Becoming a Finnish Teacher

  There is still time to register for the seminar. You can find more information on the  "Learning Future - Futures of Learning" net site. I have participated in many Futures Conferences during past years, and I can recommend it heartily. The conferences have always been very inspiring, and I have met many interesting people. This year the social connection will likely be weaker since it is an online event.  The conference is promoted on the net site as follows: "As we move further into the 21st century, we need to renew our understanding of what it means to learn, teach, and develop new knowledge. Education systems and learning processes for people of all ages are needed to navigate uncertainty, address known problems, identify new ones, and be able to detect and make the sense of emergent issues and opportunities. The roles of education and learning are also becoming more essential in solving the pressing global ecological, cultural, societal and economic challenges.

Building learning communities is important since people learn from teachers, materials, and from each other. Sometimes working together in a group is the main learning method. This is good since in the working life people need co-operation skills anyway. When conceptualizing thoughts and even preliminary ideas it is good to get feedback from others and redevelop their own thinking. There are several methods of how to facilitate group bonding and contributing. One example is a dialogical method of learning. This has been developed into the systematical method by DIALE-project (see the website here ).  There are even very detailed methods teachers can use when facilitating learning in groups. These have been profoundly described on the webpage .  Learning communities might face challenges when people come from different backgrounds, for example, different cultures. It is good to acknowledge the differences in cultures in order to understand each other's behavior, which might seem odd

Personalization of teaching Personalization of teaching brings about potential benefits. There are a lot of positive effects of personalizing:  it makes studying  more motivating and exciting . Furthermore, it  facilitates lifelong learning  and  provides tools for self-branding  and standing out in the job market. Schools can find  new exciting ways of organizing teaching  when the role of teachers is changed from information providers to learning facilitators. Society benefits by getting  new specialists and abilities  to solve many kinds of problems we might not have even heard of today. Investing the same amount of money in personalized education may bring about much  better learning results . If all the new skills required in the future society were to be taught to all students, it would not be easy and require a lot of resources. Personalizing the studies  saves resources  since some people can be taught one set of skills, while others learn different skills. Diversity gives

The idea of evaluation is to signal the level of student’s knowledge and skills to the student him/herself and possibly to employers etc. The student benefits from the evaluation because it signals how much the student has learned. It can also function as an incentive to work harder to achieve better grades. Typically, the grading system of a course is connected to the course aims and there are criteria provided for each grade. If one achieves all the goals, one gets top grades, if not the grades are lower. There is also a minimal level one has to accomplish to pass the course. For the education provider, the grading systems make sure, that everyone who graduates, has the skill level required in that specific course or education. The challenge of evaluation is to measure the right things and in a way that is consistent. The assessment should be unambiguous and not vary by the teacher’s mood or liking of a particular student. It would be good to have clear and public criteria for asses

Howard Gardner argues that intelligence is a multi-dimensional concept. Humans have a variety of specialized and partly independent intelligence. According to Gardner, intelligence is a biopsychological information processing ability, which is also influenced by culturally learned practices and values. The types of intelligence are: linguistic (comprehension and self-expression), mathematical-logical (problem-solving and coherent reasoning), musical, physical, spatial and visual (perceive spaces, directional, easily understand essential features of objects), intrapsychic (ability to understand own weaknesses and strengths) and interpsychic (the ability to get along with others and understand them). Gardner's listing has been criticized because those kinds of intelligence are mainly based on intuition. It has been argued that intelligence could be regrouped and named in so many different ways and that Gardner’s list is lacking potential intelligence such as philosophical and abstra

The educational plan stresses the importance of equal opportunities for all. It pays attention to the equality of minor language groups such as Swedish/Same speaking kids, people living in different areas and immigrants.  The main idea is that education and civilization is the best guarantee for young people to find their place in society and integrate. This is a base for innovations and visions and balanced development of the society.   The aim is that all the young people get second-degree schooling and 50% get a University degree by 2030. In practice, this means that Universities need to have more students. This seems like a pretty ambitious plan. Even though the educational level of Finns gets better each year, there is still a long way to go. The figure below illustrates how the educational level of Finns is developing.  Since most university funding comes from the state the way the funding is divided guides how the Universities organize their teaching and research. I