Finnish History and Schooling: A Perspective from Hannu Simola
August 7th, 2015
How the school education system works in Finland is something that has attracted a lot of attention over the last decade or more since that country’s 15 year-olds achieved top of the class in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000. It is undoubtedly true that the practices within organisations are significantly influenced by the cultural norms of that country which are in turn significantly influenced by the country’s history. Much of what we know about effective learning at school has come from studies of schools in Finland.
Though Finland’s students, like those of some other countries are no longer in first place in the PISA project, the practices in that country are still of great interest. The most prominent writer on the system is Pasi Sahlberg and his views have appeared recently in books and articles. Of perhaps special interest are his comparisons of the approaches taken in Finland with those of the USA.
There are numerous accounts of Finnish education from educators who have visited. A new book takes an historical approach to how school education is practiced in Finland.
Hannu Simola, until recently Professor of Sociology of Education in the Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, has written the series of essays, some of them with colleagues over an 18 year period to 2011. The Finnish Education Mystery, published as an e-book by Routledge, bring them together. The essays focus on how the nature of Finnish society and political history have influenced Finland’s education system. (A consideration of the reforms in the United States might well be similarly instructive.)
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