Education in Finland is recognised to be internationally among the – if not THE – best one in the world!
I travelled to Finland with Dr. Freddy Alvarez, the Chancellor of UNAE (the National University of Education of Ecuador) and MSc. Shodona Kettle, who is the Specialist in Fundraising of the University. Here a few thoughts about our recent visit in Finland!
a. University of Helsinki – Faculty of Education
We started with a visit on September 28 at the University of Helsinki – Faculty of Education with Dr. Minna Lakkala and Dr. Arja Haakorpi. Dr Lakkala is a Professor at the University of Helsinki, at the University of Pedagogy, and researcher in the field of education. The research focus of Dr. Minna Lakkala is on the practices of teachers in the organization of collective activities in classes that make use of technologies. Dr. Minna Lakkala also has a lot of experience in teacher training and continuing education. Dr. Haakorpi is a specialist in social science and researcher in the labor market in the field of research. During this meeting, our University was mainly represented by Dr. Alvarez who presented its history, its numerous projects, and its international and national relations.
Then, Dr. Lakkala and Dr. Haakorpi presented the University of Helsinki. The University of Helsinki has a long history. It was born in 1640, has 32 different B.A. programs, and 60 Masters. Each year, about 6,100 students graduate from this University, and has a staff of 7,950 people. The students are 32,500 in total. And the University has 4 Campuses, the City Center Campus is where the Faculty of Education is located. The staff that conducts research in the Faculty is constituted of: 26 main professors, 86 researchers and auxiliary professors, and 336 doctoral students. The Faculty of Education has a number of research centers and research projects on different topics such as teaching, assessment, ECE, social justice and education, progressive pedagogies, and technology and education.
After this conversation, during the second part of the morning, we met with the Director of the Department of Educational Sciences of the Faculty of Education, Professor Jari Louven. He worked already in Latin America, as in Peru and Chile. One of the main focuses of his work is the relationship between education, science and technology. For example, he is part of the Co4LAB research center that conducts research also on science and education.
The Helsinki Faculty of Education has 40 years of research experience in the field of education, 300 staff members, 3,000 students, 7 different masters, 400 Master’s students and 20 PhD students. The Faculty has 25 research centers and is among the most important institutions in the world of education.
Professor Jari Louven told us about one the main characteristics of the high quality education in Finland, which according to him, has to do in part with the value that the Finnish society associates to the work of teachers and their training. Teachers have a very high social recognition. It is an attractive profession and is considered a work of quality, where teachers are free to interpret the curriculum very flexibly with little State control. Preparing to become a teacher is something that is considered to be of great importance – unlike other European countries. In Finland, as for students of our University in Ecuador, entering a teacher training course is very competitive and the requirements are very high.
There are also some very important aspects of teacher education that Professor Jary Louven described about the University of Helsinki: the relationship between teaching and research, feedback from students, and local and comparative studies on different curricula and types of teaching.
Professor Jari Louven told us that the Faculty of Education is constituted of different departments. These include the Department of Education Sciences, schools that prepare teachers (some located at the University and others located elsewhere in the city). The Department collaborates with other Faculties at the University of Helsinki as the Faculty of Arts, Science, Biosciences, Theology, and Social Sciences. Mainly, the work of the Faculty of Education of the University of Helsinki is focused on the education of teachers of primary education (1-6 level) and in secondary education (7-12 level).
The training of teachers of primary and secondary education in this University is organized in a very similar way to that of UNAE. It consists of 5 years of education that includes B.A. and a Master (in UNAE are 4 and a half years). Similarly to what we do at UNAE, studies for the preparation of teachers in Finland include a specific preparation in the pedagogy and the writing of a thesis. Also, as in UNAE, at the University of Helsinki they train future teachers with innovative teaching methods such as ‘student-centered learning’, learning by doing, ‘flipped classroom’ and collaborative work in small groups.
With Professor Jari Louven, we also went to visit some laboratories for the training of teachers in topics such as Home Economics, Visual Arts, and Fabrication. Here teachers practice what teachers are going to teach in schools in the future. We visited laboratories to prepare primary and secondary school teachers. What is interesting is that they combine traditional and digital technologies – such as traditional, digital, and hand-cooking machines – like we want to do in the ‘Atelier / Fab Learn’ that we are going to build as part of the UNAE Educational Unit and where our students from UNAE will be able to do their teaching practice.
b. Potential donors
We then engaged in some fundraising and related meetings with potential partners and donors! Dr. Alvarez and I presented the project of the school and highlighted the overlaps between the donors’ work and ours!
c. HundrED
HundrED is a virtual platform that selects and presents in its platform 100 school K12 in Finland and 100 in the world that make projects of innovation in the field of education. We presented the project of the UNAE school to them, they found it very innovative, and they suggested we applied to their competition of innovation schools.
d. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland
During this meeting we discussed again, among other things, that the strength of the Finnish education system lies in important ways in the valuation of the teaching profession and the freedom that teachers have in interpreting the national curriculum.
e. Tuusula School
Finally in Finland, we went to visit the Tuusula school – a primary and secondary education school, a little school outside of the city of Helsinki. There we were greeted by an English teacher, Mrs. Mia Tihinen, and the vice-school principal, Mr. Matti Valkonen. We were given a small introduction and then they showed us the school.
This school is located in a small town, and is the reference school of the village of Tuusula. Population is fairly homogeneous. They are in the process of applying the new national curriculum that was recently introduced.
In the school, they do very interesting things with the spaces they have – some of which also are made prefabricated structures like the UNAE school will be. For example, we visited a science and biology laboratory in the Tuusula school that was not the traditional laboratory you’d see of science, but seemed much more like a Fab Lab – a space where students work in small groups, engage in active learning and have access to different types of technologies to do their work. They had in this laboratories: tablets, projectors, etc. The furniture was flexible and had wheels so that they could be moved easily according to the needs of the class. During the visit to this laboratory, there was a class that had an activity and we noticed that the use of technology was very integrated with the work of the students. They were doing a project on the local plants and taking pictures of these plants; each group created a folder that shares with their class through a virtual platform.
Another interesting fact about the Tuusula school is that it is a public school like most of the schools in Finland. Public schools in Finland have particularly good infrastructures – the Tuusula school was a good example of this. The school in Tuusula had innovative furniture placed on wheels, they had all kinds of restrooms for creative work, you had different types of technology in the classroom, and in the school they had specific fabrication laboratories and some art workshops. In addition, they had plenty of space for sports.
Overall, it was very important for us to visit this school – mainly because we realized that there are many parallels between what happens in the public school in Finland and what we are planning to do in the Educational Unit annexed to the UNAE. First, we are thinking of working in classes mainly in non-directed activities, we also incentivise collective work between teachers, in an interdisciplinary way like they do in Finland. Second, in the school annexed to the UNAE, we are implementing some changes that are very similar to the schools in Finland, such as creating workshops, we are transversalizing technology in the school, creating a technology and science laboratory where active learning and collaborative work will be encouraged, and an atelier of taste just as they have in Finland. Third, we noticed that the organization of furniture and classrooms in the Tuusula school encourages group work and has strong colors – similarly to what we hope to achieve in the UNAE school.
In conclusion, this visit to the School of Tuusula really made me even prouder of the work we are doing at UNAE that appears to be in line with the educational practices more progressive, solid and important in the world like the one in Finland!
Pensieri di Bea 