Ongoing global issues relating to the decline of the popularity of institutional religions, the rise of numbers of non-religious persons, and new models of spirituality in superdiverse societies have resulted in the need to reconceptualise religious diversity as worldviews diversity, and to critically examine increasing calls for the provision of worldviews education in schools. This paper first examines the key concepts of superdiversity and religious complexity in contemporary societies. It then presents an overview of scholarship pertaining to the concepts of worldviews and worldviews education. It next provides case studies of worldview/s education in Finland and Australia, drawing on data of recently completed qualitative and quantitative studies in the two countries. Finally, it concludes with a comparative analysis of the two contexts, and recommendations pertaining to worldviews education as a means of enhancing cross-cultural literacy, positive attitudes to religious diversity and thereby social inclusion.

This research investigates Finnish teachers' personal worldviews, by focusing on understanding what kinds of approaches teachers use concerning the visibility of their personal worldviews in an educational context. This issue is discussed in the light of teachers' professional autonomy and ethics, since these are two fundamental dimensions of teacher professionalism that are discussed a lot. The research was conducted using a qualitative attitude approach, and included interviews (N = 20) from Finnish in-service basic education class teachers. The results show that teachers use three different approaches where their personal worldview and its visibility in their work are concerned. When reflecting on worldview questions, there was uncertainty about balancing between practicing teacher autonomy and following teachers' official responsibilities. Teachers' personal worldview expressions were limited to the institutional worldview, which means in practice adopting norms and language of the worldview majority, and professional ethics was highlighted even more than autonomy when reflecting on the visibility of worldviews.

This study investigates religious education (hereinafter referred to as "RE") student teachers' perceptions about what constitutes a successful teacher in the next 20-30 years. The study focuses on RE student teachers in teacher education in Finland. The students were studied in the light of a 21st century skills framework. The data were gathered using a questionnaire (N=43) and interviews (n=8). The analysis of the interviews was deductive content analysis with a quantification of the results. There were several results from the study. For instance, the RE student teachers' expectations of professional development are connected to their perceptions of the task requirements. The RE student teachers perceived all kinds of interaction skills as an essential part of RE teacher competence in the future along with dialogue skills. The RE student teachers also emphasised learning to learn and critical thinking skills as the core skills of a successful RE teacher in the future. The participants seemed to highlight all the different literacy skills (information, media, technology and religious) as the core skills of a successful RE teacher. Especially religious literacy was considered to be a key skill in the competence of the RE teacher in the future.

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This article examines "new learning" skills from the perspective of Finnish in-service Religious Education (RE) teachers by exploring which skills teachers emphasize in their instruction. The data of this study consist of a quantitative online questionnaire (N = 83), and qualitative semi-structured interviews (N = 18) that were conducted to clarify the data. Skills were categorized and analysed by using the Assessment and Teaching of twenty-first century Skills (ATC21S) framework. The study shows that, from the four categories in the framework, teachers emphasized skills in Ways of thinking, Tools for working, and Ways of working categories, quite equally highly, though this was less true of the skills in Ways of living in the world category. However, the diversity among individual skills was high. Comparing individual skills, understanding diversity, religious literacy, communication skills (excluding leadership) and critical thinking were the most important in RE and leadership; producing a result and productivity were less emphasized skills in teachers' instructions. The results were explained by ongoing changes, such as religious pluralization, and digitalization in Finnish society, and the aim of RE as developing equal communication and developing, not finalizing, pupils' thinking.