Empowered Educators in Finland E-Book

Karen Hammerness

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 144

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

BEST PRACTICES FROM FINLAND'S HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOL SYSTEM Empowered Educators in Finland is one volume in a series that explores how high- performing educational systems from around the world achieve strong results. The anchor book, Empowered Educators: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality Around the World, is written by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues, with contributions from the authors of this volume. Empowered Educators in Finland explores Finland's unique approach to teacher training that, combined with a national focus on equity and children, has led to strong student results on the OECD PISA and other international tests. Since the 1930s, every child born in Finland has been provided with a box of clothes, sheets, toys, diapers, and even a small mattress; the box itself can--and often does--serve as a simple crib. Intended to ensure that all Finnish children begin with the essentials, this box also serves as a clear symbol of the nation's emphasis on equality and opportunity. This book describes how what is commonly thought to be "just a part of Finnish culture" is actually the result of strong support for educators at all levels of government. From the Ministry of Education and Culture, to the Finnish National Board of Education, to regional and local policy makers, Finland has made deliberate choices to create and support a strong educational system. While there are unique political, cultural, and societal features of Finland--as with all countries--there are many lessons to be learned and practical ideas to be implemented across the world.

Leseprobe

EMPOWERED EDUCATORS IN FINLAND

How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality

Karen Hammerness Raisa AhtiainenPasi Sahlberg

Copyright © 2017 by The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE). All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 9781119369714

ISBN: 978111937217

ISBN: 9781119372189

Cover design by Wiley

Cover image: © suriya9/Getty Images, Inc.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

About the Sponsoring Organizations

About the Authors

Online Documents and Videos

Introduction

The Context

Finnish Policies and Practices of Teacher Education

After Graduation: Supports for Quality Teaching in Schools

A Case of the “Construction” of Teacher Quality

Looking Ahead

Sample Documents

Notes

Appendix Methodology

References

EULA

List of Tables

Introduction

Table 1

Table 2

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Figure 1

Income inequality (gini coefficient) and aggregated student achievement (PISA score average of all three domains) in OECD countries in 2012 (OECD, 2013b).

Figure 2

Levels of Government in the Finnish Educational System

Figure 3

Cover of VAKAVA Exam Book

Figure 4

Sample VAKAVA Question

Figure 5

Curriculum for Class Teacher Education 2012–2015

Figure 6

Viikki Teacher Training School

Figure 7

Student-Teacher Suites

Figure 8

Anni Loukomies

Figure 9

Sari Muhonen

Figure 10

Sirkku Myllyntausta

Figure 11

Curriculum of Subject Teacher Education Programs

Figure 12

Sample class schedule, primary.

Figure 13

Sample primary school teacher schedule.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

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FOREWORD

FEW WOULD DISAGREE THAT, among all the factors that affect how much students learn, the quality of their teachers ranks very high. But what, exactly, do policy makers, universities, and school leaders need to do to make sure that the vast majority of teachers in their jurisdiction are literally world class?

Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to look carefully and in great detail at what the countries whose students are performing at the world’s top levels are doing to attract the highest quality high school students to teaching careers, prepare them well for that career, organize schools so teachers can do the best work of which they are capable, and provide incentives for them to get better at the work before they finally retire.

It was not hard for us to find the right person to lead a study that would do just that. Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond is one of the world’s most admired researchers. Teachers and teaching have been lifelong professional preoccupations for her. And, not least, Professor Darling-Hammond is no stranger to international comparative studies. Fortunately for us and for you, she agreed to lead an international comparative study of teacher quality in a selection of top-performing countries. The study, Empowered Educators: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality Around the World, took two years to complete and is unprecedented in scope and scale.

The volume you are reading is one of six books, including case studies conducted in Australia, Canada, China, Finland, and Singapore. In addition to the case studies and the cross-study analysis, the researchers have collected a range of videos and artifacts (http://ncee.org/empowered-educators)—ranging from a detailed look at how the daily schedules of teachers in Singapore ensure ample time for collaboration and planning to a description of the way Shanghai teachers publish their classroom research in refereed journals—that we hope will be of great value to policy makers and educators interested in using and adapting the tools that the top-performing jurisdictions use to get the highest levels of teacher quality in the world.

Studies of this sort are often done by leading scholars who assemble hordes of graduate students to do the actual work, producing reams of reports framed by the research plan, which are then analyzed by the principal investigator. That is not what happened in this case. For this report, Professor Darling-Hammond recruited two lead researcher-writers for each case study, both senior, one from the country being studied and one from another country, including top-level designers and implementers of the systems being studied and leading researchers. This combination of insiders and external observers, scholars and practitioner-policy makers, gives this study a depth, range, and authenticity that is highly unusual.

But this was not just an effort to produce first-class case studies. The aim was to understand what the leaders were doing to restructure the profession of teaching for top performance. The idea was to cast light on that by examining what was the same and what was different from country to country to see if there were common threads that could explain uncommon results. As the data-gathering proceeded, Professor Darling-Hammond brought her team together to exchange data, compare insights, and argue about what the data meant. Those conversations, taking place among a remarkable group of senior policy actors, practitioners, and university-based researchers from all over the world, give this work a richness rarely achieved in this sort of study.

The researchers examined all sorts of existing research literature on the systems they were studying, interviewed dozens of people at every level of the target systems, looked at everything from policy at the national level to practice in individual schools, and investigated not only the specific policies and practices directly related to teacher quality, but the larger economic, political, institutional, and cultural contexts in which policies on teacher quality are shaped.

Through it all, what emerges is a picture of a sea change taking place in the paradigm of mass education in the advanced industrial nations. When university graduates of any kind were scarce and most people had jobs requiring only modest academic skills, countries needed teachers who knew little more than the average high school graduate, perhaps less than that at the primary school level. It was not too hard to find capable people, typically women, to do that work, because the job opportunities for women with that level of education were limited.

But none of that is true anymore. Wage levels in the advanced industrial countries are typically higher than elsewhere in the world. Employers who can locate their manufacturing plants and offices anywhere in the world and who do not need highly skilled labor look for workers who have the basic skills they need in low-wage countries, so the work available to workers with only the basic skills in the high-wage countries is drying up. That process is being greatly accelerated by the rapid advance of automation. The jobs that are left in the high-wage countries mostly demand a higher level of more complex skills.

These developments have put enormous pressure on the governments of high-wage countries to find teachers who have more knowledge and a deeper command of complex skills. These are the people who can get into selective universities and go into occupations that have traditionally had higher status and are better compensated than school teaching. What distinguishes the countries with the best-performing education systems is that: 1) they have figured this out and focused hard on how to respond to these new realities; and 2) they have succeeded not just in coming up with promising designs for the systems they need but in implementing those systems well. The result is not only profound changes in the way they source, educate, train, and support a truly professional teaching force, but schools in which the work of teachers is very differently organized, the demands on school leaders is radically changed, teachers become not the recipient of a new set of instructions from the ”center,“ but the people who are actually responsible for designing and carrying out the reforms that are lifting the performance of their students every day. Not least important, these systems offer real careers in teaching that enable teachers, like professionals in other fields, to gain more authority, responsibility, compensation, and status as they get better and better at the work, without leaving teaching.

This is an exciting story. It is the story that you are holding in your hand. The story is different in every country, province, and state. But the themes behind the stories are stunningly similar. If you find this work only half as compelling as I have, you will be glued to these pages.

MARC TUCKER, PRESIDENT

NATIONAL CENTER ON EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FIRST, WE WANT TO thank the many educators, researchers, policy makers, and faculty in Finland who provided us with their insights, experiences, and expertise through interviews, as well as supplied us with the documents and data for our analysis for this case. A special thank you to the faculty of the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Helsinki: Hannele Cantell, Leena Krokfors, Anu Laine, Markku Jahnukainen, Kalle Juuti, Jari Lavonen, Hannele Niemi, and Auli Toom. We are also grateful to the masters students in teacher education, and the doctoral students, including Lauri Heikonen, who gave their time to help deepen our understanding of teacher preparation and novice teacher support. In addition, the faculty of the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Helsinki graciously hosted Karen as a visiting scholar in June 2014. She is grateful for their hospitality and for the very warm welcome she and her family received during that month.

