Continuing
Professional
Development
of Teachers
in Finland
Yongjian Li and Fred Dervin
Continuing Professional Development
of Teachers in Finland
Yongjian Li · Fred Dervin
Continuing
Professional
Development of
Teachers in Finland
Yongjian Li
School of Education
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland
Fred Dervin
Department of Teacher Education
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland
ISBN 978-3-319-95794-4
ISBN 978-3-319-95795-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947630
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To our family in China and Finland
Contents
1 Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher Continuing
Professional Development in the ‘Miracle’ of Finnish
Education1
2 Framing CPD to Understand and Explore
the Finnish Context29
3 Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD43
4 Data and Methodologies83
5 Providers: Offerings and Critiques89
6 Teachers’ Views on CPD115
7 Paratexts to CPD: Decision Making, Leadership,
Teacher Education and Project Work129
8 Conclusions157
vii
viii Contents
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative
and International Education171
Bibliography195
Index211
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1
Fig. 1.2
Fig. 8.1
Finland’s system of education, from the National Agency
for Education
5
Continua of Finnish education
8
CPD organisation and funding 161
ix
List of Tables
Table 4.1
Table 5.1
Table 5.2
Table 6.1
Types and sources of data 84
List of funders for CPD 90
Profiles of interviewees: providers 98
Profiles of interviewees (teachers) 117
xi
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher
Continuing Professional Development
in the ‘Miracle’ of Finnish Education
Finland is known for its equal basic education. We are proud of it. The
centenary of the Finnish story is a narrative of a nation that, throughout
its history, has expanded access to education and built equal opportunities.
(Finnish Minister of Education Sanni Grahn-Laasonen 28 February 2018)
– Now I want to live in Finland…
– I should have gone to school in Finland.
– The education system there is also brilliant, we have so much to learn
from a society that places importance on equality and happiness.
– I am tired of hearing about the Finns.
(Comments on Finnish education found randomly online in 2017)
When the Greek hero Achilles, who was the bravest, handsomest and
greatest warrior, was born, it was foretold that he would die young. His
mother dipped him in a magic river that would offer him invulnerability to counter the spell. However, she held Achilles by the heel, preventing it from being protected by the river. One day, he was killed by
a poisonous arrow lodged in his heel. Today the expression “Achilles’
heel” refers to “an area of weakness, a vulnerable spot” (Oxford English
Dictionary, 2016).
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_1
1
2 Y. Li and F. Dervin
This book examines the Achilles’ heel of one of the top performing countries in education, according to such world rankings as the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies, the
OECD Better Life Index Education, the Global Competitiveness
Report 2016–2017 of the World Economic Reform, and the current doxa (commonsense ) on international and comparative education:
Teacher Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the small Nordic
country of Finland (population: 5.4 million, 2017).
According to Olli Luukkainen, Director of the only Teachers’ Trade
Union in Finland (Opetusalan Ammattijärjestö, OAJ), which represents
over 120,000 teachers from early childhood teachers to university lecturers:
Our system of continuing education and professional development for
teachers is not good enough. It differs too much from one part of the
country to another and one group of teachers to another. Teachers in
vocational schools, for example, have much better support for continuing
education than do primary teachers. (OECD 2011: 126)
The country has been revered worldwide for its ‘miraculous education’
(Niemi et al. 2012) and has become ‘mythical’ (Dervin 2013), being
presented in somewhat simplistic ways. For example, this is how one
company, attached to several Finnish universities and selling Finnish
education to the world, talks about it:
All over the world, people are talking about “the Finnish phenomenon”.
People wonder how Finland can consistently top international student
performance rankings, while placing an unwavering focus on every child’s
well-being.
The Finnish education system is a diamond that has been carefully
ground and polished for decades. It began with the zeal and determination of Finnish people to push themselves to succeed – a dream that generation after generation worked at until it came true.
One thing Finns realised is that success in education can only be achieved
by working together and making the most of everyone’s resources. This is
how an equal education system was created.
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 3
The resounding success of Finnish education is evidenced by superb international results such as high PISA rankings.
The wonders of this ‘diamond’ are often attributed to Finnish teachers,
who are said to be the ‘best teachers in the world’—even if one cannot
agree universally on what this actually means. In her answers to parliamentary questions to the Finnish government about education in early
2018, the Minister of Education put it this way:
We have the best, highly educated teachers in the world who are appreciated by society and who, compared to other countries, have an exceptionally
broad pedagogic freedom. (…) Our teachers do an excellent job in schools.
As we shall see in this book, teachers’ CPD in the Nordic country is
somewhat a victim of contradictory discourses amongst decision makers
and practitioners. In many cases it appears to be a mystery and a problematic aspect of education, although it should be central to teacher preparation. While working on this study, we have had to do ‘detective work’ as
information about CPD is scattered and often inconsistent in Finland.
Motivated by the mantra of ‘the best education system in the world’,
hundreds of ‘pedagogical tourists’ have visited Finland in search of
the ‘miracle of education’ (Niemi et al. 2012), especially in relation to
Initial Teacher Education (ITT) at university, which lasts for 5 years,
leading to a Master’s Degree. Overly positive discourses on ITT have
led to the establishment of ‘Finnish education export’ to the world
(Dervin 2013; Schatz 2016a).
Finland’s Miracle?
In international comparison, according to surveys by the World Health
Organization, WHO, Finnish schoolchildren are not very enthusiastic about going to school (…). Salmela-Aro and her research team have
found that many young people experience a lack of meaning concerning school and their own studies (Salmela-Aro 2017). According to their
research, almost one half of schoolchildren do not see school as meaningful at the end of elementary school. (Huhtala and Vesalainen 2017: 60)
4 Y. Li and F. Dervin
According to Egginger (2013) the current interest in Finnish education is not new if one looks back in history. As such, during the World
Fairs of 1889/1900 Finland, which was then a Grand Duchy of Russia
before its independence in 1917, was already presented as some sort of
a ‘miracle’. A Finnish school had been set up in Paris with a teacher and
Finnish pupils enacting reading activities for the audience (Egginger,
ibid.). Finnish education was already said to be efficient, modern, and
equalitarian at the time.
These ideas are still reflected in Finland’s top position in many world
rankings: The Sustainable Society Index (2016), first in human wellbeing; The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report (2015, World
Economic Forum), safest country in the world; The Global Gender Gap
Index (2016, World Economic Forum), one of the most equal countries.
The Fourth of December 2001 marked an important date
for Finland. This is when the results of the first Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA) of the OECD were released.
Finland came first, which put the country on the world map for
many years and earned the country the status of ‘educational utopia’.
According to the ‘global ambassador’ and ‘guru’ of Finnish education,
Pasi Sahlberg, who started working in Australia in 2018:
This [was] a very new situation for Finns. Ten years ago, before 2002,
we were very rarely asked to go anywhere so now if somebody wants to
hear stories from Finland we… you know I wanna go… because I also
understand that this is not gonna last forever that at some point we will
be taken over by somebody else then all these things will be nice memory.
(Pasi Sahlberg, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, March
2012, our transcription)
The triennial international survey, PISA, aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science at the end of basic education.
Around 510,000 students from 65 countries participate in the assessment. PISA has managed to establish an increasingly strong and mediatised ‘comparative turn’ amongst educational systems around the world,
where top systems attract attention and become models for others (Grek
2009).
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 5
According to the OECD (2013: 6) Finland is among the most equitable countries as far as PISA performance of 15-year-olds is concerned.
System-level policies are said to assure equity for students. And the
Nordic country has both a large percentage of top performers and a
smaller-than-average proportion of low performers.
Finnish Basic education (see Fig. 1.1) includes nine years of compulsory schooling with a voluntary tenth year. Education is free, and textbooks and a daily meal are provided. Early intervention and individual
Fig. 1.1
Finland’s system of education, from the National Agency for Education
6 Y. Li and F. Dervin
guidance and support are seen as keys to ensuring that no one is left
behind. At upper secondary level, instruction and school lunches, as
well as health care are provided free of charge, but students are required
to obtain their own textbooks and they may also be charged for other
learning materials. It is important to note that all families receive child
benefit from public funds for each child aged under 16, which aims to
cover specific costs relating to raising children. This is provided regardless of parents’ income, which, in a sense, can lead to inequity (some
families get even more capitals). In addition to such benefits, those
receiving special needs education are also entitled to assistant services,
other pupil welfare services and special aids (Sahlberg 2011).
Finland’s investment in education is similar to the OECD average,
with 5.7% of Gross Domestic Product (OECD 2017). Basic and general upper secondary education institutions are funded by the state and
local authorities. Municipalities receive funding according to the proportion of population (number of municipal residents aged between 6 and
15) and its socio-economic status. Municipalities decide how to distribute funding for education (OECD 2013: 16). In 2017 there were 311
municipalities in Finland. Sahlberg (2018: n.p.) insists on the diversity
of municipalities and thus the multifacetedness of Finnish education:
Since each municipality has very different regulations, the autonomy of
the corresponding schools varies greatly. For example, in some municipalities schools have the right to hire teachers, while in some teachers
are recruited by the government. In some municipalities, principals can
decide some minor bonuses they pay to teachers, and in some municipalities, the power to pay all wages comes from the government.
Therefore, there is a common misunderstanding when discussing Finnish
education internationally. People think Finnish education system is unified. However, in fact, education in Finland is very diverse, not the same
everywhere. That is also why I often tell international colleagues that we
should go out and see how different communities in different situations
and with different needs in Finland.
Although Sahlberg offers an interesting critique of discourses about
Finnish education globally, it is important to note that, in a way, he
might have contributed himself to presenting an image of Finnish
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 7
education, which is homogeneous—like many other experts of Finnish
education. The title of his most popular book, Finnish Lessons, and its
contents add to the confusion (Itkonen et al. 2017).
The most recent PISA results are from 2015. Finland’s performance
was less impressive in the last study as the country ranked 13 for mathematical literacy amongst all the countries participating in PISA, 4th in
reading literacy, 5th in scientific literacy and 7th in collaborative problem-solving (total number of participating countries and economies: 73;
OECD 2015). One of the reasons is that inequalities have increased.
For example, boys and students with an immigrant background now
have a higher risk of lower performance. Although the impact of
socio-economic status on the risk of low performance is still lower than
the OECD average, it has also increased (OECD 2015: 6).
What Finnish education fans and supranational organisations seem
to miss is the fact that, like all other education systems, Finland witnesses contradictions and should be examined, according to Simola
et al. (2017), through dynamics. In agreement with the scholars, one
could say that the Finnish system of education is located on different
continua, in terms of ideology, policy and pedagogy, that characterise it
as politically shifting from one end to another:
– Brunila et al. (2017) note that Finnish education, like many other systems of education, has clearly shifted from a knowledge-based education to skills training, prefiguring students’ role in the labour market.
– Simola et al. (2017) argue that Finnish education is witnessing a
strong contradiction between “the social-democratic agrarian tradition
of equality and the market-liberalist version of equity that emerged in
Finland in the late 1980s”. While the former is based on the ideology of the similarity of students, regardless of their sociocultural background, the latter is clearly stating that students should be catered for
according to their own capacities, needs and individuality (ibid.).
– Pedagogically, Simola et al. (2015) note that Finnish education represents a mix of traditional and progressive pedagogy (Fig. 1.2).
Regardless of these counter-narratives that have been presented in e.g.
sociology of education and social justice and multicultural education,
8 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Fig. 1.2
Continua of Finnish education
the flow of ‘pedagogical tourists’ to Finland (especially from China and
the USA) has not decreased, neither has the amount of requests from
international media. The promotion and export of Finnish education to
certain parts of the world have been part of the current nation branding
and commercial strategies (Schatz 2016b; Simpson and Dervin 2017).
These derive directly from the PISA fame and have led to what we could
refer to as ‘PISA hysteria’. The reputation of Finland abroad has thus
been very important over the last decade and conscious efforts have
been made by decision-makers and some scholars to protect this reputation. However, as we shall see, very little, see nothing, is ever said about
teachers’ CPD in Finland. We thus believe that it can represent an interesting and critical entry point into Finnish education.
The Broader Picture: Marketization, Branding
and ‘PISA Hysteria’
For Cantwell and Kauppinen (2014: 3), it is important to understand the complex ways in which today’s education is integrated into
local, national and global political economies, especially in higher
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 9
education—a very important level of education when discussing
Finnish (teacher) education and training. They write: “nearly all aspects
of higher education (e.g., student recruitment and learning, governance,
organizational administration and strategy, public policy, and the academic profession) are embedded in the political economy with links to
the market, non-profit and non-governmental organisations, and the
state” (ibid.). The marketization of education is a reality in Finland and
is imbricated, especially, in higher education despite claims that it is not
(e.g. Sahlberg 2011). Over the last 10 years, since the semi-privatization
of Finnish universities, there has been “a move from the public good
knowledge/learning regime to the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime” (Slaughter 2014: vii).
Teacher education being part of universities in Finland, has especially
triggered many business-like ventures. The economisation of Finnish
higher education is evident today through e.g. an increase in activities
related to education export (sale of made-to-order trainings, knowledge,
services and consultancy to other countries, see Cai and Kivistö 2010);
which represented about 100 million euros in 2013 (Team Finland, 2014),
and 260 million euros in 2014 (cimo.fi, 2017). A new Government
Programme from 2017 has set a target to increase the turnover to 350 million euros by the end of 2018 (ibid.). According to the Finnish Ministry of
Education and Culture (2010: 13), “Higher education institutions will be
encouraged to be active and assume a major role as education export operators.” In 2018 Education Finland, a national education export program,
was set up by the Finnish National Agency for Education (NAE) (educationfinland.fi). It is described as follows (cimo.fi, 2017):
The Education Finland growth programme offers companies, education
and training providers and others involved in education export information
about new business opportunities, develops know-how in education export,
and promotes Finnish education and training abroad. The programme
also develops new support solutions together with other operators in education export. The Finnish National Agency for Education is responsible
for the implementation of the Education Finland growth programme. The
programme receives funding from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and
Employment and the Ministry of Education and Culture.
10 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Its main goal is to “offer Finnish educational know-how and learning
solutions globally” (from the website; motto: “Ready to learn? ”). An
exhaustive list of Finnish companies and start-ups is included on the
website. From a business perspective, and when we look at the companies represented on the website, one can wonder if a needs analysis has
been made: what does the world need from Finland? As such one of the
company is based on the famous Finnish cartoon characters Moomins
(language education) and another one offers 3D printing services. Can
export of education rely on what appears to be scattered and somewhat
random, basing its selling points on anecdotal white lies? Furthermore
can one sell CPD abroad when the state of CPD in the country is said
to be fragmented and ineffective?
At an event in China in January 2018 where Finnish teachers were
asked to ‘perform’ with Chinese children and present to Chinese specialists (event organised by an education export company), the following ‘selling’ ideas were shared about Finland:
All subject teachers have interdisciplinary teaching abilities (examples
given: The same teacher uses triangle irons, sand balls and sticks in music
teaching; jigsaw puzzle and dice in math classes; and games with students
in physical education).
The key to Finnish education is according to one teacher: “Our education
system is not built for the sake of winning in PISA. It is for Finland to
win international competition in the future so that every child can have a
high-quality education”.
The following aspects are also mentioned about Finnish education:
(1) Education for all
(2) Development of a high level of teachers’ competence: Finland’s high
social status of teachers, young people want to be teachers, there are
strict pre-service training and teaching practice.
(3) Focus on students, students at the center
(4) Effective guidance and advice
(5) Encouraging Assessment and Evaluation: There is no standardized
test and teachers have autonomy
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 11
(6) Flexibility and Trust: Trusted Principals, Trusted Teachers,1 Trusted
Students and Parents.2
Finland is also the happiest country in the world.
The rhetoric around trust will come back again and again in this book.
For Sahlberg (2018: n.p.), one of the ‘gurus’ and promoters of Finnish
education,
When it comes to trust, first and foremost we need to understand that
in a system, if parents or society themselves have high demands on their
children’s well-being and behavior, this often means that you are not giving some freedom to the consequences that may arise. In Finland, trust is
for us the full trust and freedom for our schools and teachers, believing
that they can develop goals, teaching standards and content appropriate
for their children. The trust is instilled deeply in our culture; it is not a
single behavior in a particular situation.
We shall see how this ‘rosy’ picture often hides many unspoken issues in
relation to CPD, amongst others.
Institutions producing international league tables of school performance like the OECD—responsible for PISA studies—or the World
Trade Organization, have played an important role in stimulating marketization and branding in Finland. They constitute what Spring (2015:
1) calls a ‘global education superstructure’ that “directly and indirectly
influences national school systems along with multinational education corporations and schools.” These also increase the influence of
1One
of our research participants, a teacher from primary school, shared the following anecdote.
One of her colleagues asked her for exercises to be used to train the students for the past tense
in French. When she asked her why she needed exercises about that when it was not even in the
curriculum, the colleague explained that she wanted to teach it because teachers in the lower secondary school would blame her for being a bad teacher if the students did not know this tense.
2In her book School’s Fault, Korhonen (2018: 35) shows that parents’ trust is not always true (she
is on schoolyard supervision duty): “I walk around the schoolyard, I remember the headmaster’s
advice: remember to look like you’re doing something. Every year there are parents who have
time to come and spy on you. If some students have a fight and you’re not there immediately, the
headmaster will get a call from one of the parents complaining that the teachers are not doing
their job.”
12 Y. Li and F. Dervin
educational research conducted by economists and judging educational
outcomes in economic terms (e.g. rankings).
Scott et al. (2015: 65) claim, for instance, that the OECD “simultaneously acts as a diagnostician, judge, and policy advisor” for member
states and others. These superstructures tend to continue working from
a methodological nationalistic approach which is nation-based and thus,
(in-)directly contribute to some sort of neo-nationalism, especially when
the best performers advertise or sell their education to others. However,
Dale and Newman (2005) argues that we can no longer be apprehended
as local entities separated from each other in our accelerated global
world, especially in education where discourses and practices circulate.
Since the ‘PISA hysteria’ started in the 2000s, nicely marketable
imaginaries about Finnish education have blossomed: Finland is one
of the most equal countries in the world; Finnish people are hard-working
and honest; Finnish children do not need to work hard at school even if
they perform excellently in PISA studies; Finnish teachers are the best in the
world, etc. (Dervin 2013; Sahlberg 2011). Decision makers’, country
branders’, practitioners’ and even researchers’ voices from Finland have
contributed to spreading this commonsense, supported by international
media, politically engaged scholars and foreign politicians in need of
inspiration. The Finnish National Agency for Education (NAE) itself
uses marketing language to describe what they are trying to achieve to
foreign guests (e.g.: “Everyone can grow to his/her own potential. We
have passion for learning!”). There is an interesting saying in Chinese
that could explain well what consequences this has on how Finnish
education is discussed around the world. It derives from a discussion
between a minister and his ruler during the Warring States Period (475–
221 BCE) about the presence of tigers on the streets. The saying is 三
人成虎 (San Ren Cheng Hu ). Literally it means “three people become a
tiger ”, in other words if three people say they have seen a tiger then it
must be true (even if it may not be true). Figuratively the meaning is: If
you repeat a lie often enough, it will be believed…
Critics of PISA have noted many methodological concerns about the
conduct, analysis and interpretation of its results (Goldstein 2004). For
instance, we have been personally very critical of interpretations such as
the following, concerning Finnish pupils’ excellent results at reading:
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 13
This is due to both educational and socio-cultural reasons: teaching children to read in school is based on individual development and pace rather
than standardised instruction and frequent testing; Finnish parents read a
lot themselves and also to their children; books and newspapers are easily
available through a dense library network; and children watch subtitled
TV programmes from early on. (Sahlberg 2011: 25)
Although Sahlberg’s arguments include larger societal aspects such as
TV and reading outside schools, it seems to us that too much emphasis is laid on the positive influence of parents and teachers. We believe
that looking into the specificities of the Finnish language, which has
regular spelling, compared to e.g. speakers of English, should retain our
attention. While in Finnish every single letter is pronounced, English
pronunciation is quite challenging as the way words are written rarely
correspond to how they are read aloud. Take for example the words
Leicestershire [‘lestəʃə(r) ] and Marimekko in Finnish. Ignoring this aspect
can rhetorically serve the purpose of showing the ‘superiority’ of Finnish
education and society (teachers are excellent, parents caring, etc.).
Another example for testing mathematical literacy is the use of calculators during PISA tests. While in e.g. Singapore the children are not
allowed to use them, in Finland, they are very common—even for PISA
tests.
So, do we compare ‘apples and pears’ through PISA? Should we use
perspectives that look into broader ideological socio-economic-political
contexts (hidden ‘truths’, ‘white lies’)? Should we also pay more attention to biased generalisations and consider alternative perspectives, especially from the ‘periphery’ (i.e. outside Europe and the US), to compare
educational systems (see Li and Dervin 2018)? Isn’t there a need to be
critical of ethnocentric, essentialist and exotic discourses about different
systems of education? (Li and Dervin, ibid.).
For Biesta (2015: 350):
The most visible way in which systems such as PISA are seductive is in
that they seem to provide clear, unambiguous and easy to digest and to
communicate information about the apparent quality of educational systems, particularly with regard to their ‘performance’.
14 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Imaginaries about Finnish education, derived from ‘bad’ analyses based
on PISA results, reports and books for general audiences (rather than
‘proper research’) published mostly in English or translated into local
languages (e.g. Sahlberg’s book Finnish Lessons ), often construct Finland
as a different place that has very little in common with other countries—especially in terms of education (Sahlberg 2011). The insistence
on dissimilarities makes the Nordic country both an ‘exotic’ and ‘better’
place. Through our critical work, we have noticed an ‘allergy’ towards
similarities between education systems of top performers and those
who face many problems. It could be that, when the problems faced by
Finland in education, which are similar to those experienced by other
countries, are more transparently discussed, Finland ‘fans’ will try to
find another place that can give them the illusion that ‘their’ problems
can be solved.
