Finnish lesson 1. High performing Finland might be regarded as an example of
posipve deviance from which other napons can learn as they rethink their own ...
Finnish School system, School leadership and sustainable system change
Workshop in the Ministry of Education and Employment (MEDE), Malta -‐ 2.4.2012 PhD Kari Kivinen
Basic opera8onal culture inside the Finnish Educa8on System Trust on schools, principals, teachers and students School Autonomy – School opera8onal culture Influence of the local community Comprehensive basic school with extensive special and remedial teaching • Limited compe88on between basic schools • Heavy compe88on between schools aFer that, covering the whole country – Schools compete for best youngsters – Youngsters compete for best study places • • • •
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“Only dead fish follow the stream”
an old Finnish expression
• Finland has decided to go against the 8de of the “global educa8on reform movement,” which is based on core subjects, compe88on, standardiza8on, test-‐based accountability, and control.
Dr Pasi Sahlberg, 2012
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Global trend vs. the Finnish way
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Finnish lesson 1 High performing Finland might be regarded as an example of posi8ve deviance from which other na8ons can learn as they rethink their own reform strategies. (Hargreaves, Halasz, Pont, 2007)
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Finnish lesson 2 The Finnish “Na8onal Curriculum Council is “very future oriented”, it also tries to determine “what is the best we can learn from the past, (in order to) try heavily to look into the future and what is happening in the world and then analyse the present”.
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Finnish lesson 3 At the heart of the human rela8onships that comprise Finland’s educa8onal system and society is a strong and posi,ve culture of trust, co-‐opera,on and responsibility.
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Finnish lesson 4 Finland exhibits a pa\ern of system leadership in strong cultures of • lateral and ver8cal teamwork, • networking, • par8cipa8on, • target se]ng and • self evalua8on. 8
Developing organisa8ons a lead by system leaders “Instead of being managers who implement policy, school administrators will increasingly need to become leaders of their schools who can also exercise leadership in the environment beyond their schools, and ar8culate the connec8on between the two. The educa8onal leader of the future, therefore, will increasingly be a system leader as well as a school leader.” (Hargreaves, 2007) 9
System leaders (Hargreaves, 2007)
• Leading learning organisa8ons
– Effec8ve organisa8ons are able to learn con8nuously, not just as an aggrega8on of individuals, but also collec8vely as a group.
• Leading learning communi8es
– Successful learning communi8es are places where people care for each other as individuals, and commit to the moral purpose the organisa8on is pursuing, as well as pursuing technical tasks of analysis and improvement together
• Distributed leadership
– Within the overall sphere of school leadership, teacher leadership has more significant effects on student achievement than principal leadership
• Leadership succession
– Highly effec8ve schools are oFen characterised by high leadership stability
• Lateral leadership • Sustainable leadership
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Lateral Leadership (Hargreaves, 2007)
• Top-‐down policy strategies turn leaders into managers. • More and more educa8onal leaders – principals and teachers – are therefore becoming engaged in lateral, networked leadership, that promotes effec8ve par8cipa8on in networks, while ensuring that the networks remain 8ed to clear purposes that are connected to improved learning and achievement. • Lateral leadership takes place through sharing best prac,ces and “next” prac8ces, especially between the Schools.
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Finnish lesson 5 “Finland seems par>cularly successful in implemen>ng and maintaining the policies and prac>ces that cons>tute sustainable leadership and change.” Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink, 2006
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School development and educa8onal sustainability (Hargreaves, Halasz, Pont, 2007)
• Depth – sustaining what ma\ers in terms of a clear and defensible moral purpose • Breadth – ensuring that improvements benefit the many across a system, and not just a few excep8onal instances within it and that they are a shared and distributed leadership responsibility instead of being dependent on heroic individuals • Endurance – over the long term, across and beyond many leaders, not just within snapshot periods under any one leader‟s tenure • Jus,ce – avoiding harm to and promo8ng ac8ve benefit and assistance for others in the surrounding environment • Diversity – so that improvement efforts value, promote and create cohesion within organiza8onal diversity, rather than developing standardised prac8ces that do not allow cross-‐fer8liza8on of learning and are neither adaptable nor resilient to change • Resourcefulness – through prudent use and deliberate renewal of people‟s energy so leadership ini8a8ves and improvement efforts do not burn them out • Conserva,on – which builds on and learns from the best of the past in order to create a be\er future
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“The key to system-‐wide success is to situate the energy of educators and students as the central driving force. This means aligning the goals of the reform and the intrinsic mo=va=on of par=cipants.” Fullan, 2011
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Finnish lesson 6 “The capacity of a system to engage in the complexi>es of con>nuous improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose.” Fullan, 2005 “Capacity building concerns the knowledge, skills, and disposi>on of people individually but especially collec>vely.” It is the group with shared purpose and skills that gets things done! Fullan 2011
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Finnish state budget
(a prac8cal example of the priority thinking)
• Finland spends just about 1 million euro annually on assessment of its school system versus • 40 million euro is invested in professional development of teachers and School Heads 16
Michael Fullan’s wrong drivers (Fullan, 2011)
1. Accountability: using test results, and teacher appraisal, to reward or punish teachers and schools vs. capacity building 2. Individual teacher and leadership quality: promo8ng individual vs group solu8ons 3. Technology: inves8ng in and assuming that the wonders of the digital word will carry the day vs instruc8on 4. Fragmented strategies vs integrated or systemic strategies 17
Effec8ve drivers that actually produces be\er results across the system (Fullan, 2011) 1.
