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thebda

Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with 'topics' as country reforms its education system - Europe - World - The Independent - 45 views

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    "We really need a rethinking of education and a redesigning of our system, so it prepares our children for the future with the skills that are needed for today and tomorrow"
Adrienne Michetti

t r u t h o u t | Lessons From Most Successful Schools Abroad - 2 views

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    Interesting article about lessons that can be learned from non-American educational systems. This article focuses primarily on the educational systems in Finland, with an emphasis on teacher autonomy.
Martin Burrett

Countries with greater gender equality have a lower percentage of female STEM graduates - 9 views

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    "Countries with greater gender equality see a smaller proportion of women taking degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), a new study has found. Policymakers could use the findings to reconsider initiatives to increase women's participation in STEM, say the researchers. Dubbed the 'gender equality paradox', the research found that countries such as Albania and Algeria have a greater percentage of women amongst their STEM graduates than countries lauded for their high levels of gender equality, such as Finland, Norway or Sweden."
Martin Burrett

How students recognise 'fake news' in digital literacy tasks - 18 views

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    "A recent study revealed students at an international school in Finland significantly outperformed U.S. students on tasks which measure digital literacy in social media and online news. The researchers suggest this may be due to the Finnish and International Baccalaureate curricula's different way of facilitating students' critical thinking skills compared to the US system and curriculum. The results of this study were published in the Journal of Research in International Education in April. Critical thinking is a 21st century skill considered essential for today's students to navigate the Information Age and for their future work life."
Siri Anderson

DigitalYouthSeattleThinkTank2016.pdf - 13 views

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    Finland is getting rid of their subject areas in K-12...it seems that tapping into the way in which youth already use technology to facilitate their own learning goals would be a good first step for teachers. Any schools using competency based assessments for fully personalized learning absent of subject matter classes?
Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder

CBI: Our education systems are not delivering - while average performance rises gently, too many are left behind - 0 views

  • Spending on education accelerated still further after 1997, rising in real terms by 71% by 2010-11.
  • UK ranks among the highest spending OECD countries measured in terms of percentage of GDP on education.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • but we are being outperformed by nations which spend less.
  • the challenge lies not in what we spend, but in what we do.
  • explanation for the conveyor belt comes not from money, therefore, but from other incentives that schools face.
  • Schools have become used to governments setting blanket targets,
  • We should not be surprised that these drive behaviour – but not always the behaviour that the Department for Education wants.
  • The percentage of pupils gaining five ‘good’ A*-C GCSEs has increased by 50% over the last decade.
  • this should be an indicator of great success
  • has been questioned by many commentators.
  • When we look at whether the improvement on the GCSE metric is general or specific to those close to the grade boundary, it is clear that this measure is driving what is happening in schools.
  • intensive targeting of resources on pupils just below the C grade and/or an increase in teachers’ expertise in ‘teaching to the test’ has been behind  improvements.
  • Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the rise in exam grades for average ability candidates really reflects an increase across all groups in mastery of the subjects studied.
  • Narrowly-defined targets like these, based only on exam results subtly inhibit the overall education of young people.
    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
       
      This is why Finland only has one national test....
  • If an acceptable level is reached, failure among a substantial minority is tolerated.
  • At earlier stages in the system, similar testing frameworks focus school accountability on achieving a certain percentage of pupils reaching a defined average, rather than a focus on absolute attainment.
  • it is possible to dramatically reduce attainment gaps in their primary school populations and raise standards on a broader basis than the UK has managed.
Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder

CBI: Change is possible - but we must be clearer about what we ask schools to develop in students and for what purpose - 1 views

    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
       
      Question: What are the goals set out on the political level? What does Gove want to achieve?
  • lacks
  • guardrails
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • which makes transformational change
  • ifficult
  • In Finland, the goals of education are explicitly linked to competitiveness, research and innovation.
  • nowhere in the UK do they really drive the terms under which schools are assessed.
  • In England, the government has defined its approach as being based on curriculum rigour.
  • This lack of a comprehensive statement of the achievement we are looking for schools to deliver is a key failing.
  • best schools
  • areas of high disadvantage
  • define the outcome they need
  • in the face of the complex and inconsistent demands the system places on them.
    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
       
      Clear indication that the system as a whole is not supporting a generally accepted set of goals. Instead, the schools are trying to achieve a goal they see as important at worst while fighting the systemic demands.
  • One such school leader told us they had taken a conscious decision with one group of young people to focus on five key subjects and some life skills, knowing that the accountability system would score them down for it, as it expected eight qualifications from all students at that time.
  • Our system should reward schools making brave decisions which focus on boosting long-term outcomes for pupils, not punish them.
  • It should be able to survive changes of government and provide the test against which policy changes and school actions are judged
  • shine the light on whether the system is truly addressing the needs of all students, rather than just the few required to meet a government target.
  • Focus on raising the ambition and attainment for every child as far as their abilities permit
  • guide young people effectively on their choice of enabling subjects…
  • thos and culture that build the social skills also essential to progress in life and work, and allow them time to focus on this
  • Have a school accountability and assessment framework that supports these goals rather than defining them.
  • social literacy
  • a range of core subjects
  • ncluding critically maths, English, the sciences
  • effective use and understanding of computer science.
  • ‘enabling subjects’
  • humanities, languages, arts, technical and practically-based subjects
  • equip a young person to move on
  • o university, or to an apprenticeship or vocational qualification
  • a set of behaviours and attitudes,
  • An exclusive focus on subjects for study would fail to equip young people with these, though rigour in the curriculum does help
  • ‘employability skills’
  • Behaviours can only be developed over time, through the entire path of a young person’s life and their progress through the school system.
  • right context at school
  • A supportive culture, pastoral care and the right ethos are all needed to make the difference.
  • a long tail of pupils failing to achieve the desired outcomes can no longer be accepted.
  • enable all of our young citizens to reach the desired standards.
  • conflicting expectations placed on schools.
  • renewed system should be able to judge performance against the goals based on more complex metrics.
  • judgement
  • on overall culture and ethos, teaching and governance
  • group of data points, including testing but also outcomes data.
  • Development of a clear, widely-owned and stable statement of the outcome that all schools are asked to deliver.
  • beyond the merely academic, into the behaviours and attitudes schools should foster
  • basis on which we judge all new policy ideas, schools, and the structures we set up to monitor them
  • Ofsted
  • asked to steward the delivery of these outcomes
  • resourcing these bodies to develop an approach based on a wider range of measures and assessments than are currently in use,
Andrew McCluskey

