Irmeli Halinen on Finnish Curriculum

Irmeli Halinen and me

I had the privilege of listening to Irmeli Halinen who is the head of curriculum development unit with the Finnish National Board of Education.

Background on Finnish Education

• early years of education and care belongs to the ministry of health but is moving to the ministry of education and culture. This includes children until they are six years old. At 6, they are eligible to attend pre-primary education, and compulsory school begins for 7 year olds.
• Formal education is not for these young children. They learn through play. Research tells us that to begin formal, systematic education for children younger than 7 is developmentally inappropriate.
• No streaming or tracking at all.
• Voluntary tenth year of education.
• Basic Education goes for 10 years and then children can go an academic route (matriculation) or Vocational route.

In Finland education providers have a central role in the governance structure. Government, ministry of Education and Culture, National Board of Education and state regional organizations all work together with educators who work in schools to develop and implement school.

Minimum teaching hours for every grade (by law)

• 19 hours for grades 1-2
• 23 hours for grades 3-4
• 24 hours for grades 5-6
• 30 hours for grades 7-9 (grade 10 is optional)

Maximum daily working hours for students (by law)

• 5 hours per day for pupils of 1-2 grades
• 7 hours per day for pupils of 3-9 grades

Important quality indicators

• Practically all children in Finland complete school.
• Politicians in Finland understand how important music, visual arts, crafts, physical education and home economics are very important.

The Ethos of the Finnish Education system is built on professionalism of teachers, supportive formative assessment for student learning and high standards for all that are enabling and encouraging. In Finland, there are no instrument of inspections that control teachers from afar. In Finland, their system is built on trust.

We have two kinds of teachers in Finland. Teachers follow their children all the way from grade 1 through grade 6. In grade 7 to 9 there are subject specialists. They have very high quality training and it is very hard to get into become a teacher. It is not unheard of for only 10% of applicants to be accepted for university teacher education programs.

In Finland, half of students go the academic route and half go the vocational route; however, the vocational route is becoming more and more popular, 

All post-secondary education in Finland is paid by the government.

Every school in Finland has a special education teacher who helps teachers in their school with meeting student's needs.

Class Sizes

• Grade 1-2: average is 20. No larger than 25
• Grade 3, 4, 5, 6: average 25-30. No larger than 32. Efforts have been made to reduce these classes to about 15. Study groups are designed by children around subjects of their choice. These groups can be as small as 9 or as large as 30.

Curriculum and Assessment

Curriculum and assessment in Finland are intertwined and can not be separated. Three times since the 1970s, Finland has reformed their curriculum and assessment Through out these years, the common theme: growing municipal autonomy and empowerment of schools and teachers.

All parts of the Finnish system aim at supporting teaching and learning - national norms form a strong basis for local provision of education. Those at the government level really listen to teachers questions, concerns and suggestions for improving the system.

Assessment in Finland is built on self-assessment. 

There are three layers of curriculum: national, municipal and school. These curriculums are less about a finished product and more about a living process. Curriculum is not just a group of subjects - curriculum is more about what they value and their ultimate goals for their children. To do this there must be a balance between academic achievement and student welfare.

While there are some standards that are dictated at the National level, most decisions about curriculum and assessment are made at the school level.

In Finland, there are no standardized exams that test all children of a certain age and subject. However, there are national-sample based tests of learning outcomes. Because Finnish teachers do not have to waste their time on high-stakes exams, they can focus on improving their teaching and supporting student learning. This is also works as a huge financial cost savings.

In Finland, students receive grades on a scale from 4 to 10. 

Assessment in Finland is seen in three ways:

• assessment of learning
• assessment for learning
• assessment as learning

Assessment as learning is becoming more and more the focus of assessment in Finland. 

Curriculum is a pedagogical, empowering tool for us. Schools cannot be intellectually challenging and socially supportive of pupils if they are not there for teachers.

Finnish teachers feel like they are respected enough to have the authority and responsibility to create and conceptualize curriculum with their students. School-based curriculum work is the process of consciously creating the operating culture of the school.

On one hand curriculum can be used for administrative and controlling purposes as a ready-made tool by experts. While on the other hand, curriculum can be a common learning process and an empowering pedagogical tool for teachers.

Challenges

Learning is like navigating. We have to know where we are right now. We have to know where we want to go and how to get there. And we have to be able to read and interpret the weather conditions.

