The FIL Guadalajara Book Fair is the second biggest globally after Frankfurt. This year the ‘guest of honour’ is the European Union. A session on examining what can be transferred from the Finnish educational experience into Mexico will be held with Eduardo Andere. If you are in the vicinity, welcome!
Some of the focus of the discussion on potential transferables from Finland to Mexico will be on the ‘6 C’s of Finnish Education’
Competence-based education
This outcomes-focused system connects students with purpose for learning by providing relevant authentic educational objectives. 21st century skills require that individuals learn-to-learn from a young age, and that an education system can respond swiftly to emergent working life competence needs.
Creativity
Teachers, schools, national administration see the curriculum as a tool, not a rule. The national curriculum states the intended learning outcomes but does not provide too much detail on how each class should successfully achieve these outcomes. This provides a lot of space for creative thinking not just by teachers, but by students themselves.
Conversations
Conversational pathways lead to joint setting of objectives. Government, working life, and educational experts set objectives; parents and citizens engage in open discussion about these; teachers and students agree on learning goals; students agree on action plans, leading to emphasis on cooperative learning, use of assessment and feedback to support learning, and widespread shared appreciation of the value of education.
Collaborative learning
Collaborative learning stresses the partnership between teachers and students, homes and schools, political and educational agencies. It functions through emphasis on distributive leadership where responsibility for learning is nurtured from a very young age. A rich Finnish learning environment is one of dialogue and creativity encouraging the adage every child as a scientist to be realized through continuous teamwork.
Crossing subject boundaries
The subjects in the curriculum may stand alone, but there are strong transversal ‘threads’ which bind them together with respect to knowledge creation and skills development. Subjects need to be adaptive and integrative because much content is continuously evolving, particularly in relation to how it is relevant to learner’s lives. Crossing subject boundaries (interdisciplinarity) also invites greater interplay between mind, brain and education, and opportunities to diversify learning experiences.
Comfortable safe learning environments
There is a powerful interplay between attitudes and emotions which affects learning outcomes for individuals, especially those of school-age. Finnish schools approach this by establishing a culture of trust and flexibility, and also participation through the creation of safe and comfortable environments. This promotes well-being and high levels of emotional literacy and empathy, both of which support strong engagement in healthy communities of practise.