Towards Twenty-First Century Education: Success Factors, Challenges, and the Renewal of Finnish Education
This chapter seeks to analyze the success factors, challenges, and renewal of Finnish education in the context of learning twenty-first century competency. We analyze the good performance and low variation in performance of Finnish students and suggest Fi
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Towards Twenty-First Century Education: Success Factors, Challenges, and the Renewal of Finnish Education Jari Lavonen and Tiina Korhonen
Abstract This chapter seeks to analyze the success factors, challenges, and renewal of Finnish education in the context of learning twenty-first century competency. We analyze the good performance and low variation in performance of Finnish students and suggest Finnish teachers and teacher education as well as the Finnish approaches to curriculum, assessment and quality assurance as possible factors for the excellent results. In addition, we analyze possible reasons for the recent decline in assessment results. Challenges for Finnish education in the classroom, school, municipality, and national level as well as challenges in teacher education are considered. Finally, we introduce the new Finnish national curriculum and how it aims to develop the twenty-first century competencies of students as a solution to overcoming the challenges. The creation of teacher collaboration networks is suggested as a way to support teachers’ continuous professional development, particularly with respect to their teaching of twenty-first century competency. We show how such networks could facilitate the creation and sharing of educational innovations related to teaching and learning through teachers’ collaboration, inquiry, and problem-solving activities as well as through a close connection to classroom practice.
Finnish Education Context Finland is situated in northern Europe, and its population, of which 90 % are Finnish-speaking Finns, is around 5.5 million, the majority being concentrated in its southern regions. The Finnish education system consists of daycare programs, a 1-year “preschool” (for children aged 6), a 9-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (starting at age 7 and ending at age 15), post-compulsory secondary general academic and vocational education, higher education at universities and applied universities, and adult (lifelong, continuing) education. Finland has consistently
J. Lavonen (*) • T. Korhonen Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, (Siltavuorenpenger 5), FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 S. Choo et al. (eds.), Educating for the 21st Century, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1673-8_13
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ranked high in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies that compare national educational systems internationally (OECD, 2007, 2010), achieving not only high scores but also little variation in performance, an important outcome of national education policy. Several researchers and policymakers argue that this success is a consequence of Finland’s education policy, structure, and practices (Burris, 2012; Sahlberg, 2011). The masters level teacher education programs have been named as particularly important in contributing to the success (Laukkanen, 2008; Simola, 2005). However, when the PISA 2012 res
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