Because the world is becoming more and more complex, navigating is becoming a difficult task. This task is best undertaken together as a community rather than as individuals. But you will get lost if you try to use the map of Edmonton while navigating in Helsinki. Highly prescribed, standardized curriculums make no sense.

It is becoming more and more important for us to focus less on what we are learning in school and more on how are we going to do it.

In order to act in a competent way, you need to be able to engage in self-reflection.

Questions I asked Irmeli Halinen

Q: I asked Irmeli how often would a teacher in Finland have a grade book where the teacher has a collection of grades for homework, projects, tests, quizzes and attitude and then average those grades together in order to provide the students and parents with a final grade.

A: Her initial response was bewilderment and silence. To be clear, nothing was lost in translation; rather, the context of my question simply didn't make any sense to her. After repeating my question, her response was that in Finland they don't care as much about the numerical data. Instead, they care more about the verbal feedback that occurs between the student and the teacher. Assessment is a discussion not a spreadsheet. It's only in grade 8 when children are about 14 years old that students are by law assigned grades; however, they might receive grading as early as grade 4 when they are 8 years old, but this is a decision that is made at the local, municipality level. Irmeli also went on to say that the grades do not help children learn and often encourage them to compete with each other, which is precisely the opposite of the collaborative community Finnish classrooms are designed to be. She also went on to say that grading in Finland is not directly used with end-of year evaluations.

Q. How often do Finnish teachers create their own multiple choice tests as a means of assessing their children?

A: Her response was that rarely if ever would a Finnish teacher give a multiple choice test because they would rather have their students doing something real.

Pasi Sahlberg on Finland and Alberta

I had the pleasure of listening to Pasi Sahlberg at the Curriculum Design for Informed Transformation Invitational Conference.

One of his messages was:

• Both Finland and Alberta are education reformers and performers.
• Both Finland and Alberta have new governments.

Because of this, Finland and Alberta are in a state of crisis. It's not that our test scores aren't high enough. The real problem is far more sophisticated than what high scores on bad tests can solve. Rather, we run the serious risk of falling into the status quo trap. Status quo brings with it an impressive amount of momentum.

Finland has as much to learn from Alberta as Alberta has to learn about Finland. In particular, Finland can learn a lot from how Alberta has so successfully nourished the multi-cultural diversity that makes up their province, and Alberta can learn from how Finland does teacher education.

The reason we should all pay attention to Finland is not because we want to copy or clone Finland, but so that we can begin to imagine how we can be different. School hasn't always been this way, and so it doesn't need to be this way.

We can improve, but that means we have to change.

Yet, when you just copy others, you run the risk of making mindless mistakes because you are busy simply replicating when you should be adapting. Replication can be accomplished mindlessly. Adapting requires an acute awareness.

A problem that is occurring in Finland is that educational tourism is at an all time-high. People from all over the world are now paying attention to Finland. This means that Finland runs the risk of spending all of its time showing the world how good they are when they should be working hard to get better.

Sahlberg talked about how Steve Jobs relentlessly chased improvement. Showed this video of Jobs and a quote:

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

We have to love what we do in order to preserve. Are we encouraging this in school? Are we ruining the schools with rigor when we should be inspiring children with vigor?

Sahlberg then shifted gears and asked us what are the problems in Alberta?

Some might say that our 25% drop out rate  The drop out rate in Alberta isn't the problem. Rather, this is a symptom of much larger problems that have been created by certain kinds of reforms:

• we limit our schools by organizing them with the Industrial model
• we narrowly define intelligence and success with the academic model
• we stifle our interactions by investing in the competitive model

Systems that are built around these archaic models are destined to suffer from some very predictable problems including disengagement. 

To conclude, Sahlberg suggests we talk about:

• Less classroom time. Cut instructional, classroom, sit and get time in half. Replace this sit and get time with get up and go do real project time. Projects that are in a context and for a purpose.
• More personalized learning. My personalization, he does not mean simply handing out electronic devices. Rather, children should play a collaborative role in developing their learning opportunities.
• Focus on social capital. Seriously regulate how our children are isolating themselves. An emphasis on social learning is imperative.
• Help everyone to find their talent. Support each child with the opportunity to find their passion and themselves. Too many children experience school as a place where they go to be told how incompetent they really are. We need more of a strengths based system.

I can't wait to read Pasi Sahlberg's book Finnish Lessons.

For more on Finland, take at my post The Paradoxes of the Finland Phenomenon. 

Alberta, Curriculum & Finland

Today, I'm in Edmonton for the Alberta Teachers' Association and Alberta Education's Invitational Curriculum Symposium.

