Building on the Finnish school success
Finnish schools run counter to generally accepted best practices, but still outperform everyone else. How can that be?
The Finnish primary school reform from the 1960s was radical and caused constant political controversy. Controversy ended only when OECD published the first PISA results in 2001, where — to everyone’s surprise — Finland had the best primary education system in the world.
Meanwhile in many other countries, school systems have been reformed in a very different manner. This GERM approach has been gaining popularity in recent years, even though it has failed to actually succeed in improving school systems. Let’s take a look at GERM and its opposite, the Finnish school system. Much of this analysis is based on the excellent work of Dr. Pasi Sahlberg.
GERM: Global Education Reform Movement
Globally, school reform focuses on school quality and access to schooling, instead of attempting to really change the underlying culture and structures.[4] Quality is improved through curriculum development, school evaluation, ict, and focusing on core skills (reading, writing, arithmetics) and STEM. Methods are often borrowed from corporate management and include pitting schools against each other, standardising teaching and learning, penalising evaluations, poorly fitted salary systems and decision-making based on simplified statistics. Pasi Sahlberg calls this approach the Global Education Reform Movement, or GERM, which has been active since the 1980 in an increasing number of countries, but which has not improved learning outcomes anywhere.[1]
Many credible sources, including OECD and McKinsey, have adamantly stated that teacher quality is the key to school improvement, but they are mistaken.[1] Their opinion relies on the claim that a school can only be as good as its teachers, but anyone familiar with systems thinking will realize that the practices and culture of an organization can either suppress or support its members. As Pasi Sahlberg points out, moving excellent Finnish teachers to a low-performing school in the USA will not be effective, as the local rules and conventions will limit what those excellent teachers can achieve.[2]
What good schools have in common is good leadership, keeping teachers in the center, creating a positive atmosphere, expecting achievement from everyone, involving parents, and developing the teachers’ skills.[3]
Vaccine: The Finnish school system
How schools in Finland operate seems to be directly opposite to what GERM recommends.[1]
Instead of pitting schools against each other, raising children is seen as a joint effort, where schools collaborate with each other, ideas are shared, and people network.
Instead of standardised teaching, the Finnish core curriculum is adapted to municipal and school levels, and each teacher can adapt the curriculum ever further, down to each pupils’ individualised learning needs.
Instead of focusing on reading and writing, Finnish schools focus on holistic development that takes into account each child’s personality, creativity, ethics, and skills.
Instead of quality control through evaluations, the expertise of headmasters and teachers in Finland is appreciated and they are given the power to decide what is in their pupils’ best interests. Accountability is based on trust.
Instead of free school choice, Finnish schools are built on the premise of equity of learning outcomes, and funds are allocated according to need, not achievement.
Better than Finland
Even the Finnish educational system needs to be improved. Here are Pasi Sahlberg’s suggestions for future improvement in Finland and elsewhere.[1] He sees that School 2.0 should be built around learning communities, which are sparked by individual interests, passions, and creativity. He describes these themes for future development:
Less traditional classroom learning and studying divided into subject areas, and more integrated themes and individual tasks. Traditional lessons should gradually make way for workshops, projects, and art.
More personalized learning plans that provide alternate ways of learning the core skills needed by everyone. Integrating informal learning and children’s own interests into education.
Schools cannot rely on their old missions any more. In addition to the core skills and essential cultural knowledge, pupils need to acquire the skills and views to apply them in various situations. An additional focus on social skills, empathy and leadership is also needed as more and more communication moves online.
Schools should find each learner’s strengths and help them develop those. Maintaining learners’ curiosity and motivation is crucial, as is allowing them to create something worthwhile in school.
LifeLearn is the School 2.0
Most of Sahlberg’s recommendations come true in the LifeLearn Platform.
In the center of LifeLearn is the learner, who wants to develop their skills and competences. Some of those skill paths may come from their school or profession, others from their hobbies and other interests. Learners will pursue the skills they’ve chosen, with their friends and colleagues, possibly with the guidance of a teacher or mentor or coach.
If an educational system (a school, a corporation, or a government institute) wants to embrace School 2.0 principles, LifeLearn will help them to
- Establish collaboration between learning providers through a shared platform.
- Prioritise each learner’s individualised learning needs.
- See each learner’s whole situation and the skill paths they’re working with.
- Reframe learning goals as skills and skill paths, instead of subject area specific chunks of knowledge.
- Integrate informal learning goals to the individual learning plans of each learner.
- Find each learner’s strengths, passions, and curiosities, and strengthen them.
- Provide alternate ways to learn the mandatory basic skills and competences.
LifeLearn will not help very much in the following principles, which the educational systems will need to handle on their own:
- Gradually moving from assessment of teachers and schools to trust-based accountability.
- Devising funding schemes to support equity of learning outcomes.
- Stressing the importance of social skills, empathy, and leadership skills.
It’s not a coincidence that about 70% of Pasi Sahlberg’s vision is encompassed in LifeLearn. LifeLearn is designed and developed in Finland by the best educational science and educational technology expertise available.
Summary
The Finnish primary school is evidence that outstanding learning results are possible with a very humane approach. See my previous article talking about free, unguided time and its importance on human development.
The Finnish model provides an excellent basis for preparing youth for the challenges of the 21st and 22nd centuries. LifeLearn is designed in Finland and embodies most of the principles that make Finnish education outstanding, including future ambitions that have yet to be realized fully in Finland.
References
- Sahlberg, P. (2014). Finnish lessons 2.0 : What can the world learn from educational change in finland? (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press.
- Sahlberg, P. (2013). What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools? Washington Post.
- Teddlie, C. (2010). The Legacy of the School Effectiveness Research Tradition. In Second International Handbook of Educational Change (pp. 523–554). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2660-6_31
- Hargreaves, A., Lieberman, A., Fullan, M., & Hopkins, D. (Eds.). (2009). Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2660-6
About the Author
Tarmo Toikkanen is Chief Learning Scientist at LifeLearn Platform. He has over a decade of research experience in the fields of learning environments, participatory design, and educational psychology. His passion is to save the world by helping people learn and teach in better ways. This article is part of a series to explain LifeLearn Platform’s ideas on learning.
