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Paradoxes of the Finland Phenomenon
Joe Bower, for the love of learning, October 6, 2011.

Just to be clear, in the diagram above, it is the 'alternative policies', and not the GERM, that characterizes Finland's approach to education. "Finland's successful pursuit of policies driven by diversity, trust, respect, professionalism, equity, responsibility and collaboration refute every aspect of reforms that focus on choice, competition, accountability and testing that are being expanded in countries around the world." See more. (Hits Today: 0 Total: 1221) [Direct Link] [Tags: Tests and Testing]

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Re: Paradoxes of the Finland Phenomenon

markoteras, October 7, 2011

This was an excellent post and adds to the lively discussion about "what do to education and learning?". But the question it doesn't answer is what we should actually do about these issues described as generally "good" to emerge globally?

I do not believe these things are just some Finnish characteristics and taking place only because of our culture, and thus cannot be applied in other parts of the world. Not comparing Finland to the ancient Athens, but that even smaller place had a huge impact on the world during the time when the world wasn't even near of the connectedness as it is now.

I've seen the same discussions about the educational needs and challenges to be global, but the attitudes what to do about them differ a lot. It seems that in some parts of the world the management (without the actual experts of how actual learning happens) alone is doing decisions about educational institutes in some strange void based on, well, to some "I feel it should be like this". And many of these people still live in the Protestant Ethic paradigm and get their vibe from there. Baad thing that one.

Just talking at seminars or conferences isn't helping, but the paradigm shift of the mind is needed to happen and from that, the action. Maybe some excellent conferences presentations can ignite the flame of exploring 21st century ways of teaching/learning, but, like I've recently encountered, the actual way of conducting seminars is also from the industrial age and should evolve (or to go way back to history). [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

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