Amazing Difference in Educational System

Happy Teaching, Happy Learning: 13 Secrets to Finland's Success

By Sophia Faridi

Most educators have probably found themselves wishing for a simpler solution to the hardships and inequities of the U.S. education system. I recently got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend the Oppi Festival in Helsinki, Finland, with a group of seven U.S. educators to learn more about the Finnish school system and the lessons it might offer.

During the trip, our group had the chance to visit several innovative schools. While I can’t say that I uncovered some mysterious holy grail of education, I did discover something that I had never considered before: the importance of happy teaching and happy learning.
The teachers and students that I observed were happy. Students seemed to actually be enjoying their learning experiences, and teachers appeared satisfied and valued.
It made me wonder: “What makes school in Finland such an enjoyable experience for students and teachers?” Here are 13 factors that I identified.

Students in Finland work together frequently, and the material they study is important to them.

—Sophia Faridi

1. A heavy emphasis on play. In Finland, people believe that children learn through play, imagination, and self-discovery, so teachers not only allow but encourage play. Development of the whole person is highly valued, especially in the early years. Even at the high school level, you can see students playing foosball or videogames in the student center.
2. No high-stakes standardized testing. Finnish schools believe more test preparation means less time for free thinking and inquiry. Accountability is measured at the classroom level by the experts—teachers.
3. Trust. This was perhaps the greatest difference I observed. The Finnish government trusts their municipalities, the municipalities trust school administrators, administrators trust teachers, teachers trust students, and in return, parents and families trust teachers. There is no formal teacher-evaluation system. Teachers, similar to doctors in the U.S., are trusted professionals.
4. Schools don’t compete with one another. There are no school evaluations since it is believed that all schools should be good. Non-competitive school structures result in no need for school-choice programs.
5. Out-of-this-world teacher prep programs. Part of the reason why teachers are so trusted in Finland is that becoming a teacher is an extremely rigorous and prestigious process. Only the best of the best are accepted into education school. In addition to having high test scores, candidates must pass an interview investigating their integrity, passion, and pedagogy. Universities are committed to finding candidates that are the right fit for the teaching profession. Their programs are research-based, and teachers finish with master’s degrees, including a published thesis.
6. Personal time is highly valued. Every 45 minutes, students have the legal right to 15 minutes of free time. Finns believe that students’ capacity for engagement and learning is most successful when they have a chance to unwind and refocus. In turn, students work productively during class time, with the understanding that their needs to play, talk, or even read quietly will be met shortly. Going outside frequently also encourages greater physical fitness.

In Finland, schools emphasize play, and students are encouraged to play during the school day all the way through high school.

—Sophia Faridi

7. Less is more. Students do not start school until the age of seven. School days are also shorter. Most elementary students only attend school for four to five hours per day. High school students, similar to college students, only attend the classes that are required of them. So while one student might have an 8 a.m. Swedish class, another might not start school until 10 a.m.
8. Emphasis on quality of life. The Finnish system recognizes that happy teachers are good teachers, and overworked teachers will not be at the top of their game. Teachers prep from home and only teach to students about 20 hours per week.
9. Semi-tracked learning. After age 16, students choose gymnasium (academic-based) or vocational school. However, both paths are highly respected in Finnish society. The vocational school we visited was an amazing state-of-the-art facility with hands-on learning infrastructures that surpass most American universities. Students graduating from either type of high school may attend university.
10. National standards are valued. Finland uses a national set of standards that are similar to the Common Core State Standards. Teachers have complete autonomy over curriculum and how the standards are implemented.
11. Grades are not given until 4th grade. Evaluation of early learners focuses on metacognition and learning how to learn.
12. Ethics is taught in the primary grades. While many students learn their ethics curriculum through religion class, even nondenominational or nonreligious students are required to take ethics courses.
13. Collaboration and collaborative environments are strongly emphasized. The infrastructure of schools is designed to promote collaboration. Classrooms branch off from a shared learning area where students from various classes and grade levels work together and teachers can interact in a common space. High school students have all sorts of cozy nooks and crannies to work together comfortably on campus, and students move freely around the building with minimal supervision. The teachers’ lounge was a literal greenhouse allowing for sunshine and plants to thrive. With access to a massage chair and computer lab, teachers feel relaxed and comfortable when working together.

Students in Finland appear happy, engaged, and invested in their work.

—Sophia Faridi

Perhaps what struck me most about schools in Finland was the relevant, genuine learning taking place right before my eyes. For example, I had the chance to sit down with a group of high school seniors working on a project examining U.N. extradition trials. Without any teacher present, students were engaged simply because the subject was important to them.
While I’m still not sure exactly how Finland has managed to cast such a positive light on education (or how to replicate that attitude), I did walk away with one tool to begin the conversation about improving American education. As one Finnish principal explained, “When a student struggles, the question is not what’s wrong with the student or what’s wrong with the teacher. The question is, what’s wrong with the system?”
I think this is just the beginning of many questions we need to ask ourselves as we develop our own models for improving schooling for all U.S. students and teachers.

Sophia Faridi is a 9th grade English teacher at Baker College Prep in Chicago. She has served as a fellow for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, America Achieves, and Student Achievement Partners, for which she has helped advise the U.S. Department of Education on major education issues. She is a member of the CTQ Collaboratory. 

The future of education?

