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Tero Toivanen

Finnish educator offers suggestions for American schools - Marin Independent Journal - 17 views

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    "Marin County educators gathered this week to imagine a world without standardized tests, one in which teachers would teach less and students would study less - yet score near the top on international tests of math, reading and science. Teaching would be a highly regarded profession in this world, and decisions about curriculum and other aspects of education would be made at the school - rather than the state or county level. The "achievement gap" between rich and poor schools would be unknown, as all schools would provide their students with a high level of education, along with free meals, counseling and health care. This mythical world of teachers' dreams has a name: Finland."
Maggie Wolfe Riley

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - The Atlantic - 37 views

  • "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
    • Maggie Wolfe Riley
       
      Wow did this ever strike a chord! Give us more responsibility, and let us show what we can do. When you reduce it to "accountability" you've taken away our power.
    • Kim Schmidt
       
      Perfect!
  • The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad
  • Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity
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  • Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.
  • Real winners do not compete
  • cooperation
  • instrument to even out social inequality
  • Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance
Tinhai Vong

e-competencies - 1 views

  • • Interestingly, teachers in countries like Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands etc. do not belong to the (very) intensive ICT users in class. Only around 10% or less of the teachers in these countries use computers in more than 50% of their lessons. One can only speculate about the reasons for this. It seems that in these countries the use of computers and the internet has become the norm for most of the teachers and pupils in all aspects of life and that there no longer is the need to put a special emphasis on this in the teaching processes at school. However, most European countries still seem to be in the phase of increasing the frequency and intensity of ICT usage for education in class”.
  • • “Students who use computers least frequently at home also performed below average in PISA 2003. However, students using computers most frequently at school do not in all countries perform better than others.
  • the highest performances in PISA 2003 were seen among those students with a medium level of computer use rather than among those using computers the most”. [p.52] “
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  • The more clear-cut effect appears with home use: in every country, students reporting rare or no use of computers at home (on average 18% of students) score much lower than their counterparts”.
  • One of ICT’s main strengths is its capacity to support informal learning. Self-learning and informal peer-learning are by far the two most important mechanisms for obtaining skills and competences;
  • If high amounts of computer usage at school are not associated with the better performing students, teachers may need to look more closely at the manner of this usage. Stronger supervision and structured lessons, involving the setting of concrete tasks to be achieved using computers, may improve their impact on performance”.[p.64]
  • • “The PISA evidence confirms previous studies showing the particularly strong association of performance with home access and usage“.
  • This possibility would be consistent with the observation that the amount of usage most commonly associated with the best performance is “moderate” – between once a week and once a month.
  • STATEMENT TWO: Frequency of ICT use in students does not determine their academic performance.
  • STATEMENT THREE: No correlation between the level of ICT access and the percentage of the ICT use.
  • STATEMENT FOUR: The impact on education and training has not yet been as great as expected.
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    Digital competences go beyond e-skills and consist of the ability to access digital media and ICT, to understand and critically evaluate different aspects of digital media and media contents and to communicate effectively in a variety of contexts. It involves the confident and critical use of ICT for employment, learning, self-development and participation in society. Digital competences are one of the eight key competences identified and defined by the EU
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