The Finnish Alternative: Reclaiming Public Education From Corporate Reform - 2 views

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    Episode 3 - A great comic looking at the problem of education reform!
Steve Ransom

Stephen Krashen Pulls the Rug Out From Under the Standards Movement - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher - 3 views

  • ur average scores are respectable but unspectacular because, as Farhi notes, we have such a high percentage of children living in poverty, the highest of all industrialized countries. Only four percent of children in high-scoring Finland, for example, live in poverty. Our rate of poverty is over 21%.
  • It means that the "problem" of American education is not ineffective teaching, not teachers' unions, not lack of national standards and tests, and not schools of education: It is poverty.
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    "It means that the "problem" of American education is not ineffective teaching, not teachers' unions, not lack of national standards and tests, and not schools of education: It is poverty." Sarah's comment is heartbreaking
rkl05754

Education Week: Doublethink: The Creativity-Testing Conflict - 46 views

  • n his book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland?
  • Pasi Sahlberg i
  • "The central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Standardized testing rewards the ability to find the "correct answer" and thus discourages creativity, which is about asking questions and challenging the status quo.
Diane Stewart

Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? | People & Places | Smithsonian Magazine - 82 views

    • Diane Stewart
       
      Like Sharon
  • Many schools are small enough so that teachers know every student.
Tracy Tuten

How to Fix the Schools - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach.
  • Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his research on comparing public education in the United States with that of places that have far better results than we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits — almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so.
  • His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)
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  • Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”
  • High-performing countries don’t abandon teacher standards. On the contrary. Teachers who feel part of a collaborative effort are far more willing to be evaluated for their job performance — just like any other professional. It should also be noted that none of the best-performing countries rely as heavily as the U.S. does on the blunt instrument of standardized tests. That is yet another lesson we have failed to learn.
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    On what's wrong with our education system 
Nigel Coutts

Fuzzy Thinking for Long-Life Learning - 46 views

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    Recently I have found a number of ideas on the web that were particularly interesting and together paint a compelling picture of education's future. Each fits into a model where the focus is on developing skills, dispositions and habits that will last into the future - long life skills.
marcmancinelli

Think Again: Education - By Ben Wildavsky | Foreign Policy - 31 views

  • But when the results from the first major international math test came out in 1967, the effort did not seem to have made much of a difference. Japan took first place out of 12 countries, while the United States finished near the bottom.
  • By the early 1970s, American students were ranking last among industrialized countries in seven of 19 tests of academic achievement and never made it to first or even second place in any of them. A decade later, "A Nation at Risk," the landmark 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, cited these and other academic failings to buttress its stark claim that "if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
    • marcmancinelli
       
      US has long been mediocre or at the bottom of international comparisons, but it's not a zer-sum game
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • J. Michael Shaughnessy, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, argues that the latest PISA test "underscores the need for integrating reasoning and sense making in our teaching of mathematics." Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, claims that the same results "tell us … that if you don't make smart investments in teachers, respect them, or involve them in decision-making, as the top-performing countries do, students pay a price."
    • marcmancinelli
       
      People use crises to advance their own agendas...
  • But don't expect any of them to bring the country back to its educational golden age -- there wasn't one.
  • According to the most recent statistics, the U.S. share of foreign students fell from 24 percent in 2000 to just below 19 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, countries like Australia, Canada, and Japan saw increased market shares from their 2000 levels, though they are still far below the American numbers.
  • And even with its declining share, the United States still commands 9 percentage points more of the market than its nearest competitor, Britain.
  • A 2008 Rand Corp. report found that nearly two-thirds of the most highly cited articles in science and technology come from the United States, and seven in 10 Nobel Prize winners are employed by American universities. And the United States spends about 2.9 percent of its GDP on postsecondary education, about twice the percentage spent by China, the European Union, and Japan in 2006.
  • But over the long term, exactly where countries sit in the university hierarchy will be less and less relevant, as Americans' understanding of who is "us" and who is "them" gradually changes. Already, a historically unprecedented level of student and faculty mobility has become a defining characteristic of global higher education. Cross-border scientific collaboration, as measured by the volume of publications by co-authors from different countries, has more than doubled in two decades.
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    A great perspective piece on American education compared to the world.
C CC

What makes Finland's education system the best in the world? - 144 views

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    Teacher autonomy and a flexible curriculum are reasons often cited when explaining the Nordic powerhouse's chart-topping performance. But having taught there, Nicki Berry has some reasons of her own...
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