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Re: VS: [xmca] Finland
Hello Andrew
What an interesting post.
I have been reading about educational change and education reform. The
last 30 years thre ite has been a lot of in the Anglo-Saxon (English
speaking if your prefer) countries. It is really atheoretical (even
leading to the loss of curriculum studies as a discipline), piecemeal.
assessment driven and expensive (I could go on.)
The point I want to pick up particularly is assessment-driven. The rise of
international testing (which of course says the Finnish children are the
best) has perhaps been unduly influential . South Africa of course comes
stone last. But teaching to the test breaks down the pedagogical
relationship. Valuing what teachers know becomes sidelined. Respect for
teachers as autonomous professionals diminishes.
We have Annual National Assessment in Grade 3 & 6 (Grade 9 is coming). The
schools which don't score 60% have been labelled dysfunctional. If you
know that 75% of schools in my province are labelled dysfunctional, this is
poor performance indeed. The response of the education system is not to
address pedagogy, but to get teachers to teach to the test. The teachers
are give the question types, and told to teach them. (We give the highest
proportion of of GDP to education known.)
In South Africa we are now into the 5th new curriculum since 1990.
Teachers are called "noncompliant" as if that is self-evident, and they
are to be blamed. I am writing about situation the excessive curriculum
reform has developed into for a chapter for Andy's book (in progress).
Carol
On 16 July 2013 17:44, Andrew Babson <ababson@umich.edu> wrote:
> I thought I would follow up on this, especially re Peter's post just
> earlier about Bill Gates' influence on education "reform". It also seems
> from Bruce's original post that I may have missed an earlier discussion
> about Finnish society.
>
> Yesterday in class, we got into *Finnish Lessons, *and according to the
> book it's clear that the Finnish model is very different than what Gates
> and his ilk are building. For one, testing and assessment are put in their
> proper perspective. Because teachers are taught to consider themselves as
> experts and researchers of their own profession, data are welcomed but
> scrutinized and used fittingly. In other words, the data serves them and
> their students, not the other way around--- a very Deweyan approach.
> Teachers are given the autonomy and the professional respect to do this,
> and they are not pitted against each other, which contributes to mutual
> trust. They seem to be comfortable sharing knowledge with and learning from
> their colleagues.
>
> We can then ask why this approach and that of Gates and the "global
> education reform movement (GERM)", as Sahlberg calls it, diverge so
> drastically. Why not take a hint from Finnish educators and students, who
> have established a long-term record of success?
>
> Among many reasons for this divergence, it needs to be highlighted that the
> Finnish model is not easily or quickly replicable, let alone measurable. It
> is a cultural artifact, an outgrowth of shared values and practices, chief
> among them cooperation, respect, and trust. To further illustrate: one of
> my students worked directly for Arne Duncan at the DOE for three years, and
> said that although the Finnish model was explored, Duncan et al. determined
> that only classroom-based pedagogical procedures could be replicated here.
> Now, you can guess how skeptical we in this newsgroup might be about that
> approach, considering how much education happens outside of the classroom
> in Finland, and the above point that you can't import, a la carte,
> sociocultural dynamics involved in classroom pedagogy.
>
> So, the Gates/GERM approach begs us to wonder what if about all of this
> money spent on "reform". What if it had been spent on building and
> implementing a 30 year plan to 1) transform the status of teachers into
> experts who collaborate with other experts, and 2) apply the Vygotskian
> principle of balancing autonomy and support to the entire system? Again,
> it's not like I think we here in the USA don't have it in us to learn from
> the Finns (after all, as Sahlberg points out, they took a lot inspiration
> from US educational research and practice). Not to be simplistic, but I
> still think it mostly goes back, as I mentioned before, to political will.
> Although habits and dispositions (and by extension, "cultures") are hard to
> change, they can be changed with enough motivation and time.
>
> Andrew
>
> On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Andrew Babson <ababson@umich.edu> wrote:
>
> > Hi XMCA'ers, and thanks Bruce for bringing up this topic. I assigned
> > Finnish Lessons for one of my classes, and we just started this past
> Monday
> > so your post is timely. Once we get into the book, I'll share some
> further
> > thoughts in this thread. Rauno, I appreciate your historical insights on
> > Finland (and Leif, interesting to know about trends in Sweden).
> >
> > It's galling to realize that the major thing, really, standing in the way
> > of solving so many social problems in democracies is political
> will---i.e.,
> > not because we don't know what to do, or that we don't have the money to
> do
> > it, but because advocacy hasn't been organized or passionate enough to
> make
> > it happen. It's good to see positive examples like Finland's education
> > turnaround, generations in the making.
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> > Andrew Babson, Ph.D.
> > Lecturer, Graduate School of Education
> > University of Pennsylvania
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 3:50 AM, Leif Strandberg <
> > leifstrandberg.ab@telia.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Good Luck Finland...
> >>
> >> don't do what we have done... a massive support to private schools
> >> ("private" is an euphemism... for s.c. risk capitalism)
> >>
> >> and the result is segregation and bad quality
> >>
> >> Leif
> >> Sweden
> >> 2 jul 2013 kl. 18.49 skrev Rauno Huttunen:
> >>
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> Pasi Sahlberg is respected educational scientist in Finland. He knows
> >>> what he is talking about.
> >>>
> >>> In 50th and 60th there was big debate in Finland concerning grand
> school
> >>> reform. Existing school system was reproducing unequality. Finally
> party
> >>> called "Maaseudun puolue" (Agrarian Party) agreed to work together with
> >>> social democrats and communists in order to plan and execute of a grand
> >>> school reform which would guarantee every child equal opportunities in
> >>> educational system. Right wing parties gave heavy resistance but school
> >>> reform was executed.
> >>>
> >>> Actually I am personally perfect example of this new Finnish elementary
> >>> school system. I have working class background and my school success in
> >>> lower grades was poor. In old school system I would have never make it
> to
> >>> "Lyseo" (high school/gymansium/college) and university. I had only some
> >>> distant relatives who make it to Lyseo and only one who make it to
> >>> university.
> >>>
> >>> Now we have to fight for our school system and not let private schools
> >>> run over the well working public school system.
> >>>
> >>> Rauno Huttunen
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ______________________________**__________
> >>> Lähettäjä: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> >>> käyttäjän Bruce Robinson [bruce@dolphy.eclipse.co.uk]
> >>> puolesta
> >>> Lähetetty: 2. heinäkuuta 2013 19:16
> >>> Vastaanottaja: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>> Aihe: [xmca] Finland
> >>>
> >>> Hello xmcaers,
> >>>
> >>> Following the recent discussion on Finnish culture, you might be
> >>> interested in this interview about the Finnish education system and
> `why
> >>> it is so successful from today's Guardian. There's some interesting
> >>> speculation about the relationship between relative equality and the
> >>> education system.
> >>>
> >>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/**education/2013/jul/01/**
> >>> education-michael-gove-**finland-gcse<
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jul/01/education-michael-gove-finland-gcse
> >
> >>>
> >>> Bruce R
> >>> ______________________________**____________
> >>> _____
> >>> xmca mailing list
> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
> >>> ______________________________**____________
> >>> _____
> >>> xmca mailing list
> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
> >>>
> >>
> >> ______________________________**____________
> >> _____
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
--
Carol A Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
Developmental psycholinguist
Academic, Researcher, and Editor *EditLab.net*
Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa