The Nordic country, well known for its educational achievements, has just set up a radical change in its schools: ...
The Nordic country, well known for its educational achievements, has just set up a radical change in its schools: from last month on, every education centre has started to implement a pedagogic approach known as “Phenomenon based Learning”, which replaces the old system of subjects per multidisciplinary projects.
“The traditional form of education, divided into subjects, is not preparing the kids for the future”, said during a press conference the Minister of Education of Helsinki, Marjo Kyllonen. Under the new system, instead of learning isolated pieces of knowledge in a passive way, students will take an active role and work in projects that demand interdisciplinary approaches. That way, studying a phenomenon such as the European Union, will demand learning languages, history, politics and geography.
Traditional classes will be replaced by thematic projects in which students will take ownership of the learning process.
“In traditional education, the students go to their classroom and have mathematics lessons, then literature and then sciences”, said Kyllonen. “Now, instead of learning isolated knowledge from different subjects, the role of the students becomes active. They participate in the planning process, become researchers and they also evaluate the process”, she explained.
“Teaching based on projects proposes a specific production, a challenging final result. In order to do that, goals are set and actions, resources and the time it will take are defined”, explains Andrea Samper, licenciate in Education. And she adds, “participation in projects promotes the construction of knowledge that exceed a certain discipline: it demands using superior thinking skills and metacognitive processes”. Under this mode, the teacher guides, monitors, provides a framework and accompanies the students.
The use of projects in the pedagogic field is not a novelty. There is a long tradition that has its roots in constructivism, through the work of pedagogues such as William Kilpatrick and John Dewey.
“The ways of teaching have not really changed since the middle of the 19th century. There is a reluctance to change as it would imply a major modification in the role of teachers and a deep revision of the curricular proposal”, says Samper. She states that “this pedagogic approach could provide answers for several of the problems that the school has nowadays.”
Shifts in the Finnish educational system also lead to major changes for teachers, who will no longer have the control they are used to on their classes and will have to learn to work in a collaborative way with their students and other teachers.
Their work will stop being based on lectures and will resemble the work of a mentor or a coach instead of the work of a professor.
Finland seems to be willing to keep on changing and learning.
