Monday, May 13, 2013

How do Finnish kids excel without rote learning and standardized testing? by Erin Millar


Learning from the country ranked 1 and consistently in top 3 for their education system..

some excerpts from the article 
Dr. Sahlberg argues that if we want young people with the competencies to innovate and make our economy more competitive, we need to model our schools after how innovation actually happens. “Teaching and learning have traditionally been conceptualized as linear, deterministic procedures,” he wrote in a paper on economic competitiveness and education. “Innovation is an organic entity. Teaching and learning in schools should rely on principles of active participation, social interaction and reflection.”
The reality in Canada, which is unfortunate in Dr. Sahlberg’s view, is that students are rewarded for competing against their peers, teachers are held accountable by their class’s performance on exams, and schools are compared through widely published standardized test results. Finland takes an alternative approach. Students receive only narrative evaluation instead of marks or grades until Grade 5. Thereafter, their grades rely on how they’ve performed relative to their individual potential rather than as compared to their classmates. “Teachers stress grades as little as possible,” Dr. Sahlberg says. “This means that students ‘compete’ against themselves, not one another.”
One of the ways the Finnish education system accomplishes this is by giving individual teachers greater autonomy in teaching to the needs of their classes, rather than a top-down, test-based system.


source:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/how-do-finnish-kids-excel-without-rote-learning-and-standardized-testing/article11810188/?utm_content=buffer508d5&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

No comments:

Post a Comment