In many descriptions of Finland, we are reminded of Psalmanazar’s
(1704) imagined Taiwan in An Historical and Geographical Description
of Formosa. The mysterious author, who was actually French, had never
been to Taiwan (Formosa as it used to be called), although he claimed
to be the first native of Taiwan to visit Europe. His descriptions of the
place were made-up and surrealistic: people lived underground; aristocrats
breakfasted on viper’s blood; students were fluent in ancient Greek; priests
sacrificed thousands of infants to a horned god. Interestingly his stories
impressed English audiences and he was even invited to give lectures at
Oxford. Although the comparison will appear far-fetched, we often hear
salaciously imagined ideas about Finland (especially from people who
have never visited Finland—although those who went to the Nordic
countries, are not immune to spreading these imaginaries): there are no
social classes; pupils don’t get any homework; becoming a teacher is as prestigious as becoming a lawyer or a doctor. In a recent email to one of us,
a teacher educator from another country asked us “how assessment is
occurring in Finland now that you don’t have individual disciplines or
subjects”. This puzzling message was most likely based on made-up stories from international media but also from some education exporters
about the fact that the 2014–2016 Curriculum in Finland had banished
school subjects and generalised interdisciplinarity in all schools. This is
our reply:
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 15
Good question! However, we still have different disciplines and school
subjects. There is this misconception around the world that we don’t…
we do… we do…
Teachers should, in principle, do at least one interdisciplinary model per
year (phenomenon-based learning) but it does not work… Teachers were
not trained at all for this.
My advice about Finnish education is: Come see for yourself, go outside
Helsinki and you will witness counter narratives… I can send you some
of the articles we have written about Finnish education as “the emperor is
naked”.
The colleague replied briefly: “Thanks for taking the time to get back to
me and also for the info.” Without any request for clarification or publications. We have faced many similar situations abroad: From a Dean
of a Faculty of Education in Canada who did not want to hear about
the ‘issues faced by Finnish educators’ because he wanted to ‘continue
dreaming’, to a French educator, who did not speak a word of Finnish
or Swedish, and got really upset when he heard counter-stories about the
‘wonders’ of Finnish education. Our assumptions are that myths about
Finland are very handy to manipulate decision-makers (“the Finns do that,
so it must be great”) or to remind e.g. teachers that they need to work
harder or get further training (“because they are not as good as Finnish
teachers”). We name this phenomenon “Finnish education as an alibi”.
But the Nordic country has also somewhat understood the value
of advertising and selling its educational system. Adopting an ambiguous form of self-aggrandizement (see the recent use of the hashtag
#BragForFinland used by many Finnish businessmen and public figures), through which Finland is constructing itself as better than it is,
those who sell implicitly or explicitly its education often lessen the value
of other educational systems by othering them and representing them
as ‘bad examples’ to follow (the case of China) or as being ruthless and
even ‘primitive’ forms of education (Schatz et al. 2015). Falling into the
traps of “apparent neutrality of description” (Holliday 2010) represents
a danger for those who get compared to Finland. Chung’s (2015: 476)
warning about comparing Finland’s education system with other systems argues for a different approach to comparison:
16 Y. Li and F. Dervin
While I have argued thus far that Finland provides a good example of
education policy, especially in terms of teacher education and political
consensus, there is the underlying and tempting risk of viewing Finnish
education uncritically, as a ‘silver bullet’ for all educational pitfalls and
problems.
This leads us to the idea of nation branding, which, in the case of
Finland, has clearly had an influence on the phenomena described
above, and has accompanied the ‘PISA hysteria’. Over the last 10 years
this phenomenon has spread in certain fields of research in Finland—
such as teacher education—and contributed to uncritical claims about
Finnish education. The concept of country branding was introduced
by e.g. Aronczyk (2013) and Anholt (2009). Aronczyk defines country
branding as:
Using the tools, techniques and expertise of commercial branding is
believed to help nations articulate a more coherent and cohesive identity,
attract foreign capital, and maintain citizen loyalty. In short, the goal of
nation branding is to make the nation matter in a world where borders
and boundaries appear increasingly obsolete. (ibid.: 12)
In the document entitled Mission for Finland published in 2010, the
Finnish authorities place education at the centre of the nation branding
strategy. The document also justifies the need for nation branding in the
following terms:
1) Increasing the appreciation of the fruits of Finnish labor, that is, promoting the export of Finnish products and services, 2) Promoting international investments in Finland, 3) Promoting inbound tourism to
Finland, 4) Promoting the international status of the Finnish State, 5)
Promoting the appeal of Finland among international professionals, 6)
Raising the national self-esteem of Finns. (2010: 23)
Interestingly nation branding represents, in a sense, a ‘renationalization’ of Finland, a new phase in defining Finnish people’s identity
and appeal to the world through the forces of the market. Of course,
Finland was not the first nation to explicitly brand itself in 2010. As
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 17
a ‘smaller power’ in the world it needs to legitimize its very existence
and nation branding represents a powerful way to do so (Lehti 2011),
especially as Finland has had a good reputation in most international
rankings.
Anholt’s Good Country Index placed Finland number 2 after Ireland
(http://www.goodcountry.org/overall) in 2014. The controversial idea of
the Index is to measure what countries contribute to the common good
of humanity and what it takes away. All these somewhat faulty international rankings are often used as a way to sell and promote Finnish
(teacher) education to the rest of the world.
As asserted earlier, the Finnish government is actively committed to
the marketing and export of its education brand and to reveal, use and
maybe (?) misuse the ‘secrets of the world’s number one education in
Finland’. As such, the marketization of education and nation building
are not wrong (everybody is doing it!), but because the created images
and discourses are somewhat unstable, they can be abused for political
or economic purposes elsewhere, ignoring the changes of Finnish education itself and the problems met by Finnish educators as its position in
PISA rankings declines.
For sure people will experience ‘aesthetic fatigue’ with Finnish education, which, in turn, will create resistance to the so-called ‘Finnish
road’ and ‘Finnish secrets.’ As Finland will lose its PISA appeal, others
will consider it worthless and turn to other countries (Estonia?), and fall
into the same trap. Another saying from Chinese can help us summarize
this issue: 色衰爱弛 (se shuai ai chi): affection loses with beauty withering away…
As researchers who want to learn about—or maybe from or with—
the experiences of top-performing countries, we also need to recognize a somewhat hidden, controversial and cruel fact: these ‘mysteries’
and ‘miracles’ generally come from regions that are said to be the ‘best’
(mostly Europe and the United States). News emerges everyday about
how e.g. Egypt is reforming its educational system, inspired by the
Finnish system of education; the same goes for Saudi Arabia. For these
countries, Finland has quality education and they are looking for recipes and secrets—and their own secret is to open the ‘bag’ instantly to copy
and apply Finland’s ‘good practices’. However, ‘the secret of someone else’s
18 Y. Li and F. Dervin
home’ has its own context of development. The process of replicating
education success ‘at home’ is usually a process of collecting and removing practices and methods from their context.
In this book, and throughout our work we have argued that we must
learn to think critically about our education and the other’s and, probably
most importantly, we must learn with each other. By showing that the
‘Nirvana’ constructed around Finland is mythical in many cases, we hope
that this book will stimulate more critical and reflective discussions.
A Silenced Achilles’ Heel? CPD in Finland
Finnish teachers selected from top 10% of sec.(ondary) sch.(ool)
Graduates / undertake 5 or 6 yrs of training (Masters level) / provided
with continuous in-service training (…)
In a recent post online, an American educator listed the above as
the most ‘amazing’ features of Finnish education, in comparison to
American education. Only the second aspect is correct: All teachers are
required to have a Master’s Degree—although there is a minority of
teachers who are unqualified and untenured, who often serve as substitute teachers. The first statement is based on a misunderstanding:
only 10% of student candidates are selected from those who apply for
teacher education at university, not of all the secondary school students
from a given year. And as we shall see in this book, the third statement
about continuous in-service training could be easily refuted.
For a period of six months in 2015 the Finnish Ministry of Education
(MoE), and an organization, SITRA, that “promotes Finland’s competitiveness and the well-being of the Finnish people” (http://www.sitra.fi/
en/well-being), set up a New Education Forum involving many specialists
who came together to discuss the future of Finnish education. One of the
participants, who was the Head of the Teacher Education Department at
the University of Jyväskylä, said during one of the meetings:
We have long ridden the wave of Pisa hysteria, telling ourselves that our
schools are good. And they are excellent – by yesterday’s standards. Our
schools do not meet current or future needs. (Sitra 2015)
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 19
The wave of PISA hysteria towards Finland, as asserted earlier, often
relies on positive discourses about Finnish teachers, especially in relation to the 5-year initial teacher education they receive at Finnish
universities.
In a decentralised approach, the Finnish Government defines and sets
educational priorities, while schools and day-care centres are principally
maintained and supported by municipalities (local authorities), which
have significant responsibility for organisation of education, funding, curriculum and hiring personnel (OECD 2013: 4). According to
the Teachers’ Trade Union (2017), in average, Finnish basic education
takes place with one teacher for 18 students in years 1–2, one for 20
in years 3 to 9—with a similar number for upper secondary education.
Finnish teachers are known for having pedagogical autonomy to teach
and assess students’ learning (OECD 2013: 4). This is often referred to
as ‘teachers’ empowerment’ (Sahlberg 2017). One must bear in mind,
however, that the vast majority of teachers use textbooks which can, in
most cases, dictate the way and the things they teach. From a managerial point of view, we must remember that, if a given organization or a
superior ‘empowers’ subordinates, it does not mean that the managers
are completely separated from the management system. The empowered
people can take the initiative to carry out various activities, but someone needs to supervise the overall situation and the general direction
things are taking in order to ensure that the overall goals of the organization are met. To our knowledge, there is no research on the perception of empowerment by teachers and decision-makers in Finland. In
their 2015 article about the business context, Andrade et al. show that
there are often differences between employers’ and employees’ perceptions of such practices. There might be a need to look into similar issues
in Finnish education.
In 2017, the Teachers’ Trade Union launched an Oath for Finnish
teachers. This oath was inspired by the Hippocratic Oath taken by
medical doctors, establishing principal medical ethics such as non-maleficence and confidentiality. The Oath for Finnish teachers was named
after John Amos Comenius, a Czech educational reformer, remembered
for his innovations in methods of teaching. The Comenius Oath reads
as follows:
20 Y. Li and F. Dervin
As a teacher I am engaged in educating the next generation, which
is one of the most important human tasks. My aim in this will be to
renew and pass on the existing reserve of human knowledge, culture and
skills.
I undertake to act with justice and fairness in all that I do and to promote
the development of my pupils and students, so that each individual may
grow up as a complete human being in accordance with his or her aptitudes and talents.
I will also strive to assist parents, guardians and others responsible for
working with children and young people in their educational functions.
I will not reveal information that is communicated to me confidentially,
and I will respect the privacy of children and young people. I will also
protect their physical and psychological inviolability.
I will endeavour to shield the children and young people in my care
from political and economic exploitation and defend the rights
of every individual to develop his or her own religious and political
convictions.
I will make continuous efforts to maintain and develop my professional skills, committing myself to the common goals of my profession and to the support of my colleagues in their work.
I will act in the best interests of the community at large and strive to
strengthen the esteem in which the teaching profession is held.
We should note at this stage that the oath is not contractual but serves
as guidelines for teachers.
The highlighted paragraph of the Oath is of central interest in this
book as it concerns the “continuous efforts to maintain and develop
my professional skills.” This has been contentious in the Finnish
context and very few publications, documentaries or studies (international as well as local) enter into details about what we consider
to be Achilles’ heel in the Finnish context. As such, while collecting
the data for this volume, we have heard again and again that many
Finnish teachers never receive CPD—except maybe half a day per
year depending on the municipality they work in. We have also heard
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 21
over and over that teachers’ CPD is a “jungle” in Finland. We shall
see that there are many explanations to these issues, from personal
motivation to local municipal finances. The problematic rhetoric of
trusting teachers in Finland is also often used to justify the lack of
CPD for some teachers.
What Is Special About This Book?
This book was written as a direct consequence of our involvement
with Finnish education but also with comparative and international
education. One of its main aims is to contribute to critical discussions
about the ‘wonders’ of Finnish education which have been sold around
the world for the last ten years. Our agenda is thus motivated by the
need to debunk some myths about Finnish education, using CPD as
an example. In so doing we agree with Orwell (1946) that “No book is
genuinely free from political bias”.
We have written this book from a critical and reflexive intercultural
perspective. This means that, unlike many other scholars and education
professionals, we pay attention to uncritical and unreflective comparative approaches to education ‘utopias’ like Finland. Unlike many observers, we try to avoid the following pitfalls:
1. International visitors must rely on their hosts in Finland—they
often have to pay university departments or the National Agency for
Education. Having access to the field, and to multiple voices about
Finnish education, is challenging if one is not inside the system. For
this study, we have chosen freely the participants to our research,
relying on our deep knowledge of Finnish (teacher) education and
multiple contacts in schools, organisations and universities.
2. We have had access to data in multiple languages, especially Finnish
and Swedish, which many observers do not understand. Punakallio
and Dervin (2015) and Dervin (2013) note, for instance, a gap
between the news and general discourses about Finnish education in
English and local languages (as a reminder, Finnish and Swedish are
the two official languages of the country). This multilingual approach
22 Y. Li and F. Dervin
has allowed us to dig under the surface of utopian Finnish education and to question some of the discourses that make it ‘miraculous’
to the eyes of many people abroad. Unlike many observers, we do
not just rely on translations to English. For example, the omnipresent discourse that community work, cooperation and mentoring are
the best forms of CPD in Finland is questioned in our book, rather
than being merely admired.3 The reality on the ground can be very
different than this mantra. As we shall see, many teachers prefer to
conduct their work ‘behind closed doors’, without sharing their own
resources. Some also resist changes and lack motivation to develop
their competences.
3. As asserted earlier, Finland is actively involved in education export,
which means selling educational services, schools and hiring teachers for services abroad. Many Finnish and international scholars take
part in these activities, which has an influence on their objectivity
and partiality, and on the boundaries between research and business.
Educational exporters are often found amongst Finnish education
delegations abroad. Interestingly, some foreigners also use “Finnish
education as an alibi” to sell their products or ideas. In order to sell
books about Finnish education some foreign companies (co-?)organise events at Finnish universities (they basically rent a room) to give
credibility to their products (we were there ). This has an influence on
discourses on Finnish education. As researchers working in China
and Finland, not involved in Finnish education export, we have no
pressure to ‘censor’ some of our research results and discussions.
Finally, this book represents an attempt for us to be critical towards our
own criticality. We shall not just be critical out of the desire to be critical.
3In
his 2018 column “We Need More than Just Better Teachers? ” in response to The World
Development Report 2018, Sahlberg argues rightly that the Report spreads myths about Finland.
He writes: “It is the culture of professional collaboration that improves educational performance
in Finnish schools, not teacher autonomy as the report assumes”. As we shall see, the argument
of autonomy is systematically used by practitioners and decision-makers to defend somewhat the
miserable state of CPD. The ‘culture of collaboration’ that Sahlberg presents as being a characteristic of Finnish education is far from being a reality in all schools as we shall see, and somewhat a
myth in itself.
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 23
Our ultimate goal consists in contributing positively to the improvement
of teachers’ CPD in Finland and elsewhere by highlighting issues in the
‘best education system in the world’. Our goal is also to warn readers of the
dangers of uncritical comparisons of their own context with the Finnish
context. By having identified the country’s Achilles’ heel, we can peel up
many layers—like an onion—that often escape outsiders’ attention.
Structure of the Book
Chapter 2 serves the purpose of framing CPD to understand and
explore the Finnish context. This is used as a conceptual and theoretical chapter for the rest of the book. We start by problematizing CPD
as a polysemic idea, reviewing international research. We are critical of
the fact that most of the literature on CPD is Westerncentric and add
what we consider to be interesting dimensions from China. The second
section is about the importance of long-term reflexivity in CPD. This is
followed by a review of current research on CPD worldwide. The ‘natural’ links between initial teacher education and CPD are noted.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to Finnish Initial Teacher Education and
Professional Development. As will be noted in the previous chapter, the
two need to be clearly and coherently linked. The chapter starts with
a quick critical presentation of the Finnish Core Curriculum for Basic
Education (2014/2016) which has been very much discussed around
the world, and is central to understand teacher education and CPD. The
role of teachers in the Curriculum is also problematized. Then the basics
of Initial Teacher Education are presented, as well as recent projects to
improve it. This review shows that Finnish Initial teacher education is
more complex (and unstable) than the way it is often described globally.
The next and final sections are about CPD. A diachronic review is proposed first. Specific forms of CPD used in Finland follow, and a certain
number of ‘mysteries’ around CPD are then discussed (finances, law,
rights and duties, etc.). The chapter ends with an example of CPD strategy and practices from a town in Western Finland (this serves as ‘good
practice’). This chapter, and the previous one, represent the conceptual,
theoretical and contextual backbones for the ensuing study.
24 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Chapter 4 describes the data and methodologies used. A specific
form of discourse analysis, called dialogism, is presented. It allows us
to ‘delve’ deeper into the respondents’ discourses in order to identify
potential contradictions, and ‘white lies’. Our assumption is that discourses on Finnish education are so complex that we needed a tool that
allowed us to explore its different facets. We remind our readers that the
collected data will only provide us with an entry point into some aspects
of CPD and that we do not aim to generalise for the entire country.
Chapter 5 examines the work of CPD providers. The following questions are answered: who organises CPD in Finland? What do they offer?
What problems do they face in offering CPD? Main Finnish providers
share their views, critiques and hopes about CPD. Tensions from within
and between providers are also described. The chapter helps get a broad
sense of CPD offerings and strategies.
Chapter 6 is devoted to teachers. A rural school, a bit isolated from
the capital city Helsinki, was chosen as a case study. Interviews with
teachers allow us to tackle the following issues: what are their experiences of CPD? What are their critiques of it? What needs do they have?
What do their discourses on CPD tell us about the pitfalls of Finnish
education? The data was collected a few months after major curricular reforms in Finland and there seemed to be frustration amongst the
teachers, especially in relation to the lack of proper CPD. At least one of
the teachers was very active in self-training.
Chapter 7 deals with the last category of actors (which we call ‘paratexts’) and includes decision-makers, school leaders, teacher educators and
CPD project coordinators. This last category allows us to compare the discourses of those who make decisions about CPD or who observe CPD
practices (teacher educators) and to contrast them with those of providers
and educators. This chapter demonstrates that there are gaps in the ways
some members of this category engage critically with CPD, with decision-makers and principals being more ‘liberal’ than the rest. As we had
a privileged position of being ‘locals’, we managed to obtain alternative
information about CPD and also about Finnish education in general.
In Chapter 8 we come back to the metaphor of ‘Achilles’ heel’. We
argue that CPD can tell us a lot about what is happening behind the
scene of an ‘education superpower’ like Finland, and open doors to
1
Introduction: Contextualizing Teacher … 25
aspects of international comparative education which are not always
easy to access. The conclusion summarizes what we found; proposes a
concluding figure which presents the organization and funding of CPD
in Finland and offers recommendations for different actors involved in
CPD. These recommendations are of interest to a global audience.
The Afterword opens up discussions about comparative and international education, using Chinese and Finnish education as an example. The
topic of social justice is central in both systems of education and has been
discussed extensively in examining CPD in the Finnish context. Social justice thus serves as a basis in the afterword to warn readers about comparing
‘apples and pears’ but also about starting comparative international analysis
from biases. For instance, teachers’ CPD appears to be more developed,
systematic and fairer than in the Nordic country. Learning with other in
comparative and international education is suggested as a solution.
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2
Framing CPD to Understand and Explore
the Finnish Context
CPD as a Polysemic Idea
In this chapter, we navigate through the ways Continuing Professional
Development (CPD) has been discussed, problematized and defined
in research. First, we notice that the available literature derives mostly
from English-speaking contexts (North America, the United Kingdom
and Australia). Second there appears to be a long list of models of CPD
dating back to the end of the 1970s. Third, a vast array of words and
phrases are used to refer to CPD. In English, the following words are
synonymous with CPD (amongst others): in-service training, in-service
education and staff development. In Finnish, many different phrases are
used to refer to Teacher CPD: opettajien ammatillinen täydennyskoulutus (most frequently used: teacher professional development training),
opettajien ammattitaidon kehittäminen (teacher professional competence
development), opettajien jatkuva ammatillinen kehittäminen (teacher
continuous professional development), and opettajien ammatillinen
jatkokoulutus (teacher professional continuous training). The words
used in Finnish comprise: development (kehittäminen ), complement/
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_2
29
30 Y. Li and F. Dervin
supplement (täydennys ) and advanced training (jatkokoulutus ).1 In the
discussions we had with decision-makers and practitioners for this
book, no one seemed to make a difference between these terms.
As Craft (1996: 5) argues, traditionally both in-service training and
a need for professional development have often been taken as a matter
of voluntary commitment or seen as appropriate for those with career
ambitions by teachers and decision-makers. However, in complex times
like ours, CPD should be a must for every single educator, especially as
the idea of the ‘life-long learning’ of teachers has gained ground globally. For Helin (2014: 86), CPD should be a continuation of ITT.
To start with, it is important to say that the term Continuing
Professional Development (CPD) seems to be defined and understood
somewhat differently depending on the context in which it is used
(Guskey 2002; Avalos 2011). It can also have very different forms. In
the Finnish context, there seems to be no ‘official’ definition proposed
by decision-makers, researchers or teachers themselves. In Aspfors’s
(2012) study on teachers’ induction in Finland, CPD often just refers
to post-initial teacher education. Often, in this context, unrelated
and inconsistent one-off events constitute the main approach to CPD
(Aspfors 2012).