Why everything about personalized learning is about to change

By Peter West
Read more by peterwest
June 18th, 2014

Just as ‘gaming engines’ revolutionized game making, adaptive learning engines are about to revolutionize education

Be prepared to be amazed…very amazed. A quantum leap in the way online learning materials are organized and presented to students is happening as you read this.
It will change forever the way that learning occurs…and it is becoming easier for teachers to implement.
Personalized learning made easy
Adaptive learning/personalized learning is the future. The days of presenting the same material to all students at the same time, in the same sequence and in the same way will be seen as an ancient and ineffective concept in a few years.
The problem to date has been the difficulty creating individual learning paths.
However, that is changing rapidly. In some ways, this replicates the development of the computer game industry.
Stage 1 – the “handmade” stage
Thirty years ago, each computer game was created individually “by hand.” Programmers would build every component of a game from scratch. Each game had to be built again for each type of computer. A game designed for an Atari computer had to be rebuilt for an Apple computer.
In education in the past, each school had to develop and find resources for the online component of their courses. This was often done by individual teachers, and the materials were often placed in an online repository for access by students. In the early days, these materials were on a shared network drive. This then evolved into a shared online area, such as a file repository or a web page. However, each teacher or organization had to build their own web pages and the navigational links between them.
Stage 2 – a more systematic approach
In the 1980s “gaming engines” started to appear. These were programs such as Gamemaker, Pinball Construction Set and Adventure Construction Set. These provided core components of a game and the “intelligence” behind the game. Thus, a user could focus on the design, implementation and marketing of a game rather than the “nuts and bolts” – the time consuming computer coding.
In education, the equivalent is the development of Online Learning Environments (such as Learning Management Systems) that take care of many aspects of delivering learning materials in an online environment. These environments provide structure and navigation to online courses, and provide a range of other useful tools such as quizzes, chat and discussion areas, “dropboxes” for students to submit files (assignments), etc.
This stage also opened access to a wealth of online resources from commercial and free providers. Teachers no longer had to make most of the resources for their courses. YouTube alone has become a wonderful resource for educators (and there are many, many more sources of resources).
For many educators this is their current location.
Personalization at this stage takes time and effort. Many online learning environments allow personalization through features such as the easy creation of quizzes and other assessment/feedback activities, conditional release, creation of groups of students who share common levels of understanding, multiple paths for learning resources, etc.
For example, all students might study a small part of a topic and then take a quiz. Those who score above a “pass” grade (60 percent?) could continue to the next learning resource; those who score less than 60 percent could be diverted to some alternative learning materials that provide the information in an alternative format.
If the teacher is particularly keen (and has a lot of time), feedback and navigation to an alternative learning resource could be provided for each question that was answered incorrectly.

This is obviously a time consuming process, and is not the ideal solution…yet this is where many people currently find themselves.
Stage 3 – Adaptive engines
In the late 1990s some game manufacturers started to build “game engines.” These provided all of the key programming components of the game – the way the characters and objects interact, the “physics” of the world, and so on.
Game designers could create a “world” that characters could wander through at will, and could then devote most of their effort to plot, characters, artistic features of their “world,” etc. The underlying “magic” was done by the game engine. The days of having lots of programmers and few artists and storytellers had passed. The amount of time needed to create a game reduced considerably.
Finally, the storytelling was the focus rather than the computer coding.
Education is about to discover this “magic” phase. Just as “gaming engines” revolutionized game making, adaptive learning engines are about to revolutionize education.
Adaptive learning engines will do the hard work, such as

• discovering what students know and don’t know
• providing paths to learning resources that are needed by a students at a particular time, and guiding him/her to those resources
• suggesting alternative learning resources when the initial ones provided in the course need supplementing
• evaluating the effectiveness of learning resources and moving students to the more effective ones while moving them away from less effective ones.

Teachers will have to compile the appropriate resources, but the system will individualize the learning pathways.
Just as gamers now take for granted that they can wander anywhere and interact with any object in a gaming world, students will take for granted that they can access many paths and many objects in a way that suits their individual needs…and the time when this can happen is getting much closer.
Stage 4 – Walled gardens Vs Open systems
Walled gardens
Adaptive learning is already available for some disciplines. The areas that are almost universal, with a common core of knowledge, and that are similar around the world have a number of providers of web based resources for personalized learning…and the number is growing. (Mathematics e.g. Dreambox, Science and basic Literacy e.g. SuccessMaker).
Some text book providers, particularly in higher education, provide adaptive learning capabilities for courses that use their text books.

However, these are self-contained systems. They usually do not share data with others easily through open standards such as LTI. Thus, an organization with a heavy online presence through its own Online Learning Environment (such as a LMS) has difficulty integrating the data from multiple systems, and has difficulty integrating its own learning materials.
Open systems
Schools typically have a number of courses that fall outside the range of these “centrally controlled content” programs. For example, what is the teacher of a subject based on local Geography to do? There are many courses that are “personalized” to a particular school or district that will fall outside the range of products provided by the large developers.
The answer is to use an adaptive learning engine that integrates with their Online Learning Environment, such as LeaP from Desire2Learn. This engine will use their current resources and build personalized pathways for students. Data from quizzes, etc. will feed into the Gradebook and intelligent analytics of the central Online Learning Environment. These integrated systems will do the “heavy lifting” in the background so that the teacher can focus what is important – the student and his/her learning.
Summary
While these adaptive learning engines are still being fine-tuned, their impact will be dramatic. Just as gaming engines revolutionized the computer game industry, adaptive learning engines will revolutionize education. It will enter a new phase…a phase where individualized learning is much more easily attained by organizations of any size and where teachers can focus even more on the core of their profession.

Peter West is Director of eLearning at Saint Stephen’s College in Australia. He has over 15 years’ experience leading K12 schools in technology enhanced education, particularly blended learning using online learning environments. He can be contacted at pwest@ssc.qld.edu.au.