Holm 2017)werereflected in Finnish principals’expressions –they did not directly appeal to Finnish values or norms in a similar vein, but mentioned values attached to global citizenship or human rights as the basis of coexistence. Assimilative expressions of the demands for the minorities to adapt to the majority school culture most commonly took the form of demanding adaptation to the secular normativity of the school –this demand came in some form from all the principals interviewed. The most assimilative claims revealed, for instance, an understanding of detachment from religious practice (e.g. not praying during school hours), or instances where Muslim students had played elves or angels in the school’s Christmas festivities ‘in a similar manner to all the other students’,asexamplesof‘successful integration’. These demands reflect a stance that could be called religion-blindness, which in the data of this study was commonly associated with the naturalization of the secular-Protestant worldview and culture. Few of the principals, however, promoted an ideal of building exclusively on the majority’s cultural resources in the school culture.Forthosewho did, an important concern was to protect and maintain Finnish or Swedish cultural (protestant) practices in the school. Some principals of segregated schools with 80–100% immigrant students and up to 40 languages spoken, regarded the cultivation of Swedish cultural practices as even more important in these schools than in schools with a native Swedish majority. However, they did consider it important for students to maintain their cultural identities but considered supporting this an Table 1. Diversity ideologies of Finnish and Swedish school principals. Diversity ideologies How applied to Islam and Muslims? Assimilative ideology Maintaining the majority culture -Presenting majority values as the basis of commonality -Demands for the minorities to adapt to the majority school culture -Building exclusively on the majority’s cultural resources in the school culture -Assimilation into (protestant) secular normativity Color-blind ideology Concentrating on uniqueness: -Claims about the irrelevance of diversity -Avoiding identification and categorization according to culture -Recognition and support only for individual identities Concentrating on similarities: -Appealing to the similarities between cultures and religions -Equality through exicing all cultural elements -Learning about similarities -Supporting new common group identities -Ignoring Islam as an identity marker -Emphasizing similarities between Islam and other religions -Excising Christian traditions from the school culture in order not to offend Muslims Multicultural ideology Supporting minority identities: -Showing interest in the backgrounds of students and their families -Building the school culture upon diverse cultural resources -Criticizing and changing the monocultural norms of the school culture. Benefiting from diversities: -Learning about diversities -Learning from diversities -Acquiring intercultural competences -Validating Muslim identities -Drawing on Islamic heritage in the school culture -Rethinking secular normativity in the school -Learning from values associated with Islam and Muslim families 8I. RISSANEN However, assimilative claims were more common concerned religious diversity and calling for assimilation into the secular normativity of the school. Color-blindness emerged as the most commonly endorsed ideology, and also as the strategy most commonly applied to Islam and Muslims. Multicultural ideals were expressed in some form by most of the principals but were frequently superficially internalized. Multicultural ideology was rarely implemented in promoting the inclusion of Muslims. When it was, it related to endeavors to build upon Islamic heritage in the school culture, validating Muslim identities and learning from values subscribed by Muslim families. However, understanding Islam as mainly a threat to integration was both implicitly and explicitly articulated by the principals. These views concur with common European discourses on the threats religion poses to integration, which contrast with discourses in US based studies where the religions of immigrants are commonly perceived as potential resources in integration processes (Foner and Alba 2008). In general, the study found that principals’diversity ideologies varied with respect to different forms of diversity. Language diversity was more commonly dealt with through multicultural ideology than religious diversity – afinding which contrasts with that of Agirdag et al. (2016) in Flanders. Secular normativity is fostered in the educational systems of both countries of this study but with greater emphasis in Sweden than in Finland. The Swedish principals almost completely omitted Islam from the multiculturalist discourse, while in Finland the system of religious education according to students’religious affiliation, based on the positive interpretation of religious freedom in Finland, compels the principals to see Muslims. However, what seemed to underlie principals’diversity strategies in both countries is religion-blindness, which appeared as naturalization of secular-Protestant worldview and culture, views emphasizing the irrelevance of religious identities in educational settings, lack of recognition for the contributions from religious traditions, as well as strategical interpretations of certain behaviors as ‘cultural’and beyond the realm of religious freedom. In a manner similar to that in which color-blindness is recognized as a form of racism that bolsters the normative identity of majorities and is blind to discrimination (Bonilla-Silva 2015), the aspects of religion-blindness observed in this study fail to counter the stigma attached to Muslim identities and rather than contributing to the fight against Islamophobia, become part of it. The mainstream scholarly approaches to increasing equality in education have abandoned colorblindness as an ineffective strategy (e.g. Nieto and Bode 2008; Gay 2010), but they are silent about