In the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (known
as TALIS, 2013 and 2018) that offers an opportunity for teachers and
school leaders to share their experiences of education, CPD is understood as follows (2009: 49):
Professional development is defined as activities that develop an individual’s skills, knowledge, expertise and other characteristics as a teacher.
In their broad definition, TALIS covers formal and informal ways
of developing as teachers (ibid.): (structured activities) courses/
1From a multilingual perspective, it is interesting to note that in Chinese, there are also different
terms used to refer to CPD: CPD (专业持续发展), teacher continuing education (教师继续教
育), teacher in-service training (教师在职培训), etc. Although there does not seem to be a clear
distinction between the Chinese terms, there is an indication that they differ in terms of length
and engagement.
2
Framing CPD to Understand and Explore the Finnish Context 31
workshops, education conferences or seminars, qualification programmes, observation visits to other schools, participation in a teachers’ network, individual or collaborative research, mentoring and/or
peer observation and coaching; (less formal activities) reading professional literature, engaging in informal dialogue with peers (ibid.: 50).
In their short study of CPD in Finland, Guiden and Brennan (2017)
note the following forms of CPD: compulsory training, voluntary
training and informal training (e.g. conversations and engagement
with other teachers). Niemi (2015) refers to these as being a more
holistic approach to CPD.
In this study, we concentrate on structured activities (compulsory and
voluntary training) for the following reasons: (1) As we shall see in the
next chapter, the Finnish State invests millions of euros every year in
teachers’ CPD but there is a lack of research on the forms of CPD taking place or the influence it has on teachers. We also feel it is i­mportant
to examine the structure of formal CPD offerings, which can inform
us (indirectly) of the current burning issue of inclusion and social justice in education, from a broad perspective (regional disparity, teachers’
empowerment, amongst others). (2) Many studies have been published
on initial teacher education in Finland, but very little on CPD in this
context. It is thus time to examine this important aspect of teachers’
work. (3) Theoretically and in accordance with Villegas-Reimers (2003:
11–12), amongst others, CPD is “a long-term process that includes regular opportunities and experiences planned systematically to promote
growth and development in the profession.” Teaching practices and student learning are more likely to be transformed by professional development that is sustained, coherent, and intense (Supovitz et al. 2000;
Weiss and Pasley 2006). (4) Although we recognize the positive influence
of informal activities for CPD, municipalities and schools have a duty
in Finland to provide educators with opportunities for CPD every year.
As we shall see, the reforms related to the new core curriculum of 2014
in Finland, have added to the stress levels and needs for teachers’ development. The current rhetoric of ‘teachers’ autonomy’ and ‘researchbased’ approaches in Finland, appear unsustainable when teachers are
required to be able to work across disciplines, systematically use ICT,
32 Y. Li and F. Dervin
change the way they fit in the school community, etc. In Heikkinen
et al.’s (2015) study on CPD in Finland, one teacher who took part in
their interviews explains:
Teachers’ autonomy does not just mean freedom, but also responsibility
and an obligation to develop as a teacher.
The Importance of Long-Term
Reflexivity in CPD
It is important to note, first of all, that teachers’ development differs from one teacher to another and from one context to another.
Furthermore, and in agreement with Feiman-Nemser (2001: 1042),
“professional development should be built into the ongoing work of
teaching and relate to teachers’ questions and concerns”.
According to Stoll et al. (2012), CPD should encompass both intellectual and personal aspects: teachers engage with new ideas, try out
new things and, probably most importantly, they are enabled to challenge their own beliefs. Furthermore, effective CPD needs to be
“teacher led, linked to pupil learning, grounded in reflection, a sustained cooperative effort and embedded in institutional development”
(Schollaert 2011: 26). For Huhtala and Vesalainen (2017: 74) “Without
a proper plan, in-service training can be experienced as being fragmentary, non-systematic and even unnecessary”. It is also important to note
that formal CPD that relies on the simple transmission of information
does not correspond to deep teacher learning and potential change in
the classroom and beyond (Bausmith and Barry 2011).
Reflection should thus be central to CPD and post-CPD. LempertShepell (1995: 434) defines reflection as “the ability to make one’s own
behaviour an object of study: To manage it via the ability to regard oneself as the ideal other”. Teachers’ change relies on their capacity to reflect
during and after CPD. For Girvan, Conneely and Tangney (2016), a lot
of CPD is thus theoretically based on experiential learning (e.g. problem and inquiry-based learning) derived from classics such as Dewey,
Piaget, and Vygotsky.
2
Framing CPD to Understand and Explore the Finnish Context 33
Huber (2012: 840–841) presents multiple approaches to learning in
CPD including: courses (external/in-house), self-study (textbooks/software), concrete experiences (simulation/practice), collegial exchange
(learning communities/networks), reflection and planning (portfolio),
feedback (self-assessment).
We should note at this stage that systematic evaluation tools of the
impact of Professional Development on teachers are lacking (Huber,
ibid.)—e.g. development of reflexivity.
Research on CPD
The amount of research on CPD is comprehensive, especially in countries such as the USA and the UK. Calderhead (1992: 3–10) overviewed
the theoretical research perspectives of teachers’ professional development as follows:
Socialisation into the professional culture
The development of knowledge and skills
The moral dimension of teaching
The personal dimension of teaching
The reflective dimension.
Historically, the interest in teachers’ experiences can be traced back
already to Fuller’s (1969) classic stage theory, where teacher development is identified through a three-stage model of teacher concerns. This
chronological and accumulative stage model consists of self concerns
(concerns in relation to survival as teachers), task concerns (performance
as teachers) and impact concerns (influence on their pupils). Accordingly,
when teachers start their career they are mostly concerned with themselves. They are, in other words, self-oriented as their attention is turned
inward. As they become more experienced, they turn their attention
outward to instructional techniques and pupils’ progress. Fuller (ibid.)
claimed that a teacher could not move to the next stage of concern
34 Y. Li and F. Dervin
without first solving the concern of the previous stage. There are a number of other teacher development theories including Burden (1982),
Dubble (1998), Katz (1972), Watts (1980), each of which is an offshoot
of the original work in this field by Fuller. All these present different
stages in teachers’ development paths.
As one example, one could mention how Craft (1996: 168) argues
that it is possible to generalise certain stages in the career of a teacher:
On entry into teaching (induction phase)
On re-entry to teaching after a break (induction phase)
Preparing for increased responsibility (preparation phase)
Shortly after assuming increased responsibility (development phase)
After a substantial number of years in a similar post (review/audit phase).
In the EU, there is an emphasis on the fact that teachers’ professional
development should be supported through a 3-phase model: Initial teacher
education, induction (for new teachers, 3–5 years after graduation), and
in-service teacher education. This continuum should support teachers’
career-long development (Niemi 2015: 280). In Finland, although there
are currently discussions about generalizing teachers’ induction, at present, these different stages are not taken into account. Many scholars have
described the gap between initial teacher education and induction as reality shock (Jokinen et al. 2005), transition shock (Corcoran, 1981), or culture shock (Wideen et al. 1998). In Finland, Aspfors (2012: 6) notes:
Some teachers may be welcomed with an information folder about the practices of the school or directed to a web page containing such necessary information, while others might be offered the opportunity to participate in an
introduction meeting for a couple of days. The main emphasis is usually on
the adaptation to the work community rather than on professional development aspects. Therefore, this kind of orientation or introduction should not
be mistaken for comprehensive support in the form of induction.
Aspfors (2012: 12) lists the following reasons why CPD induction programmes are lacking in the Nordic country: “the result of a relatively
2
Framing CPD to Understand and Explore the Finnish Context 35
high teacher status, high numbers of teacher applicants, good PISA
results and a long and research-based teacher education.”
Since the end of the 1990s, research has defined a new paradigm
for professional development—one that rejects the ineffective ‘oneshot’ workshop model of the past in favour of more powerful opportunities (e.g. Stein et al. 1999). In general, professional development is
viewed to be more effective when schools approach it not in isolation
but rather as a coherent part of a school effort (Darling-Hammond
2009). Research on effective professional development also highlights
the importance of collaborative and collegial learning environments that
help develop communities of practice able to promote school change
beyond individual classrooms (Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin
1995; Perez et al. 2007).
Finally, the concept of ‘capacity building’ is central to professional
development (Fullan 2005). It is about developing collective ability,
i.e. dispositions, skills, knowledge, motivation and resources (ibid.). At
a very general level it means acting together and bringing about positive
change to schools, to change something in the way work is carried out
within the professional communities, how to develop teachers’ competencies. Thus, it is about making a change in the school cultures.
CPD in Finland: Not Enough Research
How could a system of education like Finland, revered around the
world, survive and succeed with what appears to be a ‘jungle’?
In this book, we examine this silenced Achilles’ heel of Finnish education, with an emphasis on basic education—the level covered by PISA
studies. This is to our knowledge one of the rare publications on CPD
in the Finnish context.
Only two evaluations of CPD, written in Finnish, were identified: Korkeakoski’s (1999) evaluation of the effectiveness of CPD on
the utilisation of information technology, development of teaching of
mathematics and natural sciences, development of language teaching
and of teaching in a foreign language, education related to vocational
36 Y. Li and F. Dervin
qualifications, and the development of social skills and remedial teaching, and Lehtola and Wilen’s (2010) survey on teachers’ perceptions of
CPD in the Regions of Southern Finland. Other reports concerning
government initiatives have also been published (e.g. Hämäläinen and
Hämäläinen 2011; Kangasoja 2017) and will be used in this book.
In terms of international scientific publications, only four articles
dedicated to the topic in the Finnish context seem to be available—
which is very surprising considering the ‘fame’ of Finnish teachers
around the world. Geeraerts et al. (2015) examine how the recent and
popular method of teacher peer-group mentoring contributes to CPD
of teachers in Finland. This ‘method’, as we shall see, is becoming more
common in Finland as a form of CPD and as a substitute for more formal CPD. Based on a survey of teachers in Finland, the authors claim
that the participants experienced mentoring positively. The review article “Teacher Professional Development in Finland: Towards a More
Holistic Approach” by Niemi (2015), presents new ways of doing
in-service training in Finland beyond ‘formal’ CPD (“teachers as developers in the whole school community”), devoting a lot of the paper to
teacher mentoring in the induction period (straight after ITT). “(CPD)
of Finnish primary school teachers – potential lessons to be learned for
Ireland” by Guiden and Brennan (2017) examines three different forms
of CPD in Finland, teachers’ perceptions of CPD and reflects on the
lessons Ireland could learn from the Finnish CPD context. We note
that this second publication relies on somewhat outdated information
about CPD in Finland. For example, the authors explain that CPD is
provided by “universities, polytechnics and OPEKO”, while polytechnics and OPEKO, the former nation Center for CPD, have ceased to
exist in the Nordic country (ibid.: 42). Finally, Huhtala and Vesalainen’s
(2017) article is based on an empirical study of the challenges of a
three-year CPD course for teachers of Swedish in Finland, sponsored by
the NAE. Unlike the official discourse used by some education exporters, they discovered that teachers are not willing to cooperate with
each other, some are hesitant and passive to explore ‘modern’ teaching
methods (with e.g. the use of ICT) and some of the teachers’ language
skills left to be desired. They suggest that research-based planning and
2
Framing CPD to Understand and Explore the Finnish Context 37
implementation of CPD should occur and that it should relate directly
to the individual needs of the teachers, every day work and school reality. The teachers explained that they need and want more CPD, especially relevant to their own subject (Swedish).
Interestingly a similar limited number of articles on CPD has
emerged from China. Like many other countries, China seems to have
‘fallen in love’ with Finnish education. Yearly many visitors come to
Finland to observe the schools and talk to educators, teacher educators
and decision-makers. Finns are also very active in travelling to China to
‘sell’ their education. In their article ‘Education is a life marathon rather
than a hundred-meter race’: Chinese ‘folk’ comparative discourses on
Finnish education’, Liu and Dervin (2016) examine a range of books
about Finnish education published in China for a general rather than
narrowly specialist readership. They show how certain images and myths
about it and what these tell us about how the authors view Chinese
education but also current societal discussions about it. These publications illustrate very well the overreliance on official discourses emerging
from Finland and selective observations in ‘model’ schools in Finland.
Chinese research on the professional development of teachers in
Finland and in-service training of teachers is somewhat scarce. Through
the China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNIKI database),
the keywords “Finnish teacher training/education”, “Finnish teacher
in-service training”, 5 research articles were identified.2 Wang Bo
(2013) introduces the professional development plan of the In-service
Training for Physics Teachers Project (ITPT) in Finland. The program
aims to enrich teachers’ knowledge of disciplines, practice experimental teaching methods and construct teaching concepts for individual
2The
database returned many reports written by teachers and principals who had visited Finnish
schools. Here are examples of report titles, which give an indication of the overly positive content:
创世界最佳教育模式 芬兰是如何做到的 (How Finland Achieves the Best Educational Model
in the World); 最好的教育,最好的人生—芬兰教育考察报告 (The Best Education, the Best
Life—Report on Education in Finland); 让每一个生命绽放光华—芬兰教育成功因素探析
(Let Every Life Blossom Brilliantly—An Analysis of the Success Factors of Finnish Education);
最优秀最自由最幸福的芬兰教师 (The Best, Freest, and Happiest: Teachers in Finland).
38 Y. Li and F. Dervin
teachers. The program includes face-to-face and remote assistance and
collaborative reflection learning modes, including lectures, seminars and
practices. Wang Liying (2005) presents the operation of in-service training of bilingual teachers in a city of Finland and details the role played
by the university’s continuing education center in the in-service training
of teachers. Song Baoping (2013), through his own inspection of the
training courses of Helsinki University Teachers’ Continuing Education
Center, discusses teacher in-service training from the perspectives of
training features, curricula and operation methods. The relatively comprehensive and detailed study by Li Li and Chen Shiming (2013) examines the provision of in-service training programs for teachers in Finland
as well the organization and implementation of the curriculum. They
also point out the shortcomings of in-service training of Finnish teachers, that is, the tradition of self-evaluation lacks accreditation procedures
and standards set by the government. Furthermore, the scholars argue
that the government should provide high-quality assessment standards
for in-service education and training of teachers.
The article by Liu and Zhang (2017) is by far the most critical. The
scholars compare teacher professional development data from Shanghai
and Finland in the TALIS studies and found that due to strict selection and high quality, Finnish teacher education has obvious advantages. At the same time, CPD activities in Finland pay more attention
to the application of technologies for information and communication,
the teaching of special needs students and multicultural education.
However, a lack of motivation and conflicts with working hours, a lack
of financial support, and of professional development opportunities
provided by schools are noted by Liu and Zhang.
Although these studies are of interest, the authors tend to rely on second-hand data (literature reviews and official reports). There is a lack of
direct dialogue and engagement with the leaders and providers of the
actual training programs and teachers who are involved in the training.
First-hand information is relatively lacking. Finally, the literature used
tends to be in English or translations into Chinese, which means that
these scholars miss out on vital information only available in Finnish or
Swedish.
2
Framing CPD to Understand and Explore the Finnish Context 39
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3
Finnish Initial Teacher
Education and CPD
In an article from The Guardian entitled Professional development: what
can Brits learn from schools abroad?, dated 8 October 2013, journalist
Martin Williams examines CPD around the globe. He presents Phil
Taylor, a scholar from Birmingham City University, who travelled to
Finland to study CPD. We suppose that the discourses about Finnish
CPD in the article are based on discussions with Taylor.
Williams (ibid.) claims that Finland “Like Japan, […] has been
praised for its advanced CPD and last year was top of Pearson’s international education rankings.” However, we disagree with Williams about
the ‘fame’ of Finnish CPD as it is rarely mentioned in publications
about Finnish education. The same goes with education export initiatives. Williams continues:
The CPD model is much less formal than the Japanese lesson studies,
Taylor says. The differences are cultural, and deeply rooted, rather than
systematic or policy driven, particularly in terms of teacher CPD.
Taylor uses here what Abdallah-Pretceille (2003) and Dervin (2016)
have referred to as ‘culture as an excuse/alibi’ (Whose culture in
Finland? Who decides?). His argument falls short as he seems not to be
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_3
43
44 Y. Li and F. Dervin
aware of e.g. deeper societal issues such as budget cuts for education in
Finland since the 1990s (which have had an impact on CPD, amongst
other things), the power of municipalities to decide (not) to offer CPD
for teachers, etc.
What is striking about Williams’ piece about CPD and Finland’s
CPD is that he actually says very little about how CPD is organised, the
issues faced by teachers in relation to CPD (“There is also an emphasis
on high quality, university-based training and a research/enquiry orientation to practice development.”). He also mentions the typical rhetoric
of teachers’ trust and autonomy to discuss CPD in Finland.
As is often the case, when outsiders discuss Finnish education, they
tend to rely on broad and second-hand information, which may not
even be relevant to the specific context at hand (see Xing et al. 2017
about the CPD of Chinese principals in Finland). In discussions of
CPD in Finland, the discussion often seems to be diverted towards initial teacher education.
In this chapter, before dealing with CPD in Finland, we feel it necessary to discuss several aspects of Finnish education that have a direct
influence on CPD: the 2014/2016 core curriculum for basic education
(our context of study), the role of teachers in this curriculum and initial
teacher education.
Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 (2016)
In August 2016, Finnish schools started to implement a new Core
Curriculum, which replaced the 2004 Curriculum. The Curriculum was
somewhat lauded abroad and many ‘hoaxes’ were spread about it (e.g.
school subjects were dropped). This new Curriculum was designed by
the Finnish National Agency for Education, in cooperation with different actors such as teachers, teacher educators, etc. The general public was also asked to give feedback to an online draft version of the
Curriculum during the process of writing it.
The Curriculum includes the objectives and core contents of different
subjects, as well as the principles of pupil assessment, special-needs education, pupil welfare and educational guidance.
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 45
The purpose of the steering of basic education is to ensure the equality
and high quality of education and to create favourable conditions for the
pupils’ growth, development and learning. (NCC 2016: 15)
The basic values of the Curriculum are: Uniqueness of each pupil and
right to a good education; Humanity, general knowledge and ability, equality and democracy.
By offering a uniform foundation for local curricula, it is meant to
enhance equality in education for all Finnish municipalities (ibid.). As
such, based on the Core Curriculum local education authorities (municipalities) and the schools themselves draw up their own curricula. Local
needs and perspectives must be taken into consideration when drawing up local curricula. As we shall see, this leads to an idealised view of
Finnish education in relation to equality/equity. However, we agree with
Butler et al. (1997: 6): “(…) the idea of total equality is unreachable, and,
also, that a society without any kind of exclusion would be a psychotic
universe”. Of course, there is still a need to fight again and again against
the multifaceted forms of inequalities and exclusion that we all face.
The New Curriculum focuses on the following ideologies. Ideology
is understood here as the representation of “the imaginary relationship
of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser 1971:
162). This means in the case of the Finnish Core Curriculum for Basic
Education that we are faced with ideological statements that have
been negotiated as ‘ideals’, which represent certain agendas (mostly
neoliberal: emphasis on individualism, sociality, success, competence,
etc.), which may not correspond to the realities of what education is
about:
Increase meaningfulness of learning and holistic competences,
Link up learning to real life phenomena,
Enable individual learning paths,
Enhance pupils’ participation and active role in learning,
Strengthen social skills and collaboration,
Make it possible for each and every pupil to experience success.
46 Y. Li and F. Dervin
In the discourse of the NAE these aspects translate for example into:
“The pupils set goals, solve problems and assess their learning based on
set targets.” Again, a typical neo-liberal objective, for which the individual learner becomes responsible after all (Barbot and Camatarri 2009).
This kind of broad objective tends to disregard the students’ age, capitals, capacities, etc.
It is also important to note that the use of technology is emphasised
largely in the Curriculum. According to the NAE (2017),
Games and other virtual environments should also be recognized more
often as learning environments. Technology plays an increasingly significant role in everyday school routines, thus allowing pupils to be more
easily involved in the development and selection of their own learning
environments.
Pupils should also familiarise themselves with the fundamentals of programming in mathematics (ibid.).
Finally, the Core Curriculum promotes the idea of transversal competences for each subject learn at school. These include: thinking and
learning-to-learn, interaction and expression skills, multiliteracy (the ability to produce and interpret variety of different texts) but also managing
daily life and taking care of oneself, cultural competence, interaction and
self-expression, working life competence and entrepreneurship as well as participation, involvement and building a sustainable future (NCC 2016).
These skills are practised during the yearly multidisciplinary learning
modules developed by each school.
Very few criticisms of the New Core Curriculum have emerged
abroad. However, within Finland, many educators have been critical of
it. Scholars’ voices have also been raised to describe some of the problems behind the Curriculum. Let us take an interesting example from
early 2018. In a newspaper column dated 20 January 2018 (Maaseudun
Tulevaisuus, The Rural Future Newspaper ) Emeritus Professor Liisa
Keltikangas-Järvinen evaluates the content of the 2014 curriculum
harshly, drawing the conclusion that inequality, especially in terms
of social and gender differences, is expanding in basic education. She
is critical of how Finland has basked in the PISA sun, believing that
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 47
it had the best education system and the best teachers in the world,
without questioning these assumptions. When Finland started dropping in PISA rankings, parents were ‘blamed’ for not motivating their
children, not creating the right attitude towards school, not encouraging them to read, etc. Keltikangas-Järvinen (ibid.) is very much critical of the ideologies presented above and especially of the way pupils
are understood to be in the curriculum: “s/he must be active, responsible and self-motivated and must set her/himself goals and finds ways
to achieve them. They know their strengths and weaknesses and know
how to make the right choice” (our translation). As asserted before,
Keltikangas-Järvinen is critical of the simplistic idea that merely calling for autonomy will make pupils autonomous (an idea that has
been discussed in autonomy studies for decades). She adds that relying
on parents to support the students is dangerous as this can too easily
increase inequality between those whose parents are interested in their
education—and those who are not, between the parents who have the
educational capitals to do so and those who don’t. Like autonomy,
Keltikangas-Järvinen also reminds us that motivation does not happen just like that or that it is through asking for it that it will occur.
She is also critical of the overreliance on e.g. digitalization and the use
of computer games that Finland is currently implementing to motivate boys who tend to lag behind in educational achievements. Finally,
Keltikangas-Järvinen (ibid.) disapproves of the tendency to try to make
education ‘fun’ to motivate students in Finland. She argues that ‘fun
learning’ is not always an answer to deep learning.
The Role of Teachers in the 2014 NCC
Teachers are central in the 2014 NCC, although they are not presented
as the only ‘sources’ of education. For instance, the role of parents, and
the links between parents and schools are also highlighted.
The duties of teachers are defined as below in the NCC (2016: 90):
The teacher’s duties include monitoring and promoting the learning,
work approaches and well-being of their pupils, ensuring the respectful
48 Y. Li and F. Dervin
and fair treatment of each pupil, early recognition of potential problems,
and providing guidance and support to the pupils.
The teacher contributes to ensuring that the pupils’ rights to guidance
and support in the areas of instruction and pupil welfare are realised. This
requires interaction with pupils and guardians, mutual cooperation between
teachers and, in particular, collaboration with the pupil welfare staff.
The words ‘monitoring’, ‘promoting’, ‘guidance’ and ‘support’ are omnipresent whenever teachers are discussed in the NCC, which gives an
indication of their position and role in the schools. For example, in relation to ICT, the NCC explains (2016: 58):
The pupils together with the teacher consider why ICT is needed in studying, work and society and how these skills have become a part of general
working life competence. They learn to assess the impact of ICT from the
perspective of sustainable development and to be responsible consumers.
During their years in basic education, the pupils also gather experiences
of using ICT in international communication. They learn to perceive its
significance, potential and risks in a global world.
One can clearly see a shift from “the sage on the stage” to taking a side
position in the classroom, working with the pupils rather than giving
them orders and being the only suitable voice in the classroom.
Most of the teachers who were teaching when the NCC was implemented graduated and were qualified well before the Curriculum
appeared. Needless to say that their knowledge and practices did not
specifically correspond to the ‘new’ ideas proposed by the curriculum—
although they might have been aware of them. So how does the NCC
deal with the discrepancy between teachers’ skills and what is required
of them with the new educational ideology?
Surprisingly the NCC says nearly nothing about how to make sure that
teachers are able to ‘monitor’, ‘promote’ (learning), and offer ‘guidance’
and ‘support’ in school. Only one paragraph (2016: 96) seems to do so:
Schools also work together with other schools with the aim of promoting the development and coherence of instruction and reinforcing staff
competence. Cooperation is also needed at the transition points of basic
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 49
education and as pupils move from one school to another. Good cooperation between schools also contributes to smooth provision of instruction
for various linguistic and cultural groups, support for learning and pupil
welfare. Being active in local, national and international networks promotes the development of pedagogy.
Only two options seem to be offered here to help teachers cope with the
(immense) changes: cooperation with other schools and being active in
different kinds of networks to “develop pedagogy”.
How can the new NCC be so quiet about CPD and teachers’ preparation? How can teachers deal with multitasking and the new ways of
working, which are imposed onto them?
The ‘Wonders’ of Initial Teacher Education
as an Answer?
Let us start with some basic information concerning teachers in
Finland. In what follows we use, amongst others, a report from the
National Agency for Education (2016, http://www.oph.fi/download/
185381_teachers_and_principals_in_Finland_2016_brochure.pdf ).
First, we note that the number of fully qualified teachers is high in
Finland (95% in basic education and 98% in upper secondary). In
2016 nearly all class teachers in basic education were fully qualified.
Second, more than 40% of Finnish teachers are over 50 years of age—
with less than 40% in basic education.
Third, and maybe this is not specific to Finland, but most teachers are
women, especially in basic education. Yet it is interesting to note that,
for a country that often boasts about having reached a high level of gender equality, the majority of principals are men (National Agency for
Education 2016).
Finally, teachers have civil servant status and do a minimum of
14 hours per week. Teaching time varies according to subjects taught
(Eurydice 2015: 23).
To become qualified as a teacher in Finland one has to have a
Master’s degree. Initial teacher education thus occurs at Finnish
50 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Universities for five years. Students are selected competitively before
their first year. During their studies in both pedagogy and subject
studies for secondary teachers, which are said to be ‘research-based’
(Niemi et al. 2013), students write a thesis at the end of their Bachelor’s
and of their Master’s (Niemi et al. 2012; Sahlberg 2011). According to
Niemi (2015: 284):
The aim is for teachers to internalize a research-oriented attitude toward
their work. This means that teachers learn to take an analytical and openminded approach to their work and that they develop teaching and learning environments in a systematic way. The most important abilities they
learn through research studies are critical thinking, independent thinking,
inquiring, scientific literacy, and questioning phenomena and knowledge.
Sahlberg (2018, n.p.) insists on the importance that Finnish ITT has
played in educating “smart” teachers. For him the combination of systematic ITT and freedom (i.e. the rhetoric around autonomy, trust,
etc.) appears to be exceptional:
The advantage of Finland over other countries at this point is that for
the past 25 years we have trained a group of highly qualified teachers.
Primary and secondary school teachers in Finland have at least a master’s
degree diploma. So imagine a school with 5 primary teachers who graduated from universities and received systematic educational training in
mathematics, for example. Then you give them freedom. This group of
smart people will burst out much wisdom in teaching.
Jyrhämä and Maaranen (2012: 98) share similar views with the previous scholars when they explain that, during their education, teacher students “form a continually developing personal practical theory”.
But we feel that one would need to look more carefully into these
somewhat idealistic learning outcomes to understand what they really
mean (e.g. critical thinking), and if they are developed beyond ‘assertions of learning’ and ‘education export’ propaganda (Dervin 2016).
In her critical study of such discourses about Finnish teacher education, Sitomaniemi-San (2015: 136) shows how this doxa fabricates an
autonomous teacher subject:
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 51
who is envisioned as being emancipated, empowered and activated
through the insertion of science and research into teacher education
curriculum and pedagogy. The autonomous teacher, in the discourse
of research-based teacher education, is produced as a school reformer
committed to change and renewal, a decision-maker committed to professionalism, an active and lifelong learner committed to continual personal-professional development, and a scientific thinker ‘by nature’ that
would appear as providing further grounds for the academisation and scientization of teacher education.
Through the focus on research Finnish teachers are constructed as ‘modernists’, ‘rationalists’. For Sitomaniemi-San (2015: 137) this also allows
the authorities to “order the conduct of conduct”. In other words,
research-based teacher education “can also be perceived as the means
to fabricate particular kinds of teacher subjects and to govern ways of
thinking and acting – specific ways of thinking and acting that come
to be presented as the ‘evidence’ of teacher autonomy” (ibid.). This ‘scientific’ approach could indirectly reduce the autonomy of teachers by
limiting their actions to rationality.
One question that Finnish initial teacher education does not seem to
answer is how and where teachers can find support once they are in the
field. As we shall see later on, mentoring during induction of teachers is
being developed in Finland (Niemi 2017) as well as strategies for teachers to define how and what they will develop in the future at least once
a year.
The project Ope Saa Oppia (Teachers learn; 2014; Heikkinen et al.
2015a, b) aimed to enhance induction practices for new teachers by
observing current practices and making recommendations. The project
working group made the following proposals (2015a, b: 9) for decision-makers: “Political decision makers should appoint a national body
with the responsibility to secure the continuum of teacher education
together with a national network for the development of mentoring, and
ensure adequate resources for the national network to develop mentoring.” The project report concentrates on mentoring as the main form
of CPD but says nothing about long-term formal CPD. The end result
appears to be rather short-sighted.
52 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Student teachers also do two practicums in teacher training schools
attached to universities during their studies. The teacher training schools
staff are paid by universities and are actively involved in research. The students earn 180 credits for their Bachelor’s and 120 credits for the Master’s.
As hinted at earlier, entry into teacher education is competitive. As
such, less than a quarter of applicants are admitted (National Agency
for Education 2016). Entry into kindergarten teacher education is at
16% while class teacher education at 11% (ibid.).
It is first important to note the following about initial teacher education in Finland: “[t]he basic aim of every teacher education program
is to educate competent teachers and develop the necessary professional
qualities to ensure lifelong teaching careers for teachers” (Kansanen
2003: 89). Teachers are thus prepared initially to continuously “learn to
learn to be a teacher”. Initial teacher education is said to guide teachers
“to learn reflection as a way of thinking and as a tool for continuous
professional development” (Toom and Husu 2016: 46).
The Finnish approach to teacherhood (in pedagogical and identity terms)
is very much in line with global pedagogical trends emphasising a high level
of teacher autonomy. It is based on the assumption that teachers are competent professionals with high expertise in their area (Aspfors and Hansén 2011;
Heikkinen et al. 2012). Finnish teachers are said to play a role that is often
described as “teacher leadership” (Niemi 2015: 291). Formal, non-formal and
informal ways of developing as a teacher in areas important for implementing
education policy and reforms are suggested to teachers in service.
As Sahlberg argues (2011: 86) “many licensed graduates discover
that there is a chasm between lecture-hall idealism and school reality” in
Finland too. So how do new teachers, but also more senior ones, deal with
the complexities of the new NCC imposed on the reality of classrooms?
CPD in Finland: A Diachronic Review
In their thorough and thought-provoking report on CPD during induction and beyond, Heikkinen et al. (2015a, b) use (ironically) the following quote from a report by the Teachers’ Committee in Finland
(Opettajanvalmistustoimikunta ) in 1967, to introduce their study:
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 53
In our country, further training of teachers or even possibilities for postgraduate studies have not yet been satisfactorily organized. On the contrary, the lessons learned during initial training seem to disappear.
As we shall see the same problems remain in Finland today.
In this section, we propose a short history of CPD. Two of the rare
diachronic overviews available were written by Counsellor for education Martti Hellström (2012) and Hämäläinen et al. (2015: 29–32).
Hellström, a former teacher and principal, worked in Finnish schools
for 35 years. A Doctor of Education, Hellström has also taught in
teacher education departments.
Probably the oldest form of teacher CPD in Finland is summer studies, whereby teachers follow summer courses at e.g. universities. This has
been the most widespread way of CPD for the longest time in the country (Hellström 2012).
CPD became an important issue for the Ministry of Education in the
1970s, as a way of accompanying systematically reforms (Hämäläinen
et al. 2015: 29). Finnish education was centralized at the time. In
the 1972 Civil Servants’ Decree, VESO training days were introduced
(3 days per year of CPD) (ibid.). In the 1980s a municipality would
organise a 6-hour training for all municipal teachers together on a
Saturday. The morning consisted of theoretical knowledge and the
afternoon of more concrete aspects illustrating the theories (Hellström,
ibid.). A decade later, teachers’ associations would organise the VESOtraining days. Today some municipalities also consider sending teachers
to the annual EDUCA fair, dedicated to educational issues in Finland,
as a substitute for VESO-training (ibid.).
Educational departments of municipalities were also established
to support CPD. Alongside the Comprehensive School Reform,
the Heinola Course Center, from the name of the town where it was
situated, about 2 hours away from the capital city Helsinki, was created
(later Opeko and Educode). It became the nationwide continuing education centre (Hämäläinen et al. 2015: 30).
In the 1980s, CPD departments of Universities became also increasingly involved in more systematic teacher training (ibid.).
54 Y. Li and F. Dervin
According to Hämäläinen et al. (2015: 31) the reforms of the 1990s
and 2000s transformed the role played by the State in education, with
decentralization generalizing. The State outsourced CPD increasingly
to universities, consultants and private companies, for short- and longterm CPD. The very severe economic downturn of the 1990s cut CPD
dramatically, as savings were needed in education. Since 1996, however,
the National Board of Education opened competitive funding opportunities annually for higher education institutions and other organizations (Hämäläinen et al. 2015). Specific CPD projects were launched,
such as the language learning diversification program, and teaching staff
Information Technological skills. The LUMA centre1 was also set up.
It aims to “inspire and motivate children and youth into mathematics,
science and technology through the latest methods and activities of science and technology education. The aim is also to support the life-long
learning of teachers working on levels of education from early childhood to universities, and strengthen the development of research-based
teaching” (www.luma.fi).
In the 1990s many initiatives concerning CPD appeared. Hellström
(2012) mentions the Akvaario-project (Aquarium project), which was
led by world famous educator Pasi Sahlberg, amongst others. Between
1995 and 1998, the project concerned 12 municipalities and 42 schools
(Hellström 2012). The idea was to help teachers to implement the then
new curriculum by offering constant support through CPD.
The Teacher-TV project (Opettaja-TV 1998) was broadcasted online
and on public television to offer CPD to teachers. Free, the project was
sponsored by the National Agency for Education. The project ended
in 2012. It is also important to note that in 2008, the Heinola Course
Center (renamed OPEKO), was sold to a private company and became
EDUCODE.
Currently there are many discussions around renewing teachers’
CPD. Some of these initiatives are discussed below.
1In 2017 the LUMA China Centre, modelled on the LUMA Centre Finland, was established at
Beijing Normal University. The centre promotes science and technology education.
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 55
Specific Forms of CPD
Different forms of CPD initiatives have taken place in Finland over the
last decade. However, there is, to our knowledge, no research on these
experiments. In what follows we review some of the most interesting
initiatives.
In the aforementioned article by Hellström (2012), the network of
learning centres of the city of Espoo (near Helsinki) is described. At the
end of the 2000s, a first learning centre for mathematics was set up by
the municipality, whose aim was to support teachers’ CPD. Seduced
by the idea of the centre, decision-makers developed other centres.
There are currently 9 in the city, devoted to different school subjects
and relevant topics for schools, for example: multiculturalism, well-being, art education, special needs education. According to Hellström
(ibid.), CPD is taking place through evening training sessions and
benchmarking-days.
In a Ph.D. defended at the University of Helsinki in 2016, entitled
Kehittävä kollaboraatio. Uuden tiedon tuottaminen opettajien lähikehityksen vyöhykkeellä (Developmental Collaboration. Teachers’ collaborative knowledge creation at the zone of proximal development ), Kuusisaari
examines an increasingly popular form of CPD called the collaborative
knowledge creation (peer-to-peer cooperation). Based on Vygotsky’s
concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD: collaboration,
interconnection between everyday practices and theoretical knowledge as
well as change and new knowledge creation ), the study examines the influence of CPD on home economics teachers who learn how to co-operate
more in order to create more knowledge. She shows the importance of
using but also critiquing new learning theories to support developing
ideas further together successfully. Our critique towards this study is in
agreement with Girvan et al. (2016: 131) who argue that:
most of the current teacher development theories are based on classical
cognitive and empirical learning theories and inquiry-based learning.
The main representatives are John Dewey (New Center for Education),
Jean Piaget (Cognitive Learning Theory), Vygotsky (Theory of Cultural
History Development and Theory of Activities), which emphasizes the
56 Y. Li and F. Dervin
impact of social interaction on cognitive development Influence, and
community-centered educational philosophy.
As such, no effort seems to have been made in Finland to examine alternative ways of problematizing and thinking about CPD, or to make use
of theories and ideas developed e.g. in the ‘periphery’. For example, the
Keli (Exemplary Lesson Development) model of in-service teacher education in China, implemented within the broader program of Xingdong
Jiaoyu (Action Education), which has been implemented since 2003
(Huang and Bao 2006; Gu and Wang 2003), could serve as an alternative way of thinking about CPD. It is a form of school-based integration of research and learning which aims at updating ideas of teaching/
learning, and designing new situations and improving classroom practice (lesson planning, lesson delivery and post-lesson reflection, and
lesson-re-delivery). A collaborative group (the Keli group) that consists
of teachers and researchers is established through discussion between
researchers and a group of interested teachers. A research question,
relating to certain challenges arising, is raised and the relevant content
area is selected for developing an exemplary lesson through discussion
among this Keli group (Huang and Bao, ibid.). Keli includes the following three phases: (1) Familiarization and Focusing; (2) The Cycle of
Teaching, Reflection and Revision; (3) Disseminating the Keli process
and the Exemplary Lesson.
Another type of CPD based on shared expertise was developed in
Finland in the 2000s. The main idea of this kind of training was that
school teachers ‘train’ university teacher educators based on their professional everyday knowledge and university teachers would tell teachers about the latest research on different learning or methodological
aspects, based on their own research findings. The idea was that co-operative seminars and pedagogical days would be arranged together every
year. Both teachers and teacher educators could be trainers as well as
participants in these events. School teachers could get study credits for
the workshops and lectures and use these credits as part of their degree
structures. These credits could also be used for teachers’ postgraduate
studies or to compensate for compulsory CPD. Some examples of the
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 57
programmes offered included: Multicultural School, Talented pupils—a
challenge for teachers; How to be a media-critical reader?; How to deal with
and face parents? etc. (Niemi 2015).
In a similar vein, Pöntynen and Silander (2015) describe a project
between the department of teacher education from the University of
Jyväskylä and the municipality of Ylösjärvi. In order to support teachers’
CPD and co-planning, student teachers from the university department
take over the schools as substitutes.
Finally, in her 2014 doctoral thesis Helin also looks into the educational partnership between universities and schools, claiming that the
link between these two ‘separate’ worlds should be a right and a duty
for every single teacher. She argues that teachers should take obligatory
courses during their career to ensure quality of their work. The scholar
proposes four vertical continua for the improvement of CPD and the
links between ITT and CPD, following the induction education: the
research-based continuum, the practice-based continuum for working life
needs, the partnership continuum and the updating continuum.
Mysteries Around CPD?
In January 2018, an article about teachers appeared in a local daily
newspaper called Etelä-Suomen Sanomat (South Finland Newspaper).
Entitled “Teachers’ harsh critique of change in special education”—“Views have to be taken seriously, especially since criticism has
been so extensive” (5 January 2018), the article explains the challenges
that teachers in the city of Lahti have experienced since special needs
education classes had been suppressed for the inclusion model, which
places students with special needs in mainstream classes. Based on a
survey done by the local trade union, teachers are very critical of this
move, which is meant to promote social justice and inclusion of all.
Here are some of the comments shared by the teachers in the survey
(ibid.):
Teachers’ time is now mostly spent dealing with special needs students.
58 Y. Li and F. Dervin
The workload of teachers has now exploded. A 10-hour workday is more
of a rule than an exception.
I can’t stand it anymore. I just can’t. I am thinking of changing jobs.
We face more dangerous situations in class today. And teachers can’t make
sure that other students are safe.
Interestingly, when the interviewed teachers as well as the
decision-makers discuss the resources that are needed to make it work
and to avoid the aforementioned problems, technical and practical issues
are only mentioned: more assistants, less students in the class. However, not
a single word is uttered about the possibility of organising CPD to help
teachers to work in inclusive environments, well-being, social justice, etc.
There is an interesting saying in Chinese that can illustrate this issue:
头痛医头, 脚痛医脚
(When someone has a headache, the doctor only treats the head; heals the
foot only when he has pain in the foot)
This metaphor means that the causes of phenomena are not necessarily the same as their symptoms and manifestations; therefore, when
we look for solutions and ways to improve things, we should adopt a
systematic and comprehensive view. If we go back to the Achilles’ heel
metaphor of this book, the fact that Achilles has a weak spot is not his
fault, but his mother’s, who dipped him into the river. In a similar vein,
the weak spots of Finnish education cannot be solved just by teachers
themselves, decision-makers, school leaders, but also teacher educators
need to offer proper solutions for the problems teachers encounters. We
believe that investing in more teaching assistants and/or excluding some
students do not compare to the potential power of CPD. Autonomy is
a good thing (Barbot and Camatarri 2009)—depending on how it is
defined and used—but merely calling for autonomy from a neo-liberal
perspective, cannot replace proper training for autonomy!
While initial Finnish teacher education has been praised worldwide,
there is more variation in the availability of teachers’ CPD programs,
Sahlberg (2011: 86) argues that “it is recognized that professional
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 59
development and in-service programs for teachers are not aligned with
initial teacher education and often lack focus on essential areas of teaching and school-development.”
Every year the National Agency for Education receives funding from
the State to sponsor teaching staff’s CPD. The call for projects is usually
launched in December for a month. Every year between 8 and 10 million euros are dedicated to CPD, for about 23,000 educators (http://
www.oph.fi/rahoitus/valtionavustukset/opetustoimen_henkilostokoulutus/103/0/opetustoimen_ja_varhaiskasvatuksen_vuoden_2018_valtion_
erityisavustukset_haettavissa). All levels of the curriculum are covered,
and school psychologists, career advisers, teaching assistants can also
apply.
The application information is very detailed, but it concerns mostly
technicalities (number of hours, types of cooperation, etc.). It explains
briefly that CPD should help individuals to develop their own work
and cooperation with others, pedagogy, working environments,
and cultural diversity in schools (application information dated 14
December 2017, ). The trainings should be free but teachers should
find ways of paying for other expenses such as accommodation,
transport and to find a substitute (see Pöntynen and Silander 2015).
Municipalities usually pay for these, although recruiting a substitute is
a big financial issue. The sponsored projects should be long-term rather
than short-term (minimum 27 × 45 minutes). There are no clear criteria (at least in the public information) as to how these courses are
selected. Projects between EUR 20,000 and EUR 700,000 can be
sponsored.
The applications are submitted by institutions (providers, municipalities, universities, etc.) rather than by individual educators. The latter
apply for a place in the sponsored trainings. A list of sponsored projects for 2017 are to be found on the Agency website (http://www.oph.
fi/download/182607_2017_rahoitetut_hankkeet.pdf ). The following
courses received the largest amount of funding (over EUR 100,000):
Ihmisoikeudet haltuun! (Human Rights!)
Lukion vertaistutorien koulutus (Training for peer tutors in upper
secondary)
60 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Radikalisoituminen ja estremismi - syrjäytymisen ehkäisy kouluissa
(Radicalization and extremism – prevention of exclusion in schools2)
SOS - Sujuva ohjaus ja siirtymät (SOS – smooth guidance and
transitions)
Mocoma - Mooceista oma digipolku (Mocoma – From MOOCs to your
own digital path)
Lukioiden kehittyvä ja sähköistyvä arviointikulttuuri – arviointi ja
itsearviointi tavoitteellisen (Development and digitalization of the evaluation culture in upper secondary – setting goals in assessment and self
assessment)
Hyvinvointia ja turvallisuutta kasvua, oppimista ja koulunkäyntiä tukemalla (Prosperity and security in education, school attendance and learning)
OsaOppi V - Digipedagogiikka osaamisperusteisen oppimisen tukena
(OsaOppi V – Digital pedagogy to support knowledge-based learning)
LOISTO - Varhaiskasvatuksen kehittämisverkoston kehittämistoiminnan
tukeminen (LOISTO – Development support through networking in
early childhood education)
Henkilökohtaistaminen ja erityinen tuki (Personalization and special
support).
These courses are to be offered by universities, universities of applied
sciences, companies (e.g. Pro Practica LTD which specialises in teacher
CPD). Regardless of the financial input from the State, in general, CPD
practices are said to be diffuse and unsystematic, and one main reason
is that CPD, previously funded by the government, is no longer free
for education providers such as municipalities (Jakku-Sihvonen 2012).
Besides the provision for CPD has been somewhat poorly coordinated
2From a critical intercultural perspective (Holliday 2010; Dervin 2016), this course is very problematic. All the trainers are white Finnish people, whose voice is often heard in the media to
talk about ‘Islam’. Not a single voice is heard from those who have experienced radicalization or
extremism, especially from a minority perspective. What is more, there seems to be this implicit
discourse that these issues only concern the ‘Other’ (migrants, Muslims), while there has been
reports of young white Finns falling into the trap of radicalisation and extremism. If we sum up:
White trainers explain to White teachers what the Other does and experiences.
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 61
(Sahlberg 2011: 86). It is important to note at this stage that there is no
formal link between continuing education and promotion in Finland, nor
is there a link between individual teacher’s age and seniority, and CPD.
In a 2017 column in the teachers’ trade Union magazine (Opettaja,
Teacher ), the Minister of Education lists the problems faced by Finnish
education (amongst others: girls have better results than boys; socio-economic problems are growing). She then asks questions for the future of
Finnish education: “Should schools get the latest technology?” And more
relevant for our book: “do teachers get enough in-service training?”
In their 2016 report, the National Agency for Education notes that
80% of basic education teachers participated in some form of CPD and
88% of upper secondary teachers. Yet less than 50% of the entire population of teachers have an individual training and development plan to
support their professional development (versus 15% in 2012, ibid.).
CPD is obligatory in Finland but no policy mandates content. CPD
is thus part of the duties and rights of teachers. Teachers have the right
to participate in these trainings with full salary benefits. Municipalities
have an obligation to provide teachers with a minimum of three days
of CPD every year (The Finnish National Agency for Education 2017).
Teachers may participate in additional courses on their own initiatives
(Collective Agreement for the Teaching Personnel 2014; Sahlberg 2011:
86). In the TALIS review of Professional Development practices in
OECD countries (OECD 2013), Finnish teachers have less CPD than
teachers in other countries.
In their 2013 report, the OECD notes that a national programme for
CPD had been launched by the Ministry of Education and Culture in
2010 to ensure systematic CPD of staff in Finnish schools. Called the
Finnish Network for Teacher Induction, Osaava Programme (2010–2016),
the programme supported municipalities to systematically and continually develop the skills and knowledge of their teaching staff according to
locally identified needs.
In his report in Finnish for the Ministry of Education about the
Programme called Good practices from the Osaava programme; Operating
models for developing the competence of personnel in education and the
opportunities provided by these models (2017), Kangasoja notes first of
all that teachers’ CPD in Finland relies on the expertise of teaching
62 Y. Li and F. Dervin
personnel themselves, and promotes networking. The report presents
models and ‘good practices’ of CPD from 59 projects that were part of
the programme. For instance, in some municipalities colleagues started
to shadow each other for a day. The author claims that “The digital
skills, quality work and well-being at work have been improved in the
development models described in the report”. Our impression of the
programme is a patchwork of projects, with somewhat narrow foci. We
also find it difficult to identify long-term impacts of the different projects and how they can form a more holistic picture of what has been
achieved and learnt about CPD.
In 2016 the Ministry of Education and Culture also appointed a
Teacher Education Forum for the term 2016–2018 to support the
development of both pre-service and in-service training for teachers
(Opettajankoulutus foorumi ). About 100 experts gathered to work on
a Teacher Education Development Programme. Students and teachers were also consulted. Part of the government key project, the background to the Development programme is explained as follows in the
brochure produced in English:
The world’s most competent teachers.
Finland has competent teachers. Teacher education is of high quality and
attractive. We can be proud about it.
However, future challenges and rapid changes in the society have presented
the competent teachers and the teacher education with new challenges.
The Teacher Education Development Programme responds to these challenges. The programme outlines the objectives and measures that ensure
that Finnish teacher education will remain strong, attractive and internationally appreciated.
Valuing the teacher education and teachers as well as teacher identity that
creates new outcomes are important for the future of Finland.
This brief description is interesting in the sense that it seems to blend in
‘education export’ discourses (“The world’s most competent teachers”,
“we can be proud of it” and “The programme outlines the objectives
and measures that ensure that Finnish teacher education will remain
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 63
strong, attractive and internationally appreciated ”—italics are ours) and
‘honest’ discourses about the needs to make some changes. The brochure is systematically distributed to ‘pedagogical tourists’ visiting the
country, so it serves the purpose of promoting Finnish education but
also to reassure ‘Finland fans’ about its future—hence the somewhat different tones in the brochure.
On the back of the brochure the government key project of knowledge and education is explained in more (critical) details:
Competence acquired once during studies is not enough for the entire
teaching career, as the work of teachers changes constantly. Teachers’
capabilities, personal willingness and possibilities for doing things
together, networking, constant development of personal competence
and learning are key to change. It is essential to have flexibility and ability to apply one’s competence to a changing and renewing operating
environment.
The description also explains that “fragmented models for continuing
training will not accomplish the desired change. Activities supporting
teachers’ professional development must be managed, effective, systematic and long-lasting.”
The brochure also presents a list of 6 strategic guidelines for the
development of teacher education and training: (1) Teacher’s competence
into an entity (needs-based and goal-oriented; covers all stages of teachers’ career: admissions, basic education and introductory training, development of professional competence and training during the career); (2)
Attractive teacher education with well-functioning structures, anticipation
and successful student admissions (“students with the best capacity for
acting as teachers will be selected in teacher training”); (3) Teachers as
experts creating new pedagogical innovations—focus on the learners; (4)
Strengthening teacher education through collaboration; (5) Developing
educational institution and community with professional management and
leadership; and (6) Strengthening the research-based teacher education.
Interestingly most of these strategies for the future, have made
Finland famous worldwide. It is thus surprising to see that they are presented as ‘new’ in a sense.
64 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Throughout the presentation of the 6 strategies, CPD is mentioned
implicitly or explicitly. Most of the points made have been covered in
the scientific literature on CPD (lifelong learning, induction, transparency and coherence of CPD). It is also important to note that CPD
seems to be used in a very broad sense. Different actors are discussed
from teacher students to service providers:
Teacher students begin building the paths of continuous learning during
their studies.
The teacher education units update the available opportunities for developing competence during the career and evaluator training so that they
correspond with the changes practices. The changes allow securing an
opportunity for teachers to bring their competence up to date.
Teacher education and education providers will improve the objectives and
implementations of the development of teachers’ competence in network.
Education providers will use regional or other coordinated network
cooperation to enable the development of professional competence of
teaching staff.
Education providers and managers of educational institutions will
reinforce their professional networks and introduce peer support models
and mentoring activities in developing competence.
Finally, higher education institutions are urged to do research on CPD.
As a result of the Forum 15 million euros were awarded in grants
for projects to develop teacher education and training. Twenty projects
were selected in 2017 (http://minedu.fi/documents/1410845/4183002/
Teacher+Education+Development+Projects+2017.pdf/4d9358f9-4fde4000-ab02-60b2fd647098). Amongst these projects, only three relate
directly to CPD. The first one deals with teacher educators’ CPD, and
the second and third ones with teachers’ CPD.
a. Professional development of teacher educators as part of research-oriented
teacher education. Through action research, the project will create a structured model—From Novice to Master—for the professional development
of teacher educators. The objective is to create a dialogue between more
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 65
experienced teacher educators and those at the start of their teacher educator’s career, especially as concerns the combination of theory and practice. Another objective is to improve teacher education’s knowledge of the
media world of students and pupils. Cooperation with the field school
network and training schools will be utilised.
b. Creative expertise—building bridges in teachers’ basic education and continuing education (ULA ). Grounded in systemic thinking and researchbased knowledge, the project will develop operating models for teacher
education. Phenomenon-based and life-long learning will be supported
in collaboration between universities and schools, while utilising hybrid
learning environments and expertise from various disciplines. The focus
is on cross-cutting themes in learning and teaching, such as multiliteracy
and language awareness, the equal school, a research-minded approach to
working, student motivation, and cross-curricular cooperation.
c. Arctic Reformative and Exploratory Teaching (ArkTOP). The purpose of
the ArkTOP project is to support the career-long development of teachers’ professional competence and to create an operating model based on
teachers’ development plans in order to implement systematic, long-lasting and field-oriented continuing education. In addition, various pedagogical solutions for virtual teaching will be designed for providing
high-quality teaching irrespective of geographical distances.
The first project is important as teacher educators rarely either receive
CPD themselves or are the targets of research on CPD. One wonders
however how “teacher education’s knowledge of the media world of
students and pupils” relates to the project (although it is of course an
important topic). The second project means probably good but it does
not say much about the meanings and perspectives on CPD, and the
actual links with ITT. The third project appears to be well focused on
CPD, by looking into teachers’ development plans. The rest of the projects, which appear to be a somewhat random ‘smorgasbord’, deal with
such issues as digitalization in schools and teacher education, inclusion,
informal learning in teacher education, intercultural education, teachers’ professional interaction skills, teaching language oral skills, gender
issues, etc. They are meant to contribute to the 6 strategic guidelines
for the development of teacher education and training defined by the
66 Y. Li and F. Dervin
aforementioned Teacher Education Forum. These projects focus at
times on particular contexts (e.g. a given university or a region). Our
impression of these projects is that of fragmentation: How do they
fit and complement together? What is the broader picture? In other
words, the resulting vision is that of ‘smaller’ issues based on individual
Practitioners’ or researchers’ interests. We also note that all these projects are led by Finnish teacher educators and researchers but that there
does not seem to be any input from outside Finland. Foreign experts
are used for some of the projects’ seminars and benchmarking visits to
other countries are organised (e.g. University of Helsinki/University
of Stockholm joint seminar in January 2018). However, in general, it
appears that teacher education and CPD remain a Finnish issue for
Finnish specialists (see opeosaa.fi). The main idea of this book is to push
for an agenda of ‘working with each other’.
The reality of CPD today appears to be very different from what is
proposed in the Development Programme. CPD is based on the idea
of supply and demand in Finland. Short-term training courses run
from a couple of hours to three to five days. Longer-term courses are
also available, e.g. 12 days over a period of 12 months. A very wide
range of CPD is available from teacher education departments or
other departments of universities, vocational teacher education colleges, teacher training schools, summer universities and various private
organizations. Universities offer CPD through their continuing education companies (e.g. Helsinki HY+, see next chapters). They apply
competitively for funding to organise CPD (Sahlberg 2011: 88, see
above). Programmes are also run by local school authorities, which, in
many cases, represent the only CPD teachers receive annually: CPD is
organised at the school where the teacher works and is financed by the
municipality (so-called VESO-days during which teachers co-plan and
take part in some form of training). In general, Guiden and Brennan
(2017) note that VESO training days are not very popular amongst
teachers because they feel the topics are not always relevant to them.
Furthermore, these days take place outside working week (Guiden and
Brennan 2017: 49). “Given that each municipality organises their own
range of VESO training, there is considerable variation in content and
standard of material provided” (Guiden and Brennan 2017: 42).
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 67
There is also variation in the organisation of other forms of training.
For instance, the City of Espoo, close to Helsinki, organizes around 200
in-service programs per year for teachers at different levels of the curriculum. In 2012, these included e.g. information technology, pedagogy,
environmental issues and proficiency in the contents of various school
subjects. Municipalities usually allocate 200–220 euros per teacher
annually for this kind of training, while government-funded professional development linked to national priorities is co-ordinated by the
Finnish National Agency for Education.
The state-funded CPD for 2017 (time of writing) focused on the following themes, which are all relevant to the 2014 NCC:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Competence-based approaches and learner-centredness;
Cultural diversity;
Digitalisation and ICT;
Leadership and school development;
Pedagogy, subject-specific and vocational competences;
Well-being and safety.
The budget for this state-funded CPD in 2017 was about 9 million
euro (Eurydice 2017) and 10 million for 2018.
For self-motivated CPD, teachers may also get financial support in
the form of a study grant from e.g. the European Union or the Nordic
Council of Ministers (Heikkinen et al. 2012). Some staff at the NAE
specialise in such initiatives and promote international mobility of
teachers for CPD. The EU Erasmus+ initiative (2014–2020), which has
a global budget of 59.4 million euros for all the EU countries and partners, is one of the major sponsor of international CPD. Teachers can
apply through Key Action 1 and take courses on e.g. new innovations
in education, intercultural/intergenerational education, pedagogy and
didactics, special needs, etc. (examples of courses are available at www.
schooleducationgateway.eu). The course must have a clear European
dimension or promote a European dimension. According to the instructions to course designers from the School Gateway website: “The course
must provide a European dimension, both in the content and structure
of the course. The European dimension can be activated in many ways,
68 Y. Li and F. Dervin
such as by diversifying the profile of participants, creating multicultural groups, and finding an appropriate location for the course.” This
description is quite broad and implicit, which might have an influence
on how this ‘dimension’ is included in the course. However, the call for
courses seems to have clear guidelines concerning what a ‘good quality
course’ should be like:
Be both engaging and interactive, facilitating a productive dialogue
between participants;
Focus on the development of teachers’ professional competences
Offer a balance between theory and the practical application of
approaches
Select activities that are appropriate to the course duration and objectives
Use a range of methods to deliver the course content in order to both
engage participants in the sessions and inspire innovation in their future
practice
Show flexibility in the delivery of the course according to the needs of
participants (e.g. languages, competence levels, previous experience)
Provide a variety of means for participants to reflect upon and share their
learning.
It is interesting to note that Finland is amongst the EU countries
which have the highest teacher mobility rates at 26.2% (Eurydice
2015: 87).
In 2017 the NAE took part in a study conducted with other EU
countries about the impact of international courses on teachers themselves, school principals but also students and parents (total surveyed
Finnish participants: 500; 56 schools covered in Finland). According
to the report (New Perspectives on Everyday School Work ), 70% of the
students thought that the lessons had become more interesting: more
technology was used, and teachers shared their experience abroad.
Parents also saw international CPD as an important way of developing
their own children’s international perspectives (ibid.). The report also
claims that teachers who did not take part in international CPD noticed
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 69
a difference when their colleagues returned. It is important to note here
that this kind of report is problematic for several reasons and that we
need to be careful with the conclusions drawn. First of all, they tend
to be superficial, not digging enough into the meanings of participants’
assertions. For instance, the report draws the following general conclusions about the impact:
On students: more interesting lessons, more modern technology, more
interesting projects and homework, information about school work in
another country, to work together with pupils from another country
On parents: positive developments in schools, better learning outcomes,
improvements in the quality of teaching
On schools: School culture has become more open and tolerant, the
international dimension has become more common in every day school
life, they acquire new teaching methods, projects help them achieve their
goals and develop their activities, networks result in new projects, interest
in international activities increases
On teachers: language skills, knowledge of different cultures, improved
understanding of differences, international competences, new perspectives
on their work, new teaching methods.
It is also important to note that the NAE is the national representative
of Erasmus+ for Schools in Finland and that they have an indirect pressure to prove that the money invested by the EU is well used and that it
has a direct ‘provable’ impact.
Impediments to CPD in Finland
“Jotain tarttis tehdä toisin. Jotain tarttis keksiä” (“Something should be
done. We need solutions ”) Pöntynen and Silander about CPD in Finland.
(2015)
“Täydennyskoulutus on monissa paikoin retuperällä” (“Professional development is in a grim state in many places.”) Head of Teachers’ Trade Union.
(4 August 2016)
70 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Based on a European study on the professional development of teachers
(Hendriks et al. 2010) the problems met by Finland were highlighted
as follow. As we have noted before, these problems have been identified
long before 2010 and are still discussed today.
There seems to be a need to unify CPD practices, and to find more
methods for knowledge sharing. The most common barriers to participation in CPD appear to be workload and a lack of time. The economic
situation of municipalities and schools; e.g. lack of money for hiring
supply teachers, and high participation fees and other expenses, were
also identified (see Pöntynen and Silander 2015). The geography of
Finland has been named as one of the challenges due to long distances
that increase traveling expenses and, hence, may hinder participation.
Eurydice (2015: 83) also notes that less experienced teachers have less
access to CPD.
Probably one of the most important impediments to CPD is the
important role played by municipalities in Finnish education (decentralization). As mentioned earlier municipalities allocate money and
resources for education in general, CPD included. According to the
Head of the Teachers’ Trade Union in 2017: “municipality decision
makers are kings when it comes to deciding how to use the money for
education.” This has an influence on how money is spent and the priority given to CPD. While some municipalities will have more money
available from taxation, others have to make budget cuts, from which
CPD often suffers (Sahlberg 2011: 87).
Pöntynen and Silander (2015) also argue that too much CPD is taking place through individual teachers’ initiative and that makes CPD
more expensive. They explain that a one-day participation in CPD for
a single teacher can cost over EUR 300, which is doubled if one takes
into account travel, per diems and salary for a substitute. For them,
individual training is also a waste of resources as it very rarely relates to
the interests of the larger school community (ibid.).
In 2008 the Ministry of Education appointed an Advisory Board
for Professional Development of Education, whose aim was to examine and improve teachers’ CPD. The Board published three reports in
Finnish: 2011 Professional development for education personnel as a competence resource. A report on good practices and development measures
in professional development for education personnel (2011), Systematic
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 71
and planned. The state, challenges and development needs of professional
development of education personnel (2013) and Paths to Continuing
Professional Development. The challenges and future of state-funded professional development of education personnel (2015). The reports were
intended for those planning and implementing CPD in Finland.
The report from 2011 (Hämäläinen and Hämäläinen) stipulates
clearly that education personnel must “commit themselves to regular
development of their own professional competence in co-operation with
their employers”. The actions of the Board described in the report were
centered around the Osaava programme (budget: 21 million euros)
which aimed at improving educators’ professional competence through
CPD. The target educators were: school leaders, full- and part-time
hourly paid teachers (who do not necessarily have a Master’s or who are
not qualified teachers), teachers aged over 55, and those who had no
or very limited access or opportunity to participate in continuing training. Good practices identified by the Board are presented in the report.
Recommendations were also included (e.g. better ‘blending’ of initial
and continuing teacher training).
The second report from 2013 (Hämäläinen and Kangasniemi) proposed to diversify CPD in order to help educators whose backgrounds
might be very different. According to the Board CPD thus must be
“wide and competitive enough (…) for the entire duration of one’s
working life.” The aforementioned issue of integrating ITT and CPD
is once again put on the table. But the emphasis of the report consists
of recommendations for the specific case of CPD of Swedish-speaking
education personnel.
The last report of the Advisory Board dates back from 2015
(Hämäläinen, Hämäläinen and Kangasniemi). It discusses the challenges
and needs of CPD in Finland. Strategies and practices are suggested to
enhance the quality of CPD: the creation of peer mentoring training of
student teachers, recently graduated teachers and experienced teachers.
According to the report, all new teachers should be peer mentored. Other
measures were suggested: reinforcing teachers’ research-oriented work;
higher education institutions should develop long-term programmes to
enhance the professional development of educators; peer-to-peer networks
must be supported. For the next term (2015–2019) the Advisory Board
wished to concentrate on the links between ITT and CPD.
72 Y. Li and F. Dervin
What is noticeable from these reports is that the Advisory Board has
actively made recommendations and headed initiatives to make CPD
more transparent and ‘useful’ in Finland. However, at the time of writing, there was no indication of how these have been used by the authorities. As we shall see the problems related to CPD are well known by the
different educational actors, however steps need to be urgently taken.
Heikkinen et al.’s (2015b) report on CPD is probably the most
exhaustive, critical and realistic publication on the topic. The report
was published in Finnish only. In what follows we summarize the most
interesting findings of their study, especially in relation to impediments.
The authors note, first of all, that Finland’s CPD strategy is not visible in the way teachers’ CPD is organized, which gives the impression
that development and updating are secondary. This often means that
teachers lack interest and motivation in CPD. They also view CPD as
fragmented, and teacher participation as “incidental and inconsistent”
(ibid.). The strategies also fail to provide a clear perspective from both
teachers’ and institutions’ point of view. The overreliance on ITT as a
static and context-free way of learning to be a teacher is also criticized
by the authors. They see in all these points a real conflict between rhetoric and practices.
Based on interviews with the main actors of CPD, Heikkinen et al. also
note that the funding of CPD is too complex, overlapping and contradictory (ibid.). As such, many actors are included: The Ministry of Education,
the NAE, and local authorities. This leads to a loss of time and resources.
Heikkinen et al.’s (ibid.) study confirms that many teachers do not take
part in CPD, apart from the compulsory VESO days and that the same
(most motivated) teachers always attend courses and seminars (ibid.).
They also demonstrate that CPD in Finnish schools relies increasingly on
mentoring and the ‘work community’ (cooperation) (ibid.). Some of the
teachers interviewed by the scholars are thus very critical of CPD:
We are in educational institutions dealing with learning but learning does
not extend to the own learning from staff.
In the two following subsections, we take two detours before moving
on to the crux of the study. These detours aim to help the reader get
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 73
a sense of how CPD is organised in one municipality (note that this
only serves as an example) and to familiarize themselves with the discussions around CPD in the only national magazine for teachers in Finland
(Opettaja, published by the Teacher Trade Union). Discourses of CPD
are influenced by the locality and politico-economic situations, and thus
need to be contextualised to give a sense of its complexity.
Detour I. An Example of CPD Strategy
and Practices: The Town of Kokkola
(Western Finland)
As asserted earlier, the role of municipalities is central in making CPD
available for teachers and other educators in Finnish public schools. In
this subsection we take the example of Kokkola, with a population of
47,000 (Statistics Finland 2017), a town and municipality located in
Western Finland (part of the Central Ostrobothnia region, about 500 km
from the capital city Helsinki). The town is bilingual (Finnish/Swedish).
In what follows we present the work of the municipality in terms of
CPD. This must not and should not be generalized to all municipalities in Finland. We consider what Kokkola does to be a very good (and
rare) example of engagement with teacher CPD in the Nordic country. The information below was identified on the municipality website, in Finnish (https://www.kokkola.fi/palvelut/opetus_ja_kasvatus/
taydennyskoulutus/fi_FI/taydennyskoulutus%20/).
The Municipality Education Centre (sivistyskeskus ), whose decisions
are made, like in other Finnish municipalities, by a local education and
culture committee (sivistyslautakunta ), has a Professional Development
Coordinator and an Assistant dealing with the municipality CPD.
Teachers can take part in free or paid CPDs, get paid or unpaid and
must be granted leave (with paid substitute or not). It is important to
note, in order to make things more concrete, that the total budget for
2017 was EUR 79,000, or EUR 120 per teacher and teaching assistant. Although not all teachers will receive e.g. formal CPD beyond the
VESO-days, it means that very little budget is available for extra CPD.
74 Y. Li and F. Dervin
An official strategy for CPD, which we present below, was designed
in 2016 (https://www.kokkola.fi/palvelut/opetus_ja_kasvatus/taydennyskoulutus/fi_FI/taydennyskoulutus%20/_files/93969176163845330/
default/taydennyskoulutusstrategia.pdf ).
The strategy starts with the following statement (our translation):
Teachers in elementary and upper secondary education and school assistants receive further training by developing their own professional field,
getting acquainted with policy guidelines, supporting both the city’s strategic choices and the development needs of the school system.
Through supplementary education, the skills of teaching staff are developed to meet the changing challenges of schoolwork.
The aim is for each teacher to participate in a short-term training on
topical themes annually and, in addition, to teach teachers in long-term
education with the aim of increasing the educational level of the entire
teaching staff to meet the current level of qualification.
The strategy thus offers short-term and long-term training and education for all teachers to meet school, local, national educational interests
and objectives.
Teachers’ needs and potential application for the rights to CPD are discussed yearly between the teachers and school leaders during the so-called
“development discussions” (kehityskeskustelu). The objective of the municipality is to involve every single teacher in CPD every year (through three
VESO-days, formal national trainings and others). The CPD coordinator
at the municipality level is allocated a certain amount of money each year
to meet these needs and wishes. The municipality has developed a system of CPD feedback which teachers should fill online, within two weeks
after taking part in CPD. The form includes questions such as: How can
you apply what you learned during CPD? What kind of material did you distribute to your colleagues after CPD? Are you ready to share information you
have received with other teaching staff as a trainer yourself?
In 2017–2018 the three usual VESO-days were organised as well as
one full-day of training, two evenings (3 hours each) and twelve hours
of joint planning between teachers. These extra hours and days relate
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 75
to the so-called Competitiveness Pact that impacted teachers’ salary and working time between 2016 and 2019 (see next sub-section).
The municipality website gives details about the first VESO-day (23
September 2017, 9 a.m.–3 p.m.). The day consisted of workshops, joint
lectures and discussion groups. Three workshops of 40-minute were
available for each teacher. Teachers could choose between 27 sessions in
each workshop (T: 81 sessions). Here is a list of session examples:
The use of E-books in education
Maintaining your voice as teachers and leaders
Safe relations in school
Happy atmosphere—improvisations
Mindfulness and well-being at work
Using Lego Mindstorms
The use of robotics in coding lessons
The use of 3D-printing in school
The use of drama education
Phenomenon-based learning
Time management
“I don’t want to go to school!” What shall we do then?
The sessions were given by teachers, trainers, NGOs representatives,
researchers, etc.
In autumn 2017, the following training days were also organised
(average: 3 hours):
Welcoming new teachers to basic education
Workshop for teachers of mathematics
Using OneNote
Using O365 – Sway, forms, mix
First Aid
Developing strong teaching
76 Y. Li and F. Dervin
The municipality also offers to train mentors for new and less experienced teachers. These mentors are usual older and more experienced
teachers. Once trained, the mentors meet their tutees during development discussions. They discuss how the school community and culture
function, as well as professional relations. There is usually one mentor
for 4–6 tutees. The mentorship programme started in Kokkola in 2003,
when the school joined a research project entitled TeLL (Teachership—
Lifelong Learning). In 2016–2017, 206 teachers were mentored.
Finally, the municipality CPD website offers the possibility to the
teachers to share their views on “the most important goals of pedagogical development for the next four years.” Only six teachers had
left comments and suggestions as of time of writing (January 2018).
Although these can’t be generalized, we feel that the teachers make
points about CPD which are worth sharing with our readers.
One of the teachers shares her concerns about CPD that she views as
time-consuming, “bizarre” and takes her away from what matters: the
pupils. Another teacher asks for “working peace” (työrauha) instead of the
“constant pressure to develop”. The next teacher feels that more time for
co-planning should be made available because she feels that “everything
is done with compassion and… creativity disappears”. In a similar vein,
a teacher calls for a stronger “sharing culture” (sharing good practices and
methods). The latter also adds that she attaches “importance to the flexible use of different teaching methods and habits, so that each child and
young person can develop according to their own potential”.
These excerpts, which may sound anecdotal, seem to correspond
to the general feeling that teachers, decision-makers and researchers,
pay more attention to informal learning than formal and compulsory
CPD in the Finnish context. With the current educational reforms in
Finland, can one rely on informal learning only to improve education?
Detour II. Discussions About CPD in Finnish
Teachers’ Magazine (2017)
In this subsection, we examine discussions around CPD in a professional magazine in 2017 (year of writing).
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 77
First, 2017 marked an important year for teachers, like all employees in Finland. The so-called Competitiveness Pact increased annual
teachers’ working time by 24 hours, as well as reduced their holiday
bonuses temporarily (EUR 700 in average). This was discussed in the
Trade Union’s Teachers Magazine called Opettaja (Teacher ). In order to
improve the competitiveness of labour and businesses, boost economic
growth, and create new jobs, the Pact is meant to allow teachers to
use the 24 extra hours for cooperation with other colleagues and CPD
(Opettaja 13/2017, p. 12).
Apart from one full article about CPD (13/2017), the 2017 magazine issues only contained brief information about CPD. The theme of
the full-length article about CPD concerned a multicultural education
training offered by a Finnish University that lasts for a year. The interviewed teacher teaches Finnish as a second language to migrant adults.
The teacher justifies her registration for the CPD programme by claiming that she wanted to increase her scientific knowledge about the topic
of multiculturalism in education. She explains how the CPD went (lectures, seminars, online work). She also discusses what has changed in
her teaching after the course (e.g. she does not use English in the class
anymore but only Finnish). She also learnt the importance to celebrate
different cultures and languages in her lessons (13/2017, pp. 17–19).
The short pieces of news identified in the magazine include (in
chronological order, all translated from Finnish):
An article about new principals being awarded a minor in leadership at a
university CPD Centre after completing a course. (12/2017, p. 6)
Two teachers talk about a course on school well-being that they have
taken with a company called Positive Learning. The article resembles an
advertisement. (13/2017, pp. 21–23)
A representative of OAJ explains: “taking part in CPD reinforces teachers’
development. It is important that school leadership defines a clear ‘red
thread’ concerning CPD for the whole school.” (7/2017, p. 22)
An article presents local representatives of the teachers’ trade union
and explains that OAJ is one of the most active providers of training. It
provided 3524 hours of training through 358 different events in 2016.
(6/2017, pp. 6–8)
78 Y. Li and F. Dervin
In a column about the future of Finnish education the Minister of education Sanni Grahn-Laasonen lists important questions, one of them is about
CPD of teachers (will they get enough in the future?). (6/2017, p. 31)
Päivi Lyhykäinen, a trade union representative, claims that when students
finish their teacher education they are not entirely ready and need CPD
during the rest of their career. She believes that it is important to take into
account the local needs of students when choosing CPD. (4/2017, p. 23)
Full page about the CPD courses offered by the trade union. Some teachers explain what they learnt during them (courses about law and rights of
teachers). (3/2017)
Pause
From this chapter, we can say that, although current legislations concerning CPD are favourable, the reality and practices seem to differ.
One hidden discourse about CPD in Finland relies on myths about
initial teacher education. Since the latter is ‘research-based’, there is a
widely shared belief amongst decision-makers (but also maybe teachers
and school leaders), that teachers are autonomous enough to make their
own pedagogical decisions and to self-train (Niemi 2015). However,
realities show that many teachers are in desperate needs of CPD, especially to keep up with technology but also issues of well-being at school,
diversity, etc.
The National Agency for Education noted in 2016 that an increasing
number of teachers have a training and CPD plan but this represents
less than 50% of the teachers. Finally, the official fact that 80–88%
(ibid.) teachers participate in some form of CPD does not inform us of
(1) The quality of CPD (offer); (2) The length and investment in CPD.
Our study offers some answers to these questions by looking into the
main CPD providers in Finland.
One important gap in knowledge about CPD in Finland is the quasi-absence of the voice of Finnish teachers about it.
In his review of CPD in Finland, the influential former teacher and
Counsellor of Education Hellström (2012) asks the following important
questions about CPD, based on his discussions with teachers:
3
Finnish Initial Teacher Education and CPD 79
Should it be compulsory or optional?
Whose needs should be taken into account: The State, Municipalities,
Schools or Teachers?
Should CPD be theory-based or practical?
Should CPD be short or long-term?
How do we learn more during CPD? Alone or with the school
community?
Is it enough to listen, watch and listen or should we experience new
things during CPD?
Should CPD be face-to-face or online?
Should CPD be about listening to ‘gurus’ or cooperating with colleagues?
Should CPD be Top down or Bottom Up?
Should CPD be the same for everyone or individual?
Many of these questions have inspired us in designing interviews for the
individuals we have talked to for this book. We have also added more
questions concerning individuals (teachers, students, leaders) as these
questions tend to concentrate on the training only. We are especially
interested in the ways teachers perceive CPD as essential to the development of their career in education but also discuss its in-/direct effect on
the whole society. We believe that this will allow us to provide our readers with new and original insights into teachers’ perceptions of CPD.
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4
Data and Methodologies
To our knowledge, this is the most exhaustive study on CPD in
Finland. It is qualitative and does not aim to generalize for discourses
and practices of CPD in Finland. However, we claim that the study
gives a snapshot of the issues faced by the different actors in 2017. For
the following analytical chapters, we rely on this set of data (Table 4.1).
The collected data is multiform, from interviews to research diaries.
The different types of knowledge production opted for are meant to
complement each other.
The interviews took place face-to-face with different actors involved
in CPD in Finland: providers from universities, businesses; a representative of the Teachers’ Trade Union; a representative of the National
Agency for Education; teachers from a rural school and from a broader
spectrum as collected during the Annual Educa Conference in Helsinki.
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_4
83
84 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Table 4.1 Types and sources of data
Type
Source
Language
Obtained when
and where?
Interviews
– Main CPD providers in
Finland (4)
– English
– The National Agency
for Education (1)
– Teachers in basic education in a small town (6)
– Websites of all the CPD
providers for 2017
– Finnish Teachers’
Magazine for 2017
(22 issues)
– Notes, research diaries
and discussions with
each other
– English
– Finnish
– Helsinki, Turku
and Tampere
(end of autumn
2017, early 2018)
– Helsinki (January
2018)
– (early January
2018)
– Autumn 2017
– Finnish
– Autumn 2017
– Chinese,
English,
Finnish
– 2017–2018
Online
information
News about CPD
Autoethnography
– English
The Interview as a Research Method
Let us start by discussing the interview which appears to be the most
widespread method of inquiry in research. Brinkmann (2014) defines
the interview as follows:
The interview is a conversational practice where knowledge is produced
through the interaction between an interviewer and an interviewee (or a
group of interviewees). It can be defined as a conversation that has “the
purpose of obtaining descriptions of the life world of the interviewee in
order to interpret the meaning of the described phenomena”. (Kvale and
Brinkmann 2008: 3)
The form of interview retained in our study was face-to-face interaction. Although the interviews were semi-structured, we made sure that
the participants could feel the freedom to touch upon topics related to
CPD that they wished to introduce. We also performed interviews that
were meant to provoke participants, to try to dig under the ‘surface’ of
their discourse about CPD. As such, interviews cannot be considered
4
Data and Methodologies 85
as the ‘truth’, as people negotiate meaning and realities together with
the researcher (Dervin 2008; Rapley 2001; Brinkmann 2016). We felt
it important, especially with the CPD providers, to test their discourses
on the kind of CPD they provide and to unearth their potential hidden agendas. As a reminder, most of the providers are businesses whose
aims are to make money before all. In that sense, we disagree with
Brinkmann (2014) who asserts that “(in most cases) research interviewing involves a “one-way dialogue” with the researcher asking questions
and the interviewee being cast in the role of respondent”. We did ask
questions but also shared some of our views and views of other research
participants to test the ‘solidity’ of the participants’ discourse, and thus
identify multiple perspectives on CPD in Finland. We thus agree with
Brinkmann (2016) when he proposes that “Qualitative interviewing
must be considered not simply as a neutral instrument, capable of representing a “natural” human relationship, but rather as a social practice
with a history that provides a specific context for human interaction
and knowledge production”. Our approach to interviews was thus ethnomethodological (examining how things are negotiated in a situated
interaction of the interview) rather than phenomenological (describing
the things talked about) (Brinkmann 2016: 525).
Analysing the Interviews:
Dialogical Discourse Analysis
Following the interviewing sessions, the interviews were transcribed,
and analysed by means of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2013;
Dervin 2016), which allows us to look below the surface of written,
visual and auditory choices in order to identify multiple realities, ideologies, exaggerations, and constructions of CPD and Finnish education.
This form of critical discourse analysis derives from the identification
of elements used in the data to construct certain representations on
CPD.
This allows us to move beyond mere descriptions on the surface of
the data, and to critically examine the discourses. Bakhtin’s Dialogism
86 Y. Li and F. Dervin
(1982) but also methods from the interdisciplinary movement of
research on the Dialogical Self (inspired by Bakhtin, Mead and Hegel)
can be rewarding in this sense. Dialogism is based mainly on the argument that otherness is at the centre of every single discourse. In other
words, dialogue should be the basic unit of analysis when examining
such dynamic and contextual phenomena as knowledge, society, and
subjectivity (Gillespie and Cornish 2010: 15). Bakhtin’s theory places
the concept of voice at the centre of discourse. Roulet (2011) summarizes the Russian philosopher’s ideas as follows:
– There is constant interplay between multiple voices in discourse and society;
– Any discourse is always associated with former discourses and voices;
– Any discourse is always a reaction to previous discourses and thus
enters into dialogue with these discourses;
– Other persons are thus always present in what people say.
Linguistically speaking, dialogism is marked by the apparition of certain
linguistic markers or forms (pronouns such as we; reported discourses;
passive voice). Certain phenomena such as irony, negation, and the use
of discourse markers such as but all signal dialogism.
By using a dialogical approach, we are able to identify the voices that
seem to influence the participants when they reflect on CPD. What do
they tell us about the current situation in Finland? What differences and
similarities are there between what the different actors say about CPD?
What does it tell us about the present and future of CPD in Finland,
but also of Finnish education as a whole?
Analysing the Other Data Sets
Other sets of data (online information about CPD, news from Teachers’
Magazine) were analysed by means of Thematic Analysis. For Clarke
(2014), Thematic Analysis is “a method for identifying and analyzing
patterns of meaning (themes) in qualitative data”. It works very well
with secondary sources such as online information and newspaper
4
Data and Methodologies 87
articles (Clarke 2014). The way Thematic Analysis works is by generating codes, or interesting features, and then, analytically constructing
themes from the data coding (ibid.). For Clarke (ibid.): “the researcher
makes active, interpretative choices in generating codes and in constructing themes”. Criticality and reflexivity from the researcher’s perspective
are essential, especially in the different stages of analysis (e.g. initial analytic observations).
Finally, the study is based on the analysis of paratexts related to CPD
in Finland, a term used in literary interpretation to refer to material surrounding the main text (for example: a blurb on the back of a book or
the illustration on the cover). Paratexts usually have a meaning and add
to that of the text (e.g. a novel) (Åström 2014). They are nested within
the main text like Russian dolls. In order to do so we use the somewhat
uncomfortable approach of auto-ethnography to describe our position
in relation to these phenomena, as critical researchers and thinkers in
Finland and outside Finland (China). According to Ellis et al. (2010:
273–290) autoethnography is an approach that “seeks to describe and
systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience.” This approach treats research as political and socially-just (ibid.). Autoethnography thus represents a combination of
autobiography and ethnography, using hindsight (Freeman 2004).
According to Kiesinger (2002), autoethnography may be therapeutic for
the researcher as s/he tries to make sense of themselves and their experiences, in our case, the potential influence of discourses of the ‘miracle’ of Finnish education. By using autoethnography we are aware of the
current criticisms addressed to this perspective as being too emotional
and biased, insufficiently rigorous and analytical (hooks 1994). Yet we
do believe that the combination of the ‘emotional’ and the ‘scientific’
can help us to find answers to the following question: How unearthing and being aware of the mechanisms hidden behind discourses of
CPD and ‘miraculous’ Finnish education, could empower other scholars in other contexts—these phenomena being ‘universal’ today? This
quote from Slaughter also guides our thinking here: “Like all academics,
in our heart of hearts, we believe that knowledge is power, and understanding what is happening will enable us to change it” (Slaughter
2014: x).
88 Y. Li and F. Dervin
References
Åström, F. (2014). The context of paratext: A bibliometric study of the citation contexts of Gérard Genette’s texts. In N. Desrochers & D. Apollon
(Eds.), Examining paratextual theory and its applications in digital culture
(pp. 1–23). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1982). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Brinkmann, S. (2014). Interview. In: Encyclopedia of critical psychology
(pp. 1008–1010). New York: Springer.
Brinkmann, S. (2016). Methodological breaching experiments: Steps toward
theorizing the qualitative interview. Culture & Psychology, 22(4), 520–533.
Clarke, D. L. (2014). Analytical archaeology (Vol. 13). London: Routledge.
Dervin, F. (2008). Métamorphoses identitaires en situation de mobilité [Identity
metamorphosis in mobility contexts]. Turku: Turku University Press.
Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological
toolbox. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2010). Autoethnography: An overview.
Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 273–290.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language.
London: Routledge.
Freeman, M. (2004). Data are everywhere: Narrative criticism in the literature of
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the development of individuals in society (pp. 63–81). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Gillespie, A., & Cornish, F. (2010). Intersubjectivity: Towards a dialogical
analysis. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 40(1), 19–46.
hooks, B. (1994). Outlaw culture: Resisting representations. London: Routledge.
Kiesinger, C. E. (2002). My father’s shoes: The therapeutic value of narrative reframing. In A. Bochner & C. Ellis (Eds.), Ethnographically speaking:
Autoethnography, literature, and aesthetics (pp. 95–114). Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira.
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2008). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative
research interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rapley, T. J. (2001). The art(fulness) of open-ended interviewing: Some considerations on analysing interviews. Qualitative Research, 1(3), 303–323.
Roulet, E. (2011). Polyphony. In J. Zienkowski, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren
(Eds.), Discursive pragmatics (pp. 208–222). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Slaughter, S. (2014). Foreword. In B. Cantwell & I. Kauppinen (Eds.),
Academic capitalism in the age of globalization (pp. vii–x). Baltimore, MD:
John Hopkins University Press.
5
Providers: Offerings and Critiques
Who Organises CPD?
In this first analytical section, we concentrate on what we consider to be
the most important actors of CPD in Finland: the providers. As we can
see in Table 5.1, most of the providers are sponsored by the NAE, the
European Union or the Nordic Council of Ministers.1 As a reminder
for 2017 the NAE Approved 153 CPD projects, for 8,726,000 euro
(see Chapter 3). Some teachers also pay for taking CPD or they receive
grants from private foundations.
