ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how developments in gender theory and/or research-based understandings of gender and sexual diversity are present in Finnish school cultures. It also explores how language, expressions, and what is left unexpressed keep discriminating attitudes alive and ‘relevant’ in school cultures. The new Finnish National Core Curriculum claims that one of the aims of the revised curricula, and of the pedagogy aligned with this guiding document, is to further advance equality according to the policies and laws that guard a democratic society. This revision of the national core curriculum guides administrators, teachers and learners, and provides a framework for the pedagogy carried out in Finnish schools for the ten-year period 2016–2026. Gender identity refers to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body and other gender expressions, including dress, speech and mannerisms.