I see this as an opportunity to continue the ATA's collaboration with the Alberta Government while furthering our partnership with Finland as we rethink curriculum in Alberta. I'm excited to hear from Irmeli Halinen, head of curriculum development in the Finnish National Board of Education and Pasi Sahlberg, whose new book Finnish Lessons is making its release. Dennis Shirley from Boston College and Joan Engel from Alberta Education will also be joining us.

As the day progresses, I will be sure to blog more about what I've learned and experienced.

I want to see what you can do, not what your neighbour can do

The central lesson of the traditional school: how to be alone in a crowd.

This might sound something like this:

I want to see what you can do not what your neighbour can do.

This turns out to be code for:

I want to see what you can do artificially deprived of the skills and help of the people around you. Rather than seeing how much more you can accomplish in a well functioning team that's more authentic like real life.

This of course is not the way teachers and parents put it, but it is precisely what we mean and so we shouldn't ever be surprised that this is what kids hear.

Is this really what school should be like?

* This post was inspired by a presentation given by Alfie Kohn.

Charmed by Choice: Undermining Public Education

The assault on public education is not just an agenda pursued by some Americans. In Canada, there are those who would like to dismantle our public education system, and in Alberta they are the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Party.

Of course they don't come out and say they want to destroy public education -- instead they sell their privatization agenda by talking about the freedom to choose.

It's quite ingenius really -- I mean who in their right mind would object to having more choice? This assault on public education is phrased very carefully so to make it very difficult to oppose -- because if you do oppose it, the quick response might be "what's wrong with you, you don't want choice?"

At this point, it's important to remember that when something looks too good to be true, it's usually not what it appears -- and when it comes to those who are selling choice as a means to authentically improve public education, they are either neglectfully ignorant, willfully blind or outright lying.

Pedro Noguera explains why school choice is not what it seems in his guest post for NBC's Education Nation:

The problem with using vouchers as a means to expand access to quality schools for poor children is that it is based on the premise that parents are the one's who do the choosing. The truth of the matter is that schools are the ones who choose and not parents. 

When a low-income parent shows up at a private school, especially an elite school with few poor children of color, there is no guarantee that their child will be chosen for admission - even if the parent has a voucher. This is particularly true if the child has learning disabilities, behavior problems or doesn't speak English very well. As we've seen with many charter schools, such children are often under-served because they are harder to serve and possession of a voucher won't change that. Many private schools maintain quality through selective admissions and vouchers won't change that either. 

Moreover, choice assumes that a parent has access to information on the choices available and transportation. Neither of these can be assumed. Many parents choose a school based on how close it is to their home or work, rather than the school's reputation. Many are unwilling to send their children to schools in neighborhoods far from their homes, particularly if transportation is not provided. 

The idea that vouchers would solve the lack of access to quality schools in poor, inner city neighborhoods is based on the belief that the free market is a better regulator of goods and services than the government. While this idea sounds good in theory, it's not borne out by the facts. 

In most inner city communities in the United States, the free market is not effective at providing healthy food at affordable prices, banking services or safe, affordable housing. That's because the poor in the inner city constitute a "captured market" and suppliers of goods and services are typically able to get away with low-quality products because community members have few available alternatives. 

Systems of school choice only work when there are lots of good choices available and a means for parents to exercise their choices. This can only be done when government insures quality by holding schools accountable for the quality of education they provide. Of course, our policymakers have largely failed to do this because they've focused on accountability as measured by student test scores, rather than concentrating on insuring that all schools have the resources and support systems in place to meet the needs of the students they serve, and holding themselves accountable if they don't.

Today more than ever, we need public education to educate all children to a standard that at one time may have been reserved for the elite. This means we can no longer afford to ignore the challenge of educating those who are difficult to educate.

In his publication Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform, Marc Tucker tackles education funding:

Two decades ago and more, elementary and secondary education in most of the provinces was funded much the way it is funded in the United States, with each locality raising much of the money locally, with the provinces providing additional sums intended to moderate the disparities in per student funding that such a system inevitably produces.  But, about 20 years ago, this began to change.  Conservative governments, in response to complaints from citizens about skyrocketing local tax rates, initiated a move to steadily reduce reliance on local taxes and to increase the portion of the total budget paid for by the province.  In the biggest provinces now, little if any of the money for public education is raised locally.  All or almost all comes from the province.  Not surprisingly, the gross inequities that came with raising money locally are gone, too, and Canada, like the top performing countries elsewhere, is moving toward a funding system intended to promote high achievement among all students, which means putting more money behind hard to educate children than children who are easier to educate.

