Is China trying to emulate Finland? - 9 views
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ibrahim tanrikulu on 03 Oct 13it seems that we will try to go to some Chinese Universities in ten years time, instead of Europe or States.
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anonymous on 03 Oct 13The scandinavian pioneering role in school reforms has a long tradition. It is not only the comprehensive-school-system which makes Finnland a top-performer. Many countries are trying to emulate Finland and more equal opportunities in education can be a good progress. But why is Finnland a top-performer? In my opinion it could be PISA which is responsible for the comparison of school systems. PISA is criticized by many researchers, so first we have to scrutinize whether Finland can be a prototype.
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Sinem Hizli Alkan on 03 Oct 13According to the latest scores of PISA, it seems like we all start to search how China and South Corea is doing in their education systems. As for the question why Finland is a top-performer, there are several aspects to explain it. I think, initially, teacher education comes first and equality and equity in education follow this. Therefore they show up as top thanks to PISA. Their school tradition, history of both economics and education, population and mentality of learning could be obstacles to make it as a prototype and compare with some countries.
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anonymous on 03 Oct 13My aim was not to call Finland as a top-performer into question. I want to criticize PISA and their purposes. For example the test-structure are determining the results, so if sth. would be changed, another country will be the top-performer. I found an interesting critique: http://www.univie.ac.at/pisaaccordingtopisa/pisazufolgepisa.pdf But maybe I failed the original topic, because that article doesn't discuss PISA.
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Evrim Baran on 05 Oct 13We had the same conversation here with my colleagues from Belgium and Netherlands the outcomes that PISA is measuring. It is after all measuring certain outcomes that OECD wants to measure. We also have to be careful in taking Finland as a model and such comparative approach just like mentioned in a series of reports that Christian shared.
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Mustafa İlkhan on 05 Oct 13PISA is a big goal for policy makers. They want to success even they don't believe, because it makes country popular as seen above:) We have to focus on real indicators like development... And here is an infographic about Finland's educational system: http://slowrobot.com/i/43651#
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Hatice Çilsalar on 06 Oct 13In my oppinion, we couldnot seek the other countries' educational systems, at the begining of possible educational reform process. Before this, students profile and the reasons behind the problems have to be analysed; such as economic and social problems, teacher's competencies, subject matter, schools' physical equipments, etc. As I mentioned, before analysing other countries systems, we have to analyse our educational systems indetail and clearly. From that point, solutions can be seeked and useful after determination fo the problems..
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Sinem Hizli Alkan on 07 Oct 13Now I understand your point, Christian. Thanks for sharing that pdf, I think that is related with the article since it discusses the whole structure of PISA which is showed as a scale. And for sure,that might happen that another country would be top according to another kind of testing but still there is a hard fact about Finland and their school culture. I have seen that infographic before but I feel the need to correct some issues there according to my stay in Finland. For instance, it says that there are no seperate classrooms for accelerated learning or special education but there are many of them. As for homeworks, this saying of having rarely homework is not actually reflecting the reality. They do have homeworks but the definiton of it might cause misunderstandings;)
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Mustafa İlkhan on 07 Oct 13Thank you Sinem for correcting the infographic's assumptions. I would like to hear more about your experiences in Finland.
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filizbezci on 07 Oct 13In my opinion education policy of the countries do not be planned based on the students' academic achievement. Real achievement of an education system could be observed as individuals' adaptation to life. For example the main vision of the elementary science curriculum defined by Ministry of National Education of Turkey [MONE] (2005) is that regardless of the individual differences of students, they are educated to become scientifically literate, the uniqueness nature of the learner; background and culture of the learners and motivation of the learners were taken into consideration in the development of the curriculum (MONE, 2005), but putting those in the practice is very difficult.
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filizbezci on 07 Oct 13Also, as mentioned in the text "… those results come at the cost of one of the highest levels of student anxiety in the world." Anxiety is very important and big research area in educational psychology also the news in the link http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-04/10/content_9710997.htm exemplifies its importance in Chinese case.