We also extend a special thank you to the faculty, staff, and students at the Viikki Teacher Training School, University of Helsinki. Schools are busy places, but the teachers, administration, and students made plenty of time for our interviews and helped us understand the important role training schools play in Finnish teacher education. Principal Kimmo Koskinen and Markku Pyysiäinen were generous in not only agreeing to participate in this research but also in helping identify and schedule interviews with their faculty and with teacher education students. Several Viikki teachers not only shared their time in interviews, but also read and responded to drafts of this chapter: we are so grateful to Sirkku Myllyntausta, Anni Loukomies, and Sari Muhonen for their additional support and time.

A number of Finnish teachers were interviewed in the schools where we did our fieldwork and data collection. At the Myllypuro Primary School in Helsinki, we thank Principal Anna Hirvonen, and teachers Jaana Piipponen and Leea Pekkanen. At the Poikkilaakso Primary School, we thank Principal Marja Riitta Rautaparta, and teachers Kirsi-Maria Korhonen and Maria Kuosmanen. At the Langinkoski School in Kotka, we thank Principal Heidi Honkanen, and teachers Jouni Partanen and Eva Suokko. At the Koulumestari School in Espoo, we thank Principal Vesa Äyräs, Assistant Principal Tiina Korhonen, and teacher Minna Kukkonen, as well as to the Koulumestari students for sharing their work with us; and a special thank you to Jari Lavonen for helping arrange the visit and interviews in Espoo.

We thank the members of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the National Board of Education, and the Trade Union of Education OAJ, including Armi Mikkola, Jouni Kangasniemi, Jussi Pihkala, Irmeli Halinen, and Heljä Misukka. Tanja Steiner answered multiple questions about the VAKAVA exam.

During the analysis and drafting of this case we needed to check facts, dates, and figures. We are especially grateful to Finnish colleagues who read multiple drafts of this case: Auli Toom and Anu Laine both read drafts for accuracy, especially in terms of the descriptions of teacher education. They consistently and patiently responded to a number of follow-up emails we sent as we continued to fill out descriptions and fine-tune our analysis. Close long-term colleagues also read drafts, gave feedback, and checked facts, including Sam Abrams, Thomas Hatch, and Kirsti Klette. Jon Snyder also read several versions and the draft reflects his specific attention to—and understanding of—some of the important contextual but perhaps less immediately visible differences between Finland and the US. Sammi Cannold graciously helped gather and check a series of facts and figures, to support cross-case analysis. As principal investigator, Linda Darling-Hammond gave multiple rounds of feedback throughout the data collection, analysis, and writing. Her probing, thoughtful perspective helped hone and refine the final piece in ways that illuminated critical themes and threads across cases. Lee Shulman’s conception of cases, especially his focus upon the question “What is this a case of?” also helped guide us as we worked to identify some of the overarching findings, and provided a key foundation for thinking and analysis. While all the analysis and conclusions are ours and we take full responsibility for the writing of this case, our thinking benefited in so many ways from their thoughtfulness and responsive readings.

Throughout the conceptualization, data collection, and analysis, our case benefited from the considered feedback, sustained engagement, and keen analytic perspectives of the other country case authors—Misty Sato and Kai-Ming Cheng (Shanghai); Carol Campbell, Jesslyn Hollar, Ann Lieberman, Pamela Osmond-Johnson, Ken Zeichner, Shane Pisani, and Jacqueline Sohn (Canada); Dion Burns and Ann McIntyre (Australia); and Lin Goodwin and Ee Ling Low (Singapore); and Linda, who is also co-authoring the Singapore and Victoria cases. Our team meetings were not only lively, engaging, and collaborative, but each session strengthened this case and helped surface commonalities as well as features that seem to matter across cases.

Throughout the data collection, analysis, and writing, we relied on the support of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy (SCOPE) team, including Dion Burns, Maude Engstrøm, and Sonya Keller, who helped give direction, share materials, advise on ideas, and make connections across cases. Jon Snyder provided leadership, direction, and feedback during the process, and facilitated and guided team meetings in ways that continued to surface insights across researched cases. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the Ford Foundation to the aspects of this research addressing the uses of time in the Finnish system. We also offer our thanks to Barnett Berry and the Center for Teaching Quality, whose teachers contributed their experiences and perspectives to this work.

We would not have been able to do this work without the invitation of Linda Darling-Hammond to join this team and to conduct this work, and to have the unique opportunity to dig in and examine in depth the policies of our own focal country as well as of the others in this study.