religion-blindness. Nevertheless, given the social psychological research results on the shortcomings of also multicultural ideology, its implications in educational settings need to be carefully elucidated. The risks of multicultural ideology are that it sometimes leads to further stereotyping (Wolsko et al. 2000; Wolsko, Park, and Judd 2006), fails to increase empathy towards outgroups and increases perceptions of diversity as disturbing (Vorauer and Sasaki 2010). While multicultural recognition does seem to have favorable effects on feelings of self-worth for minority members who have a positive and secure identity and high ethnic self-esteem, it is experienced as uncomfortable by those who do not identify strongly with their group (Verkuyten 2009). Furthermore, in contexts where high levels of prejudices prevail, the targets of prejudices might prefer to avoid expressions of difference as the best strategy to prevent conflicts (Rattan and RACE ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION 15 Anbady 2013). The principals in this study had rather black and white perceptions on whether the recognition of different group identities was to be avoided or promoted, and reflexivity over the complexity of the issue was lacking. Research has also shown that multicultural ideology predicts more positive responses to stereotypical minority members, and color-blind ideology to counterstereotypical ones; thus, color-blindness may lead the members of the dominant group to dislike members of minorities wishing to express their cultural identities while multiculturalist majority members would feel the same way about those who are not willing to do so (Gutierrez and Unzueta 2010). This tendency was also apparent in the present study, where empathy towards students or staffmembers reluctant to be seen as Muslims was strong, and avoidance of religionizing treatment a common concern. Any criticism of the different diversity ideals is dubious if it is not informed by the minorities’own voices. Studies have demonstrated that the ‘over-visibility’of Muslim identity sometimes violates the feelings of belonging and ability to participate, but hurt is also caused by the invisibility of Muslim identity in situations where it is relevant and could be positively recognized. In contexts experienced as islamophobic, some Muslims struggle with the experienced need to promote positive recognition of Islam and exhaustion over assuming the task of being the ‘positive example’Muslim, and for these reasons sometimes prefer religious anonymity (Hopkins and Blackwood 2011; Rissanen 2018). Furthermore, as discussed in this study, all Muslim or members of other religious minorities are not necessarily ready for the demands of mutual recognition and celebration of religious diversity that multicultural educational approaches would encourage; some prefer having a strictly secular school and regarding religion as a private matter, even though this also means there would be no official-level validation of Muslim identities in the school. There were big differences among the principals in this study with respect to their willingness to give minorities agency to negotiate these terms of recognition (see also Rissanen 2018). The results of this study have implications for both educational practice and further studies. The silence surrounding religion in scholarly frameworks of multicultural education should be broken. Moreover, discussions on the incorporation of different forms of diversity in education should not be detached from context. In the two Nordic countries in this study, with very many similarities regarding history, demographics and multicultural policies, some important differences in principals’thinking emerged, and the origins of these differences are traceable to some features in conceptions of religious freedom and differences in the curricula. More comparative research could be conducted to see how these differences influence the educational experiences of Muslims and other religious minorities. Furthermore, the competences principals and teachers need in the complex attempt to incorporate religious diversity in their schools also remains an under-researched topic. The results of this study suggest that what is needed is an understanding of religion as an identity marker and possible reason for exclusion. Discussions on the grounds and implications of religion-blindness and the secular normativity of the schools are needed, and they need to connect to the wider societal discussions on the public role of religion. The results also suggest that education professionals need a finely nuanced understanding of the implications of different diversity strategies and a sensitivity in their implementation with situational variation and flexibility. In educational settings where prejudices prevail, it may be beneficial to 16 I. RISSANEN regard the development of educational equality and social cohesion as a process during which educators estimate in which ways affirmation of diversity can be promoted without risking an increase in negative stereotypes, identity threats or discrimination. The color-blind cultivation of commonality and uniqueness could play a part at the level of everyday educational practices laying the foundations for inclusion, and be followed by the validation of minority identities in unison with efforts at challenging stereotypes and existing forms of marginalization. However, this should not be taken as a legitimation of the naturalization of the majority identity in a way that upholds blindness to its privileges: while the celebration of minority identities can be approached with some caution, endorsing self-critical attitudes among majorities and renouncing the neutrality of their positions has never hurt anyone. Furthermore, at a more structural level there is very little need for color-blindness: the true indicator of Muslim inclusion is the agency of different Muslim groups to negotiate the governance of diversity in educational settings and the terms of their inclusion. 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