In examining the providers, our first interest was to review their CPD
offers for primary and lower secondary teachers for the school year
2017–2018. Through what we qualify as ‘detective work’, we were able
to identify a wide range of courses on different topics, and offered by
very different companies. We should note that although these providers receive most of their funding through competitive applications with
1The
Nordic Council is the formal cooperative body between Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, Sweden as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Åland Islands. The Council is
also involved in cooperation with the Baltic Countries, amongst others.
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_5
89
90 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Table 5.1 List of funders for CPD
Who funds/pays?
Who applies, organises and does?
National Agency for
Education
– CPD departments of universities,
– Universities of Applied Sciences,
– Municipalities (and groups of municipalities),
– Registered companies (related to education
matters)
Individual teachers, any educational institutions
(Erasmus+)
Individual teachers, any educational institutions
(Nordplus for the Nordic and Baltic countries)
Individual teachers, any educational institutions
Pay by themselves
European Union
Nordic Council of Ministers
Private foundations
Teachers
the NAE, the NAE itself organises courses as well as the teachers’ trade
union (self-sponsored).
Based on an online search and snowball information from colleagues
and practitioners, we were able to identify the following main and most
influential providers, who will form the core of the following sections:
The Finnish National Agency for Education: http://www.oph.fi/english.
University Continuing Education Departments (private companies
owned by Finnish universities): HY+ (University of Helsinki) https://
hyplus.helsinki.fi/; Brahea Centre (University of Turku) http://www.utu.
fi/en/units/braheacentre/Pages/home.aspx.
The Finnish Teachers’ Trade Union: OAJ http://www.oaj.fi/cs/oaj/
public.
Professional development Companies: Educode (which belongs to
the Finnish publisher EDITA Publishing Oy, a publisher of educational
books, non-fiction, law books, business books, computer literature, with
$16 million in annual revenue) http://www.educode.fi.
Through the weekly teacher’s magazine issues (Opettaja ) from 2017 we
were also able to identify the following minor institutions and companies. As we are not including these in what follows we give an indication of the kinds of services they offer for CPD:
5
Providers: Offerings and Critiques 91
(Universities)
University of Eastern Finland, ADUCATE (motto “never stop learning”):
Learning and teaching in digital environments training programme (60 credits, 2-year programme) EUR 3000; cooperation between home and school
in multicultural and multilingual school environments; career advising.
University of Lapland: call for Ph.D. applications, teachers’ pedagogical
courses.
University of Oulu (AIKOPA): playing in class; creating an effective and
functioning school culture; Peace at school.
University of Tampere: Working with multiculturalism in education
(30-credit minor, one year and a half, EUR 1800).
(Universities of Applied Sciences)
Häme University of applied sciences: minor in Digiteaching (e.g.:
media literacy, 3 credits); how to create a MOOC (e.g. planning a
MOOC 2, credits).
Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences: major in digiteaching (30
credits); English as a Tool for Online Teaching (2–6 credits), creating a
safe and common school community.
Metropolia (Helsinki Region): Use of storytelling in multicultural education (4 credits).
Tampere University of Applied Sciences: keys to digitalization (2 credits), Programming in primary school (3 credits).
(Companies and associations)
Anglolang Academy, UK: ad for applying for funding through
Erasmus + to take in-service courses such as Content and Language
Integrated Learning; Special Educational Needs (1 or 2 weeks).
Basic education teachers’ association: summer courses such as Use of
IPad, programming and robotics in basic education; office 365; use of
digital environments in teaching, learn to read and write; Use of drama
in the new curriculum; Art and design in the new curriculum; Sports in
everyday school.
92 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Finland summer university: education psychology (5 credits); Children
and youth psychological well-being (25 credits); Multiculture (25 credits), dance pedagogy (25 credits).
Positive learning: well-being in schools.
Summer university of Mikkeli: Minor in drama education (25 credits).
United Nations Finland: course on sustainable development online
(6 credits) 19 online meetings and 4 meetings face to face in Helsinki.
Duration: one academic year.
Uskonnonopetus, Religious teaching: art education, cultural multiliteracy, subject integration, etc. (different cities and towns around Finland).
The following courses were advertised for in the magazine, and involved
time abroad:
OKKA: foundation for education, teaching and training: summer
course for teachers in Rome Italy (10 days): visits to museums, lectures,
networking with other teachers, etc. costs EUR 450 and the foundation
sponsors the rest
OAJ, trade unions for teachers: 10 day-trip to Germany for tourism
(German history, culture), advertised as an active study trip to Germany.
CPD Offerings
In 2017–2018 the following topics were covered in the CPD courses
offered by providers:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Assessment
ICT, robotics, programming
Migrant education
Multiliteracies
Wellbeing/psychological aspects of education
Working in/with a community
Working with the New National Curriculum (2016).
5
Providers: Offerings and Critiques 93
As one could expect, they follow the topics/themes put forward by the
Ministry of Education for the same year. The formats of training were
as follows: 1 day (conference, seminar, school training day), several days
and several months (qualifying trainings with credits).
In what follows we present a range of courses for each of the themes,
providing information about the content, tuition, trainers and duration.
We follow the aforementioned list of topics covered in the study. Whenever
possible, we give an indication of duration, cost, and potential sponsorship.
Assessment
Amongst the major providers, three proposed courses on the topic of
assessment were available (Brahea, HY+ and Educode). Apart from one
course proposed by Brahea on evaluation of own and peer school activities
which lasted a whole semester (6 credits), the other courses were short-term
(1–2 days). The two Educode courses cost EUR 200 each while the others
were sponsored by the NAE. The following course titles were identified:
The development of a school assessment culture
Evaluation in building a learning culture
Electronic Assessment in teaching (in crafts education)
The aims of these courses were to help teachers reflect on and develop
the multifacetedness of assessment in school. In the interviews with
teachers, they reveal that many VESO-days were dedicated to the topic
too. However, as we shall see, they found the knowledge that was passed
onto them was not very useful (see next chapter).
ICT, Robotics, Programming
Without any surprise, this second topic is present in many proposed
courses. Brahea, Educode, HY+ and the NAE had a long list of courses.
Apart from a one-year programme at Brahea (AVATAR 2020) and two
six-week long courses offered by HY+ (learn how to activate and use
94 Y. Li and F. Dervin
inclusive digital tools to support education and development processes),
all the other courses were 1–2 days. Three courses from the NAE and
some of the ones offered by Educode charged between EUR 100–500.
The topics covered in the courses ranged from a specific technology
(e.g. LEGO, Minecraft, Office 365) to broader courses on programming, and digital inclusion. Brahea’s one-year programme (AVATAR
2020) appears to be the most exhaustive, covering different aspects of
ICT:
Learning and learning environments for the School of the future/
Developer Training I (2 cr)
Learning and learning environments for the School of the future/
Developer Training II (2 cr)
Basics of using an iPad in teaching (1 cr)
Tablet or laptop?—experiences and tools to be used by a school for inclusion of ICT (1 cr)
Games, Learning and Gambling (3 cr)
Migrant/Intercultural/Multicultural Education
As a country that is witnessing more and more migration, it appears
normal that many CPD courses deal with the issue of diversity in education. This is where the most long-term trainings are available.
HY+ offers 3 such courses: School for integration (duration:
7 months, 10 credits), Diversity in education (2 months, 3 credits),
Qualification training for immigrant teachers (2-year programme,
60 credits). Brahea proposes two very similar courses: Cultureresponsive practices for working with immigrants (one year, 30 credits), Becoming a teacher in Finland—Teacher training preparatory
studies for immigrant background teachers (2-year programme, 60
credits). In these courses, the providers promise to provide the latest research on the issue of multicultural education but also to give
concrete tools to work with migrant (and/or migrant-background)
students.
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 95
Multiliteracies
The idea of multiliteracies is presented as transversal in the National Core
Curriculum of 2014–2016. It is defined as follows: “interpretation, composing, and evaluation of written, spoken, and multimodal texts within a
rich textual environment” (2016: 56). The NAE and HY+ proposed several
courses on the topic. For instance, the NAE offered courses on media critical skills, the use of digital pens and reading strategies (one day-course for
EUR 300 and a 3-month course on new methods for teaching reading).
Wellbeing/Psychological Aspects of Education
HY+ is the only provider which deals with this topic, with 14 different
short- and long-term courses on issues related to well-being and psychology.
Proactive Ethics in Working Life (1 day, free)
Literary Therapy for Children and Young People (4 months, EUR 2300)
The basics of Literacy Therapy (1 year, EUR 3300)
Prevention of Radicalization in Schools (2 months, free, sponsored by the
NAE)
Change of the teacher’s role (one month, 2 credits, free, sponsored by the
NAE)
Working in/with a Community
Three main providers offer courses on this issue which is also central
in the National Core Curriculum (“school as a community”): Educode,
HY+ and Brahea. These courses concern mostly other aspects of CPD:
tutoring, mentoring.
Tutor and peer educator training (4 days, EUR 200) Reverse learning in
practice (one day, taught by teachers certified by LEGO)
Being wise at work (1 day, free)
96 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Ethics in working life (1 day, free)
Gordon’s Effective Workplace Community Training (10 days, EUR 200)
provides the ability to capitalize on key interaction and interpersonal
skills in leadership and work
Teachers in Finland—intercultural know-how and well-being at school
life in general (one semester, 6 credits).
In general, all these courses seem to be influenced by the fields of psychology and communication, and lack, somewhat interdisciplinarity.
For example these two courses are described as follows:
Gordon’s Effective Workplace Community Training provides the ability
to capitalize on key interaction and interpersonal skills in leadership and
work life in general (HY+).
Teachers in Finland—intercultural know-how and well-being at school
life in general.
This training is designed for foreign teachers and for support staff. The
goal is to support the recognition of competences and the development of
work activities for your own workforce. It also aims at increasing involvement in developing your own school by becoming an active member of
the work community. The course also examines opportunities to move
forward in your working career in Finland (Brahea).
Working with the New National Curriculum (2016)
Finally, a few courses offer to help teachers work with and understand
the ideology of the Core National Curriculum. Educode offered two
such courses in 2017: New teacherhood, NPDL (New Pedagogies for
Deep Learning) (1–2-day trainings). These are described as follows:
Helps to ensure the development of a school so that the objectives of the
new curriculum are met in practice.
The international New Pedagogies for Deep Learning program helps
to develop the culture of operation and to implement the goals of the
curriculum.
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 97
Pause
This first analytical section shows that, in theory, a wide range of CPD
courses are available for Finnish teachers. What is more, most of the
courses seem to focus on the target topics proposed by the NAE.
Although most of the courses are free (sponsored by the NAE), some
more specific courses or qualifying courses are quite expensive (in average EUR 3000). As a reminder, the cost or absence of cost of the CPD
courses do not include travel, accommodation and subsistence.
Conceptually and theoretically, it is not always easy to see where the
courses are situated from the description and they thus appear to be fragmented (Huber 2012). One notices however certain flavours, such as
the influence of positive psychology on courses related to well-being,
‘American’ multicultural education on courses related to migrants and
diversity. One can also see clearly the influence of certain multinationals on how ICT and robotics are taught: LEGO certification, the use of
Microsoft, etc. Because of these different conceptual and methodological
approaches, teachers receive CPD that determines how they work, but they
also lead to discrepancies in ways different teachers are trained, which may
have a good but also negative impact on teaching—especially if teachers do
not discuss together (Aspfors 2012; Darling-Hammond 2009).
Our final point refers to the lack of indication of progression (at what
career level the trained teachers are?) and evaluation of coherence and
cohesion between the ‘patchwork’ of courses in the descriptions of the
courses (see critiques of such issues in Stein et al. 1999).
The Providers’ Voices
In this section, we listen carefully to the voices of four representatives of
CPD providers in Finland. This complements directly the previous section, which helped us to identify our participants and to formulate our
interview questions.
The interviews took place in similar conditions. The researchers went
to see the interviewees at their working place in different Finnish cities.
In all cases, the interviewees had booked a room for the interviews so
98 Y. Li and F. Dervin
the discussions could be more private. At the beginning of the interviews, they were told about the objectives of the study as well as the
anonymity of the collected data. In general, the tone of the interviews
was informal and convivial. In terms of language policy, the interviews
were done in English, with some Finnish when the participants could
not find some words in the language. All the participants appeared to be
very comfortable in English.
A few words about the different participants are needed here. Four
people were interviewed from four different providers. Interestingly they
all had a different profile and position towards CPD. Table 5.2 summarizes these elements, at the time of the study.
As indicated in the table, the four participants, although all involved
in teacher CPD had somewhat different profiles and roles in CPD provision. This gives to what follows a multivoiced perspective, which can
only provide us with richer data.
The analyses of the three interviews revolve around these three
themes: (1) Qualifying CPD in Finland, (2) Biggest problems for CPD,
and (3) Providing CPD: realities and myths.
Table 5.2 Profiles of interviewees: providers
Provider
Profile
Position towards CPD
(code: A)
University CPD
department
(code: O)
Teachers’ Trade
Union
– Project planner
– Long experience in selling trainings to teachers
– Special adviser with the
Finnish Teacher Trade Union
Organisation (OAJ)
– Was a class teacher for 20 years
– University teacher
– Ph.D. in education
– Used to work as a teacher in
basic education
– Specialises in linguistically and
culturally responsible teaching
and leaning
– Acts as a private CPD consultant
too
– Part of management team
– Former teacher (6-year
experience)
Involved in preparing and
selling CPD to municipalities and teachers
Involved in creating
material for teachers
and training them
(code: N)
University CPD
department
(code: E)
State-owned
company
Involved in training
teachers
Involved in preparing and
selling CPD to municipalities and teachers
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 99
Qualifying CPD in Finland
In this first section, we analyse how the providers describe CPD in
Finnish education in general, and what its characteristics are. In general,
the comments made by our participants are rather negative.
The first aspect of CPD that is discussed is the fact that it does not
always appear to be serious enough.
O: in-service training is not in a very good shape in Finland
For O, who works for the Trade Union, there is a need for it to be
research-based, in other words to reserve CPD to professionals such as
the NAE, and more importantly, universities:
O: in-service training should be based on research and we have so many
actors in the field and we don’t know what they do… so I think that half
of the training and the money comes from the National Agency to whom
the Ministry of Education gives the money and they organise good in-service training for teachers.
In her interview O repeats on several occasions that some of the providers, whom she qualifies as “private training actors”, are problematic:
O: we also have some training by private training actors but we don’t
know what they do….
O: if they are not teachers if they don’t have a teacher’s background we don’t
know what they do we don’t call it teaching because if they are not teachers
E adds an extra layer to the complex list of CPD providers in Finland,
providers of both IT services and training:
And then I would like to add that the third part or this kind of third
player in the field are digital companies providing some training services… so I think that when people are talking about CPD they are often
talking about how to use ICT in education… there is like [name of such
company] they sell basically IPads to schools but then they provide a lot
of teacher training… that’s training for like one-day training…
100 Y. Li and F. Dervin
There appears to be a criticism of such CPD provision from E. He ends
his description of the ‘digital companies’ with a comparison to his kind
of organization: “but we the major providers we provide large long-lasting programmes to support development.” By making this claim, E.
agrees with Feiman-Nemser (2001) who suggests long-term CPD as
‘good practice’. However, as we shall see, E.’s company also offers many
‘one-off’ training sessions…
One of the reasons why CPD is not in “a good shape” relates to the
lack of coherence that surrounds it according to O. The incoherence
comes mostly from decision-makers in her opinion:
O: In-service training has never been coherent… no so that’s what we are
waiting for and we are talking a lot with municipalities, they should make
their goals what in their areas they need to develop we want them to work
together with schools teachers and principals, and think together what is
needed, and schools should make their own development plan, and principals and teachers have their own plans…
Although A, from a University company, agrees with O, she argues that
the marketization of CPD (Aspfors 2012), which has become a reality
in Finland, is a good and acceptable thing:
A: I think that private companies were a curse word for education
before and we still have this kind of attitude sometimes coming to
us and then when it comes to, for example, especially university staff
they are really critical about this aspect, but then again as we see,
when we really look about, when you look at the schools and municipalities how much they collaborate with private companies, startups are big. For example, furniture companies or whatever, I mean
we can’t just separate ourselves from the world, I mean we need to
collaborate.
When she presents her company A even goes as far as saying: “we operate just like a regular company so if you are not efficient enough then
you have to go.” There may actually be a contradiction here between the
public services offered by these companies (sponsored by public funds)
and the need to make a profit.
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 101
For N, from another university, the consequence of this marketization can be very negative. In her interview, she shares the following
criticism:
N: and here is something I have to say about [She mentions another company] I have found its marketing the courses vague because for example
they offer some courses of Finnish as a second language and they market
it as giving qualifications to be a Finnish language teacher, and we have
many times contacted them and said this is not fair… it is not the reality,
so why do you do this?
Problems Behind CPD
Our interviewees mentioned many impediments to CPD, from their
own perspectives. Yet, they all seem to share the same concern about
financial issues. They argue that there is not enough money for CPD
and that, depending on municipalities, teachers can have more or less
access to CPD (see Hämäläinen and Hämäläinen 2011). O explains
that this leads to inequality:
O: Some municipalities don’t give money for travelling so the teachers
invest their own money but we feel it should be the employers’ responsibilities. Mostly during summer time, some teachers do it but we think the
employer should pay for all. That’s the main problem with CPD.
As a representative of the Trade Union, her role is to defend teachers’
rights and duties. O. reports that some municipalities disagree with
the need for more CPD and that they even believe that Finnish teacher
education is too long and too expensive.
E confirms this problematic aspect of decentralisation of decision-making in what follows:
E: I just had a call with one of my managers and he just pointed out that
he hasn’t yet found a municipality in Finland where they didn’t need
102 Y. Li and F. Dervin
some help in CPD but the problem is that they don’t have the money.
They were willing to buy some training and some consultancy services,
but the problem is always money… Of course, there are some cities and
municipalities that can easily spend some money on CPD but in most
cases they don’t have the money…
This has repercussions on the way E’s company organizes CPD and
charges for it. We asked him if teachers paid for the trainings by themselves. He answered:
E: Yes… and sometimes they even do pay that we can see when we
provide our… what we call open training… where anyone can participate… our typical price for one person for one-day training is somewhere
around EUR 150… many schools they have budgeted around EUR
150-200 per teacher for CPD… and also the price EUR 150, that’s also
something as a teacher you could also pay on your own… you would not
pay like EUR 500 or something… but EUR 150 people might pay for
themselves…
Another aspect about finance of CPD concerns directly the competition between the different providers who compete for funding from the
NAE or municipalities (see Heikkinen et al. 2015). A is very adamant
about one aspect that she finds unfair:
A: Yeah, there’s a lot of consultants who actually are… um they can provide such low fees and such low courses that uh… when, for example, a
large municipality is in southern Finland when they need to um what’s the
name in English? They need to ask for bids for all kind of providers, and
then they have to choose the cheapest one.
I: Oh yeah, it’s not fair.
A: That’s not really fair, because you know what, you can’t get a good
training with the lowest amount of money so… we have some… we
have quite actually difficult experiences regarding this, because I don’t
think it’s really fair, I mean… they’re big municipalities who need
really… high quality education but they can’t… they have to buy the
cheapest one
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 103
At the end of the interview when asked what she would change
about CPD in Finland, she returns to the topic, sounding even more
annoyed:
A: well, in my personal opinion, I really hate the fact that the municipalities they need to buy always the cheapest option because then you really
get I’m sorry to say this but crappy training…
In her interview, N has a different view on this issue. Just as a reminder,
N is a practitioner, while A an administrator:
I: I have heard from some providers that sometimes there are interesting
practices whereby some companies are offering CPD for cheaper… have
you experienced that also?
N: well… not in fact, not exactly for example our university… one year
ago, Helsinki municipality bought from us and it was so expensive and I
thought are they really willing to pay so much… I don’t remember how
much… it was a lot… and well it was no problem… they had some project funding and that’s how they did it.
For N, the amount charged for providing CPD does not matter as long
as it is of high quality.
Going back to A, and interestingly, she appears concerned by the fact
that some municipalities do not realise what quality training is or the
need for long-term CPD. She says:
A: if they are buying a three-hour lecture and they think that every…
all the problems that they have this will just disappear with that, so it
doesn’t happen I think… when I see those bids that they send to us…
one can clearly see that they don’t have some… that they don’t understand what they are doing, what they’re actually trying to buy from us
so and then there can’t be really an effective training… it’s really sad
because we want to do the best that we can and use the best experts and
have the best you know better processes and everything but our hands
are tied…
104 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Another criticism addressed to municipalities is the lack of funding
offered for paying for teachers’ substitutes when they take CPD (Pöntynen
and Silander 2015). This is especially discussed by N and O:
N: I think that the main problem for now in Finland is schools… well
they do not have enough substitutes or they do not have the possibility
to get substitute teachers, which prevents people from participating in
training and professional development and I think it is lack of money,
and well the teachers know… if I go away so another teacher has to cover
it so…
Beyond financial issues, our interviewees confirm the fact that at least
20% of teachers do not take part in CPD (e.g. Hämäläinen et al. 2015),
O. goes as far as saying:
O: 20% of teachers don’t take part in in-service training every year. But
they can’t be forced. Principals should force them but it’s hard for them
to say you have to go… but I don’t know how it works. I think it is the
teachers who are close to retirement… and they are scared of computers
and changes…
As we shall see in the data collected from teachers about CPD (see
Chapter 6), teachers appear to be increasingly overworked, especially
since the National Core Curriculum has been in place. How to motivate
them to take part in CPD is a burning issue:
N: I think, in my opinion, teachers are very tired at the moment because
the curriculum has changed and it is really demanding and so they are
not so willing to participate in trainings…
For N, this has a consequence on participation as only those teachers
who are really motivated register for CPD.