Vouchers and choice tend to benefit those who have already "won the lottery" and often alienates and marginalizes those who can least afford it. Competition and the free market is for the strong. Public education is for all. See the problem?

In some US states, there is a movement underway called the "Parent Trigger" which is being sold as a way to empower parents in reforming and improving their children's schools. However, upon closer inspection this is no more than another fraudulent ploy with a charming name whose objective is to undermine public education. Diane Ravitch writes:

In early 2010, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, the state legislature passed the "Parent Empowerment Act." This law is commonly known as the Parent Trigger. It allows a majority of parents in a low-performing school to sign a petition that leads to various sanctions for the school: firing all or some of the staff, turning the school over to charter management, or closing the school. These are similar to the options in the U.S. Department of Education's School Improvement Grant program. All of them are punitive, none is supportive of changing the school for the better, and none has a shred of evidence to show that it will improve the school. Neither the Parent Trigger nor the federal SIG program offers any constructive alternatives to unhappy parents, only ways to punish the school for low scores.

Supporters of the Parent Trigger say it empowers parents, especially poor parents, and gives them a tool with which to change their school. They say that it enhances not only parent power, but school choice.

Throwing educational funding to the competitive free market via school vouchers and selling it as the freedom to choose may allow politicians to look good but it offers a hollow promise to the families that can least afford to compete. It's sadly ironic that education reforms built around choice, competition and parent empowerment tend to victimize the very people they profess to be supporting.

Assessment: Timing is everything

How often are our assessments affected by nothing more or less than timing?

This comic made me think of my two favorite quotes in regards to grading:

A mark or grade is an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgement by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an indefinite amount of material. (Paul Dressel)

What grades offer is spurious precision, a subjective rating masquerading as an objective assessment. (Alfie Kohn)

Grading Moratorium: Justin Nanu

Justin Nanu has joined the Grading Moratorium. Want to join? Here's how.



Justin Nanu
Grade 3 & 4
Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada

jvnanu@gmail.com
@jvnanu
http://mrnanu.edublogs.org is my classroom blog.


I’ll preface these answers by giving a bit of background about myself. I’m 23, and in my 2nd year as a full time teacher. I’ve been in school since I was 4, and will continue to be in school until January 26th, 2041, as my pension fund recently informed me. Beyond the 2 (or 4 in university) month summers, I have not experienced any break from school since I started kindergarten. I guess that among my colleagues, I’m one whose experience in education is more closely related to that of my students. I teach a grade 3/4 combined grade, and I myself was in grade 4 only 15 years ago. I would have hoped, entering the profession in 2010, that things had changed since I was a kid. In many cases they have not. For this reason I started doing some research and finding books, articles, blogs and edchats in an effort to learn about what others were doing. I feel that as a new teacher my new teacher colleagues and myself are in large part responsible for affecting the kind of progressive change that we see outside of education. So now for the questions that you provided:

At what stage of the abolish grading game are you?

I guess I’m emerging. I’m only 2 months in as of the time I’m writing this, and so far I’ve given one math test. It somehow felt wrong though. There are a few students who didn’t get their “level 3” on the test and I’m giving them opportunities to conference with me and tell me what they know. I’m also using what I know of the kids from their conversations in class, problem solving work, inquiry work etc. to develop the report card grade. It’s not just the test.

Why do you want to or why did you abolish grading?

Kids focus too much on the grade. There is so much pressure from home on getting the grade. Kids will do whatever it takes to get the grade, and parents aren’t helping when they offer grade-based incentives at home. The focus should be on learning, and learning doesn’t stop with a grade. The idea of a grade just seems so wrong. So what… I got a C in geometry… does this mean that I’m done? We’ve moved onto something else and I’m stuck with a C in geometry? It perpetuates the idea that students only need to remember the material until the test rather than understand the material and be able to apply it for the rest of their lives.

What do you do in replace of grading?

Right now I’m using anecdotal notes of student conversations, conferencing (1 on 1 conversation) and descriptive feedback. I also want to use some Flip cameras to create a reflection center where students can tell me what they’ve learned, rather than me tell them what they’ve learned.

How do you establish a grade if you have no grades?