The learning-‐instruc,on should be in focus How to make learning more exi8ng and engaging ? How to foster intrinsic mo8va8on of teachers and students?
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Social capital to build the profession Social capacity can change all vs. human capacity can (with lots of efforts) change something. Need to build collabora8ve cultures within and across schools.
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Pedagogy matches technology There is no prove that any country would would have increased their learning outcome results through using technology at the front end but New pedagogical innova8ons with technology can help to achieve the wanted goals.
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Systemic energy How to affect all teachers and all students -‐ 100%? Focus on small number of coherent set of priori8es and strategies. Avoid fat plans. Be simple.
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System assessment worksheet based on the a\ached ar8cle of M. Fullan, 2012
CURRENT STATE – RECORD EVIDENCE AND PRACTICES FOR EACH DRIVER Less effec8ve drivers
Effec8ve drivers
Accountability
Capacity building
Individual teacher and leadership quality
Collabora8ve work
Technology
Instruc8on
Fragmented strategies
Systemness 19
More informa8on in English • www.oph.fi -‐ Finnish Na8onal Board of Educa8on • www.edev.fi -‐ Finnish Educa8on Evalua8on Council • h\p://www.edev.fi/portal/english5/useful_links -‐ Excellent collec8on of links • h\p://www.edev.fi/portal/english5/publica8on -‐ Excellent list of publica8ons • jorma.kuusela@oph.fi – NBE learning outcome evalua8on specialist • Improving School Leadership, Vol 2: Case studies on system leadership, OECD 2008 • Pasi Sahlberg, (Spring 2012) , A Model lesson, American Educator
h\p://www.aF.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2012/Sahlberg.pdf
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References* Finland: Slow and Steady Reform for Consistently High Results (2010), in STRONG PERFORMERS AND SUCCESSFUL REFORMERS IN EDUCATION: LESSONS FROM PISA FOR THE UNITED STATES, OECD Fullan, M. (2005), Leadership and Sustainability: System Thinkers in Ac8on, Sage Publica8ons Ltd, Thousand Oaks. Fullan, M (2010), Mo8on Leadership: The Skinny on Becoming Change Savvy, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA: Ontario Principals Council, Toronto Fullan, M (2011), Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform, Seminar series 204, Centre for Strategic Educa8on (CSE). Fullan, M (2011b), The Moral Impera8ve realized, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA: Ontario Principals Council, Toronto Fullan, M (2012), Choosing the Right Drivers: Introducing the Drivers for Whole System Reform, unpublished ar8cle presented in the MicrosoF Schools Leadership Forum in January 2012, London. Hargreaves, A. & Fink, D. 2006. Sustainable leadership. San Fransisco: Jossey-‐Bass. Hargreaves, A, Halász G. & Pont, B. (2007). School leadership for systemic improvement in Finland, A case study report for the OECD ac8vity Improving school leadership. Hargreaves, Halász and Pont (2008) The Finnish approach to system leadership by Andrew Hargreaves, Gábor Halász and Beatriz Pont in IMPROVING SCHOOL LEADERSHIP, VOLUME 2: CASE STUDIES ON SYSTEM LEADERSHIP, OECD Sahlberg, Pasi (2011), Finnish lessons, What Can the World Learn from Educa8onal Change in Finland, Teachers College Press * Blue slides of the presenta8on are from Dr Pasi Sahlberg’s presenta8on “What can Bri8sh Columbia learn from educa8onal change in Finland? 21
