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izz aty

Center on International Education Benchmarking » Finland Overview - 0 views

www.ncee.org/...finland-overview

finnish special ed finnish education education finland scandinavian education nordic nordic special ed

shared by izz aty on 17 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Right after the Second World War, Finland was largely a land of woodcutters and agriculturalists.  Finland’s education system and student achievement at that time were unremarkable.
  • In the early 1990s, Finland was forced to completely re-think its economic strategy. An overheated economy combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major trading partner, to produce a precipitous decline in GDP and an unemployment rate of 20%, higher than in the Great Depression.  Following this cataclysm, Finland applied for entrance into the European Union and began to move away from its traditional export strategies.
  • The government decided to funnel resources into the development of the telecommunications sector, hoping to reinvent Finland as a global telecommunications capital.
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  • By 2003, 22 of every 1000 Finnish workers were involved in the research and development sector, a figure almost three times higher than the OECD average, and more than four times higher than in Finland in 1991.   The Finnish economy had undergone a major transformation.
  • The education system was able to respond to the workforce needs created by the events of the early 90s because of a series of extensive reforms that had begun in 1972, which had changed the face of teaching and learning in Finland.
  • began with creation of a unified comprehensive education structure and national curriculum guidelines.
  • Accompanying the restructuring of schools was a restructuring of teacher education, with responsibility for teacher training moving to Finland’s universities, where Finland’s other most valued professional had long been trained. Other measures were also aimed at improving the quality of the Finnish teaching force. 
  • The Finnish story is not unlike that of Singapore, in that eventual success was the result of a long, slow and rather steady process, not the result of a single development, policy, program or administration.  Each step in the development of the modern Finnish education system built sensibly on those that went before.
  • These reforms and others, described in more detail in other sections on Finland on this site, made Finland’s economic survival in the 1990s possible.
  • if there is a key to the success of the Finnish system, it is the quality of their teachers and the trust that the Finnish people have vested in them.  Some would argue that this, in some sense, makes the Finnish case irrelevant to the decisions to be made by other countries, because they lack the culture in which such a high value is placed on teachers and teaching. 
  • when one examines the specific policies that the Finns have adopted with respect to the recruitment, selection, training, supervision and support of teachers, and the way in which the intense focus on teacher quality is matched to the Finnish approach to accountability, curriculum, instruction and school management, then one begins to see that teacher quality in Finland is not the result of an unmatchable culture, but rather of a specific highly integrated system of policies and structures that other nations can emulate to produce a culture that is no less supportive of teachers and no less likely to result in superior student performance.
  • USEFUL LINKS Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture The Finnish National Board of Education thisisFINLAND: Education & Research Articles World Education Services Education Links – Finland The CIA World Factbook: Finland
  • Every four years, the government prepares a development plan for education and research, using that plan as a vehicle to make sure that the Finnish system is constantly adapting to the changing needs, including the economic needs, of the country.
  • Though Finland’s population is very homogenous (more than 98% are descended from Finnish stock), that is changing and the Finns know that their education system will have to change to adapt to these changing demographics.
  • Lower-skilled work is also being exported to other parts of Europe and a greater proportion of Finnish jobs will require ever-more-sophisticated skills, another factor that is accounted for in Finnish education planning.
  • The government’s stated priorities going forward include reducing class sizes, enhancing remediation and special needs teaching, improving teachers’ working conditions, establishing new opportunities for teachers to develop their professional skills, and overhauling adult education and training
  • it took decades for the Finns to build the system whose fruits they are now enjoying.
  • OECD. (2014). Education at a Glance 2014 – Country Note: Finland.
  • Finnish National Board of Education. (2012). International comparisons of some features of the Finnish education and training system 2011.
  • Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland. (2012). Education and Research 2011-2016: A development plan.
  • OECD. (2011). “The Children Must Play: What the U.S. Could Learn from Finland” in The New Republic. (PDF)
  • Abrams, S. (2011). “Finland: Slow and Steady Reform for Consistently High Results,” in Strong Performers, Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States. (PDF)
  • The World Bank. (2006). Policy Development and Reform Principles of Basic and Secondary Education in Finland since 1968. Education Working Paper Series. (PDF)
izz aty

10 questions to understanding PISA results | The EDifier - Center for Public Education - 0 views

blog.centerforpubliceducation.org/...-to-understanding-pisa-results

PISA american education OECD education

shared by izz aty on 17 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The rhetoric pertaining to the quality of our public schools is certainly going to be amplified tomorrow, with critics lamenting how the results show our public schools are in dire straits while others will argue the results are meaningless
  • an assessment of reading, math, and science literacy given every three years to 15-year-old students in public and private schools in about 65 countries.
  • international institution Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) coordinates the development and administration of PISA worldwide
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  • PISA is one of the few tools we have to compare the outcomes of high school students internationally.  PISA provides valuable information on how prepared high school students are for postsecondary success whether in the workplace, career training, or higher education.
  • PISA is designed to measure how well students can apply their knowledge to real-world situations. To measure such skills, the test items on PISA are primarily “constructed response,” meaning the test-taker has to write their answers to the questions, and there are few multiple-choice items.
  • Every industrialized country now educates all their students, including language minority, special needs and low-performing students. Every country that participates in PISA must adhere to strict sampling rules to ensure the country’s results are nationally representative of all 15-year-old students. Indeed, the decision to test secondary students at age 15 was made in part because young people at that age are still subject to compulsory schooling laws in most participating nations, which provides more assurance that PISA will capture the broadest sample.
  • OECD reports statistically significant differences in performance between nations, which is a more accurate way to look at PISA rankings than a straight listing of average scores.
  • Does PISA measure the effectiveness of public school systems? Not completely, for three reasons: 1) PISA results are representative of the performance of all 15-year-olds in participating countries including those  attending private schools; 2) PISA makes no attempt to isolate schools from outside factors such as poverty or high proportions of non-native language speakers that may have an impact on  performance —such factors are important to include in the mix when evaluating the effectiveness of each country’s schools; and 3) No single measure can incorporate every outcome we expect from our public schools
  • look at how much time other countries give teachers for professional development, how much they pay their teachers, how much time teachers spend in the classroom, how much flexibility exists at the local level, how special needs students are taught, and how much time students spend in school.
  • see PISA results as an opportunity to assess if best practices in teaching and learning in other countries can also work for secondary schools here in the U.S.
  • just because a high-performing or high-gaining country does something does not mean it will work in U.S. schools.
  • Many analysts observe that poverty has a greater impact on student performance in the U.S. than elsewhere. For one thing, the U.S. has the highest child poverty rates among industrialized countries. For another, students in the U.S. who live in poverty tend to have less access to resources that research consistently shows impact student achievement, including highly effective teachers, access to rigorous curriculum, and high quality pre-k programs.
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