FINLAND is often held up as a country that "gets" education, with a government that uses both policy and funding to secure learning opportunities for its students that are difficult to replicate in other parts of the world. This is a classic bright spot. What accounts for this success? What is working in Finland that we're not seeing in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere?
Here is a recent Atlantic article Dec 2011 for discussion framing 1/15 and 1/22.
Additional FINLAND framing 1/29 from Joe Bower (Paradox)
Great FINLAND curated resource page from Jerry B and Larry Ferlazzo (Turnaround links)
NY Book Review "Schools We Can Envy" from Brenda Young .. " .. the central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition..."
CHAT TAKEAWAYS
Here are preliminary takeaways from Bright Spot #Ecosys chat 1/15/12
- Q1 1/15/2012 What are some of the ways FINLAND is differentiated from an Equity perspective?
- Principle of equity more embedded in culture than U.S. or Canada - more of a priority; cultural forces appear to be foundational, eg., "Ministry of Education & Culture"
- Local influence - scale equates more to U.S. State level (TN) & Canadian province level - more manageable
- Higher standards for teacher selection & evaluation
- Q1 1/29/2012 What are some of the primary differences?
- Trust, autonomy, respect for teachers
- Collaboration!
- Culture of risk taking
- Ideal, adaptive blend of 'expert observers' and 'mindful practitioners'
- Different level of commitment to PD (Professional Development)
- Q2 What are the similarities/differences between Norway/Finland? Is there a paradox in play?
- Norway has oil (higher GDP) while Finland has trees .. otherwise they are similar geographically, & even demographically?
- Norway policy looks more like U.S. policy
- Key difference is tweak (Norway) vs. complete overhaul (Finland)
- Finland now considered one of the best in the world
- Q3 Does 'obsessive testing' impact success of ed reform in West/U.S. v. Finland?
- Creates focus on wrong things
- Warps behaviors, risk of turning growth into graphs
- Need to shift focus from bad teacher to bad teaching; decide that no teachers/students will be lost, and work from there
- Middle course better than taking extreme. No silver bullets (including "getting ride of tests"); key is setting priorities, creating balance
Here's the Finland3 transcript, (printed to PDF from chrome at end of session)
Please RT and/or Favorite additional tweets for anything we missed here. We can come back to FINLAND again in the future as we need to. GREAT insights, thanks so much. Chris 1/29/12
What is Ecosys?
It's a conversation about change in our social ecosystems, currently focused on K12 Education. Here's more on our framing and our wiki frontpage brightspots topics