For me, grades are curriculum based. We don’t give students a letter or a percentage but rather we give them a level. Level 3 means that they demonstrate competence in the curriculum expectations; a 4 means that they’ve gone above and beyond; a level 2 means that they’re approaching the provincial standard. I’m bound by this curriculum… legally, so when it comes to report cards I’m going to have
the expectations on one side of the computer and all of my anecdotal records, descriptive feedback etc. on the other side to decide on a grade.

What fears did you have about abolishing grading?

Mainly I fear the pushback from parents who have been expecting grades over the years. I’m also a little weary of the inconsistencies across classrooms. How much does it benefit a student who goes through JK, SK, 1, 2 and 3 being graded, comes into my grade 4 class and receives this differentiated type of feedback, and must then go back into a grade 5, 6, 7, and 8 class using grades?

What challenges do/did you encounter with abolishing grading?

I anticipate some concern from administration who likes consistency within a grade. If we have 3 grade 4 classes then traditionally the teachers have been sharing assessment tools for all units and using common assessment. One class being different would raise questions within the community.

Are you willing to provide contact information for others who are interested in abolishing grading?

jvnanu@gmail.com
@jvnanu
http://mrnanu.edublogs.org is my classroom blog.
Personal blog coming soon.

Common Assessment = Undifferentiated Assessment

Here is a guest post by Dave Martin. He tweets here and blogs a lot about math here.

by Dave Martin

I would like to challenge the idea of common assessment. Not just common throughout a department but common even in a single classroom. From this time further I will refer to these assessments as their true name “Standardized Assessments”. The definition of a standardized assessment is:

a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent.

Also, I refer to these as standardized assessments as they are designed in such a way the class average should fall in a “reasonable” zone. This zone may differ from teacher to teacher and from class to class but this underlying bell curve does exist. I have heard of meetings where discussions such as “The average was low, so the test should be made easier” or “The average was too high, so we need to increase the difficulty” have been had. This saddens me as we are requiring students to fail such that others can feel success.

Since by the definition and the manner these assessments are designed, usually, they must fall on a specific day, common to all teachers of the same course, and also consist of some mixture of the following:

· MC 5-10 questions
· NR 3-5 questions
· WR 2-5 questions with bullets

Usually the test days, and requirements are decided before the first day of schoolI have asked why do teachers give common assessment? I will provide the two top reasons I heard, and then my counter-argument.

1) Standardized assessment allows for fair and equal assessment practices between the same courses throughout the school.

Counter: What is fair is not always equal and what is equal isn’t always fair. If we truly want equal assessment, then should we not require all students to write with the same hand, take off their glasses, set the temperature in all the rooms to be the same, and have all students write with the same type of pencil? I know this sounds absurd, but where does the fair and equal practice stop? Each and every student, in my class, has a different set of needs and abilities yet these exams will force each student to be put through the same hole. Alberta Education recently, wrote:

Differentiated assessment means selecting tools and strategies to provide each student with the best opportunity to demonstrate his or her learning. As you get to know your students, and as student differences emerge, assessment naturally becomes more differentiated, because its purpose is to meet students where they are and to coach them to the next step. In this way, assessment and instruction continue to support and inform each other.

By making these decisions before ever “knowing my students” how is one to decide which would be the “best opportunity for each student to demonstrate his or her learning”? I do not see standardized assessment as a fair and equal practice at all.

2) Standardized assessment allows for fair and equal instructional practices between courses throughout the school.

Counter: This seems like the standardized assessment is more assessing the teacher than the student now. Even if two students, in two different classes, receive the same mark this does not guarantee the same instruction has been given. One teacher could be “teaching to the test” and involving daily test prep activities while the other is implementing quality instruction and critical thinking.

Now, the problems I see with common assessment:

First and foremost: It is the duty and responsibility of the classroom teacher to determine how and when to assess each student. I am confused and distraught when people, outside the class, control the assessment strategies, without even knowing the individual students they are impacting.

Alberta Education’s ideas are:

Differentiating assessment involves rethinking the standard practice of having all students do the same assessment tasks at the same time, regardless of their individual learning needs or the learning they have already demonstrated. Rather, in this new paradigm, teachers customize the selection and use of assessment information to reflect each student’s highest level of achievement.

By having standardized exams, we are going against the research and knowledge of our government. Also, it should be the freedom of the teacher to decide, and indeed, the freedom of each student to decide how and when they will be assessed on their knowledge. Of course we all know that some people employed as teachers do not do a good job, but by forcing everyone to assess, and ultimately, teach the same way it does not improve these “bad teachers” – but actually hobbles the good ones.