Finland's PISA results have raised world-wide interest in Finnish schools and teacher education. What will happen next? Phenomenal Learning from Finland presents Finland's path to 21st century competences and the exciting concept of phenomenon-based learning as part of the new curriculum.
Kirsti Lonka, PhD, is Professor of Educational Psychology at University of Helsinki, Finland. She has worked in many countries on several continents to bring the latest innovations and ideas to Finnish education. She is an international researcher and keynote speaker who has inspired thousands of teachers globally.
This book covers why Finnish education system is so great and what are the skills to provide for the 21st century.
Learned a few things about Finnish education: - Charging for schooling is illegal, so even the few private schools are tuition-free (raising money) - The Finnish education system relies entirely on highly educated teachers. E.g. in the University of Helsinki, more than 2 000 apply to the class teacher (grades 1-6) program every year, and only 120 are accepted. - There are tons of different approaches to learning being researched, in Finland only. Most learning approaches connect theory and practice in some way.
About learning: - Kids over school year ask less and less questions and soon learn more according to adults’ goals than out of curiosity and a joy of learning. - Emotions play a key role in human coping and adaptation, since they help us to protect ourselves from threat (imagined or real) and engage in things that appear fascinating. - Many pupils may feel that at school they regress into the knowledge practices of their parents and grandparents. - Schools are no place to carry out mechanical tasks, since even cognitive routines will soon be automatized. Future citizens need creative thinking in their everyday lives to tackle increasingly complex and ill-defined problems. - Phenomenon-based learning (by the author) means teaching through actual in-world phenomena.
This is a very important book for anybody interested in education. It tells the story of Finnish education, but it could, and should, be also read as a book about thinking and learning in a more general terms. Even though Finnish education is globally successful, they are still thinking about how to improve, how to do better, how to engage their teachers, as well as students, in life-long learning, critical thinking, how to prepare themselves and their pupils for the future (that we cannot see, and maybe cannot fully predict, but we sure as hell know it is coming, and it will be different, children starting school today will live in a different world... but why are we then sticking to 'tradition', to 'values' and old dusty textbooks?) This is a book on the importance of interdisciplinarity (because we do not live nor learn in the compartments of school 'subjects'), on learning as an active process, on the importance of motivation and positive emotions of pupils... But it does not choose the easy way out - and this is what I like most about it - this is no call for 'dumbing down' of information and knowledge, it is not a call for oversimplification. Kirsti Lonka makes a case for education that will help raise critical, creative and literate people who will manage to grasp the future, whatever it might bring their way. A very important book! You can also watch Ken Robinson on the importance of creativity in education today https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_rob...