Two other problems related to CPD were mentioned by the
interviewees.
First of all, the lack of relation between ITT and CPD is decried (see
Niemi 2015). When N is prompted about the fact that an increasing
number of Newly Qualified Teachers quit their jobs, she says:
5
Providers: Offerings and Critiques 105
N: To be honest with you, preservice teacher education does not prepare
teachers well… parents are really demanding sometimes, for example, we
have nothing about cooperation with parents… we include this in our
in-service programme
The second somewhat surprising aspect is the lack of use of online technologies for CPD. O seems aware of this issue:
I: What about the use of technology for in-service training?
O: There is not much… yes but I think it is going on more and more
what I think is… we have had the difficulty with computers in schools
and kindergartens, people don’t have their own computers and they don’t
know how to teach with IPads and computers…
A shares the same views:
A: there are not that many domestic providers of online training
so… yeah so most of the training that the NAE is funding… they are
just basic contact teaching you know so I think that that really is a
problem…
N explains why online CPD does not seem very common in Finland.
We need to bear in mind that the situation might be different in other
university departments:
I: How about online training?
N: That’s another story… we have for example… we are offering
three online courses about multilingualism and responsive teaching
but the problem is that the bureaucracy here at university is that it
does not recognize that kind of teaching as teaching at all… so we
can’t mark those hours that we spend online as teaching at all so we
don’t get paid and there are not counted… and everything here is
about counting the hours… maybe there is a light at the end of the
tunnel… I think it is the problem here in this faculty… it is different in other faculties…
106 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Providing CPD: Realities and Wishes
In this final section about the providers’ interviews, we examine what
we call the realities and wishes of CPD.
We start by identifying the CPD philosophies shared by three participants (E, A and O).
E, who works for a state-owned training company, appears to have
the clearest CPD philosophy—which he presents as the company’s
focus:
E: What many teachers are looking for when they are participating in
training is that there comes the training then after the training they’re
provided with some new skills they can use in their work… but that is
something we do not do… because in our model we kind of help them…
we organise some kind of mentoring services so when we have one-day
training courses, we are not giving them handouts and checklists so…
when you go back to your classroom then you do this this and this…
no… we are providing them with some new ideas and some skills to help
them… I think the mentoring model is much better… at a deeper level…
When prompted about the success of this approach, E is very honest:
it depends on the ‘customers’ (his term) and on the trainers. E also
explains that sometimes there are misunderstandings between the provider and the municipality that buys their service—and this is reflected
in the teachers’ expectations:
E: but sometimes we have some issues when a city or a municipality has
bought some training from us and somewhere between us… and the end
customer there can be a gap in information and… the teachers sometimes
when they come to our trainings they think we will provide them with
some kind of pedagogical burana [pills for headache in Finland2] and we
do not provide… and they were expecting this kind of approach and…
2We could hint again at the Chinese saying 头痛医头, 脚痛医脚 to problematise this misunderstood aspect of CPD (“When someone has a headache, the doctor only treats the head; heals the
foot only when he has pain in the foot”).
5
Providers: Offerings and Critiques 107
so I think that comes because people traditionally train their skills by
going to a one-day training and then they can use for instance Microsoft
Excel… but that’s not something we do…
As far as trainers are concerned E’s company hires mostly teachers and
principals who are part of their network or, even, who have taken part
in their previous trainings. He explains that “you can just be a good
teacher and you have some skills that you wanna share to others and
then you are an expert for others… and you are willing to share this
expertise…”. These trainers must adhere to the aforementioned training
model.
A seems to have a less clear idea about what her company wants in
terms of CPD, especially in terms of format. She explains:
A: In addition to research… because I think that’s really important not
to just have lectures, but to have kind of hands-on experience and concrete examples. And we, of course, we are really… we want to develop the
teaching methods that we’re using. So not just basic lecturing, that’s a bit
limited…
A seems to suggest that CPD is done though typical problem and
inquiry-based learning (Girvan et al. 2016). When asked what a successful CPD course is, A is first a bit hesitant and then provides us with
a vision about the participants:
A: it’s an awful question I’m sorry… yeah but it’s okay I try to answer…
the participants come from different schools because then you get some
kind of variety and you can…
She also lists working methods that seem to be popular and successful
in CPD:
A: there’s also this kind of a peer-mentoring and you can get group reflection and sharing… that’s something that usually works a lot better than
just to develop in one school (…) in good trainings there needs to be
something else apart from lectures like experiential learning… they go
108 Y. Li and F. Dervin
to different places to learn… a different environment such as a forest or
whatever it is… and that’s actually what we are doing quite often… they
might have kind of a closing seminar in the forest for example… and I
think that’s something is also it’s a concrete way of showing those teachers
that if you can do this in in-service training so why can’t you do this with
your class.
She then described an ideal trainer as follows:
A: they need to be really… I mean they need to be really motivated…
they have to have the passion… but the teacher it shows in it shows…
like… and you can’t just do that for just to make money or something
like… that it’s obvious I mean then you have this kind of a passion for
what they’re doing and that also… sometimes it takes more efforts and
more time than actually we can compensate with the fees or whatever…
It is important to note that University companies often hire university
staff (from lecturers to professors) but also school teachers as trainers.
These are often from the local university but both O and N report using
the services of foreign experts either through visiting professors (e.g.
USA) or online lectures (e.g. from Sweden).
We asked N how they chose the courses that are offered as CPD:
N: well we base our courses to our image of the needs of the teachers…
and it is not just the image, it is also the results of the studies that we
have been making… for example, in 2016, we collected a large data, 822
teachers, about their knowledge about multiculturalism and it showed a
huge lack of knowledge… there is a lot of good will, a lot of empathy, but
the lack of knowledge is enormous so that’s what we are doing.
N specializes in multicultural issues in education and we were interested in probing the ideologies that constituted the CPD courses on the
topic. So, we asked her:
I: when you think about the trainings you are offering, what is the ideology of the courses? How do you make it very specific for teachers in
Finland?
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 109
N: It is always a combination of theory and practice. From my experience, teachers always want to have good practices, so when they leave
the training this is my tool for tomorrow, but this is never enough there
needs to be theoretical knowledge: why? Why is this thing good or effective? Because otherwise it is just a toolkit that maybe just works once that
is it. I always emphasize that the mindset and the attitudes, they are very
important, and it is to be theory-based.
Her first answer relates to the format of CPD rather than the content of
CPD. So, we asked her the question again:
I: but when you think about theory, it is very political. When I hear the
terms that you use I cannot not think about American researchers who
are based in America and work on the American context. In my own
research and my research group we would use a completely different term.
N: well for us the background is in sociocultural theories, but I would say
because I have been working so long in the schools I know the Finnish
context so well, so it is context-based and that’s also… the participants,
they always tell that it is good that I explain the theoretical knowledge
with the experiences and experiments from the field. I always get this
feedback. And I am really happy because that’s what I want to offer, I can
offer good practices but not only that I always want to have it as research
based and I know what the research says but unfortunately, there is very
little research from Finland…
In terms of realities, O. discusses the reforms that were taking place at
the time of the interview, the so-called Kiky, through which teachers,
like all other employees in Finland had to accept more working hours
and losing part of their summer bonuses. When O discusses time allocation for CPD activities (in a broad sense), she explains:
O: We have three hours per week to make or cooperate with your colleagues, parents and write messages… it is three hours per week and one
hour goes to school meeting so it is almost one or two hours per week
and then, there is one hour left and sometimes where they don’t have
these meetings then there is more time to cooperate with your colleagues.
So when I was a teacher, we had one hour per week to cooperate with
110 Y. Li and F. Dervin
teams or external people… we get paid for these…and they get controlled
but some of the work is done at home… so it is 38 weeks times three
hours, it is called YS (Yhteisuunnitelu ). So it is 4-3 hours per week but
mostly they are spent in meetings by principal but now that we have this
kiky… the boss of our trade union Olli was negotiating with the municipalities and employers, and they decided that it is extra 24 hours to work
per year and they negotiated that they would take 30% of the summer
extra salary but these hours, half of it is for YS so you have 12 more
hours to do that cooperation and you can use it when you want, and the
12 hours extra are for in-service training…
CPD here seems to be reduced to cooperation with other teachers, and
co-planning (see Niemi 2015). However, according to O, even these
hours are used up for meetings and other administrative tasks.
In order to conclude this chapter, let us look at what our interviewees
wish for as far as the future of CPD is concerned.
The first argument that all the providers mentioned is the funding as
well as the selection of providers and courses by municipalities. For O
and E this has to be reformed. O also argues that universities should be
given the priority to offer CPD, as their trainings are research-based.
E has a more practical (and vital) message for decision-makers:
I would give at the government level… I would give a strict amount of
money to be used for CPD… maybe EUR 500 or EUR 1000… some
amount of money that has to be used and then…
He also suggests “some kind of system to check” the quality of the trainings and the participation of teachers. As a reminder: none of this is
occurring officially in Finland.
N’s vision seems to correspond to many of the critiques of CPD in
Finland that we have highlighted in earlier chapters (e.g. Heikkinen
et al. 2015):
N: my dream is that we would have some kind of CPD system that when
people are ready to be teachers, they know that they have to develop
themselves all the time, that there should be the time and money for
that… I think there should be more collaboration between teacher education and the field…
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 111
Finally, and that is one aspect that was very little discussed with the
interviewees, O sees the importance of making CPD more inclusive
a priority. Finland’s reputation is based on inclusive and equity practices. While this discourse will always appeal to ‘others’, one is entitled
to wonder if the limited inclusive characteristics of CPD do not reflect
a deeper problem that international rankings do not always identify. If
teachers are not included in a wider system, can students be? O argues:
O: What we want is that trainers travel to the place isolated and we hope
that they could cover a topic for different educational levels instead of just
one. A topic that could interest all teachers at different levels.
Section Epilogue: A Visit to Educa
In January 2018, we both visited the Educa Trade Fair for Education
and Pedagogy in Helsinki. The theme of the fair was Opettaja opettaa!
(The teacher teaches!). The fair is often presented as an annual training
event for professionals in the education field. Anyone can participate
for free (upon registration) and the targeted audiences are teachers and
headmasters from different educational levels. Nearly 18,000 people visited the fair in 2018 (http://educa.messukeskus.com/). The objectives of
the fair are to present new educational tools to the participants (from
furniture to ways of including discussions around sexual harassment in
the classroom), and to offer seminars about ‘burning issues’ in education. Most CPD providers have a stall at the fair. The Teachers’ Trade
Union (OAJ) is very much involved in the organisation of the fair. At
the Union stand, teachers can collect a certificate of attendance which
they can fill in by themselves and indicate the number of hours spent
there. The certificate states that Educa is a training program.
At first sight, Educa is before all market-oriented but also very much
fragmented. Moving from one stall to another (where people can usually collect freebies such as reflectors, pens, sweets, etc.), one encounters companies that sell textbooks, school photos, arts and craft, EdTech
startups with VR technology, 3D printers, but also NGOs, the NAE,
and probably the most surprising of all: Falun Gong (Falun Dafa)
112 Y. Li and F. Dervin
and stalls selling tea and clothes. The stands were targeted first and
foremost at people who work in Finland and were mostly in Finnish
and Swedish. We came across one or two ‘foreign’ stands—e.g. a
Singaporean company specialising in neuroscientific based pedagogy. A
minority of the visitors were from outside Finland.
As said before, Educa is considered as a CPD event for teachers.
Teachers can get to know the latest textbooks, the latest technology and
obtain more information about projects and reforms. The proposed
seminars, lectures and workshops were many and varied, and included
the following themes: well-being and safety, teaching tools of the future,
media literacy, and multiculturalism (as advertised on the fair website).
The speakers were decision-makers, teachers, teacher educators, entrepreneurs (e.g. physiotherapists giving advice on how to sleep well),
NGOs, etc. The theme of the fair (the teacher teaches! ) is problematised
as follows in the fair booklet:
The interesting lectures at Educa offer new and fresh ideas! The themes
focus on the job of the teacher! These are some of the themes that will be
discussed:
Professional boundaries for teachers
Well-being of teachers, students and the community
School community – everybody participates
Towards the future, but how?
Safety: who is responsible for it and whose issue is it?
Leadership and change
Multifaceted leadership – pedagogy, well-being and safety, and personnel.
Out of the tens of lectures and seminars, only three sessions were related
directly to CPD (duration for each session: 30 minutes):
1. The teacher of the year talked about how to learn to be a ‘superteacher’ (“teacher 2.0”) in the presentation of a book he wrote on the
subject.
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Providers: Offerings and Critiques 113
2. A session, organized by a vice-principal and an administrator, was
entitled Let’s develop together. The aim of the session was to discuss
how to support teachers in their involvement with CPD.
3. The session on teacher tutors was a discussion between two ‘experts’
about the worth of this initiative and asked the question of its
sustainability.
The fair can probably serve as CPD in the sense that teachers can find
information about teaching tools, CPD programs, official information… The lectures and seminars are of interest, although many of these
sessions represent (indirect) advertising for companies selling services
and teaching tools. Some of the sessions are also meant to be entertaining (dance, stand-up). It would be interesting for a fair like EDUCA to
provide teachers with concrete and focused tools to help them keep up
with CPD outside the fair.
References
Aspfors, J. (2012). Induction practices: Experiences of newly qualified teachers.
Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2009). Recognizing and enhancing teacher effectiveness. The International Journal of Educational and Psychological Assessment, 3,
1–24.
Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). From preparation to practice: Designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching.
Girvan, C., Conneely, C., & Tangney, B. (2016). Extending experiential learning in teacher professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education,
58, 129–139.
Hämäläinen, K., & Hämäläinen, K. (2011). Professional development for education personnel as a competence resource. A report on good practices and
development measures in professional development for education personnel.
Helsinki: Opetushallitus.
Hämäläinen, K., Hämäläinen, K., & Kangasniemi, J. (2015). Osaamisen kehittämisen poluille: Valtion rahoittaman opetustoimen henkilöstökoulutuksen
haasteet ja tulevaisuus [Knowledge development direction: A state funded education in-service training, challenges and future]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus.
114 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Heikkinen, H., Hästö, P., Kangas, V., & Leinonen, M. (2015). Promoting
exploratory teaching in mathematics: A design experiment on a CPD course
for teachers. LUMAT (2013–2015 Issues), 3(6), 905–924.
Huber, S. G. (2012). The impact of professional development: A theoretical
model for empirical research, evaluation, planning and conducting training and development programmes. Professional Development in Education,
37(5), 837–853.
National Board of Education (2016). National core curriculum for basic
education. Helsinki: Opetushallitus.
Niemi, H. (2015). Teacher professional development in Finland: Towards a
more holistic approach. Psychology, Society & Education, 7(3), 279–294.
Pöntynen, L., & Silander, T. (2015). Opettajat koulutuksessa - nappikaupasta rohkeisiin ratkaisuihin [Teachers in training—The most daring
solutions]. Available at https://www.sitra.fi/blogit/opettajat-koulutuksessanappikaupasta-rohkeisiin-ratkaisuihin/.
Stein, M. K., Smith, M. S., & Silver, E. (1999). The development of professional developers: Learning to assist teachers in new settings in new ways.
Harvard Educational Review, 69(3), 237–270.
6
Teachers’ Views on CPD
Context: 2017, First Year of Reform
In this chapter, we examine teachers’ discourses on CPD. The context
of the interviews was a small lower secondary school in a rural area,
about 200 km away from the capital city. The choice of the school,
where the interviews were collected, relates to our wish to reach out to
the periphery and avoid schools based in the Helsinki area—which are
often visited by pedagogical tourists to Finland (see Dervin 2013). The
visit took place after the Christmas break in 2017. It is important to
note that this followed the first semester of implementation of the New
Core Curriculum. We had visited the school in early autumn 2017 so
we already knew some of the teachers we interviewed.
The discussions took place in the teachers’ staffroom and in a classroom. They were led in three languages (Finnish, English and French)
and translated into English when English was not used. We noted that
many of the teachers lowered down their voices or code-switched to
another language and looked in the direction of the Principal’s office
when they were critical of CPD or the school in general.
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_6
115
116 Y. Li and F. Dervin
When we started the interviews, we were struck by the fact that
most of the teachers looked and sounded tired—even if they just had
two weeks’ holiday. One teacher asserted that “I think that these Xmas
holidays… they did not give me some rest… we are tired…”—shifting speakers from me to we. As we shall see, some were clearly annoyed
by the reforms and the amount of work, they claimed, these impose on
them. For example, they discussed the problems of ‘over-digitalisation’
and the new idea of phenomenon-based learning, which was not taking
place in the school. One of the main obstacles for the latter relates to
funding. One teacher exclaimed: “I can’t even take my students to the
city 30 km away, we don’t have the money, while in Helsinki it is so
easy.” During the visit, we were also told that one teacher had left the
school, and the profession, as he was burning out. Another teacher was
off work (one of the best teachers whose students get top grades in the
final exams) because of stress about over-digitalisation. As we shall see
these issues were omnipresent in discussions of CPD (NAE 2016).
Before we examine the data in detail, let us make general remarks
about how the topic of CPD as an object of research is understood by
these teachers.
Some of the teachers we interviewed did not understand what the
Finnish phrase for CPD meant and what it covered. Besides some of them
were clearly ashamed of the fact that they don’t do any CPD at all—apart
from the compulsory VESO-days (see Heikkinen et al. 2015). However,
we noted that all the teachers we interviewed appeared to be very eager to
do new things and develop their skills, but they seem to do it either alone
or with their closest colleagues. Teacher 5 described herself as:
I am the kind of person who gets excited about things and I am always so
happy to find new methods.
Some of the teachers were also ‘hungry’ to do CPD but had no opportunity beyond VESO (because of family commitments or money).
Two teachers had done long-term CPD (a minor in media education;
a major in career advising while working). One teacher took us through
her professional Facebook page, explaining how she uses this tool to
self-train and “share tips” with other teachers. She considered this to be
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Teachers’ Views on CPD 117
the best form of CPD as it did not require going anywhere or spending time in a lecture hall. Interestingly, this teacher, as well as another
respondent, essentialised Finns to explain the lack of engagement and
cooperation with colleagues: “We Finns don’t like to share our work”;
“maybe we are too lazy in Finland and we are scared of what the others
will say…” (see similar arguments in Heikkinen et al. 2015; Pöntynen
and Silander 2015). These assertions (which we have heard from other
teachers and providers many times) seem to question e.g. Sahlberg’s
(2018) argument that “in Finland, we try to make cooperation part of
our culture”. They also disrupt the official narrative of ‘trust’.
In total six teachers took part in our interviews. We realise that this
is a very small number in a school that has 25 teachers. However, we
are not trying to generalise about all these teachers—not about Finnish
teachers in general. Our goal is to identify some recurring discourses
about CPD that might dialogue with discourses from respondents in
the other sections. We are also interested in the multiple and sometimes
conflicting and contradictory voices that we might identify about CPD.
The choice of the teachers was based on: different levels of seniority; different school subjects; different teacher education backgrounds
(Helsinki, Jyväskylä, and Turku). All the respondents were qualified
with a Master’s and teacher education credits. Only female teachers
took part in our study. One male teacher joined in one of the interviews
as a guest but did not say anything. The table below provides basic yet
anonymous information about the teachers (Table 6.1).
Teacher 3 is probably the most interested teacher in CPD. During
her interview she explained that:
I get bored very easily, so being me, I need the change if I do the same
every year that would burn me out… so I need this change…
Table 6.1 Profiles of interviewees (teachers)
Teacher
Seniority
Subject
1
2
3
4
5
6
20 years
15 years
8 years
5 years
15 years
10 years
Mother tongue (Finnish)
Foreign languages
History and psychology
Foreign languages
Mother tongue
History and geography
118 Y. Li and F. Dervin
At the time of the interview she had completed an extra qualification
in career advising and was considering doing a Ph.D. She was the only
teacher who did not have a permanent position in the school. When
asked how it felt when she started, she explained that she had received
a lot of support “because the headmaster teaches the same studies as I
do”. Furthermore, she considers that her university studies prepared her
well for self-learning.
The analysis is composed of the followings subsections: respondents’
experience of CPD; discourses on VESO-days; critiques of CPD; needs.
Respondents’ Experience of CPD
Having access to CPD in Finland requires being active in finding
proper and interesting courses in which one could take part (Niemi
2015, see Chapter 4). When asked what kind of CPD she has done
Teacher 6 claims that “I don’t think that there is much to offer for history teachers or maybe I am not active enough to look for the trainings but…”, showing that she is aware of the fact that she is somewhat
responsible for her own CPD.
Apart from teacher 3, it usually takes a certain number of interactional turns with us before the teachers mention concrete CPD courses
they have taken. Teacher 1 mentions a course about media education
that she took at a Finnish university with a colleague of hers, explaining
that “That was something I did not have at university when I studied”.
Teacher 2 seems to have had very little experience of CPD (she started
her career five years earlier). This is how she responds to the query about
past experiences of CPD:
T2: that’s a very difficult question… if you count in all the VESO
days… I have taken part in some training somewhere… last year I went
to Helsinki… they have this association for language teachers… it was
very useful it costs like 15 euros… the school paid… it was one evening
and they taught us how to use abitti in a very effective way and that was
very useful and that was something that was targeted… I have these great
notes I can use…
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Teachers’ Views on CPD 119
Eurydice (2015: 83) had already noted that less experienced teachers
have less access to CPD in Finland. The only concrete training that she
mentions was meant to support teachers in their use of an e-platform
(abitti in the excerpt above) used throughout Finland by high school
students who take the matriculation examination at the end of upper
secondary school. It is interesting to note that many teachers seemed to
be worried about not knowing how to use the platform properly and
claimed they needed more training—while they said nothing about their
needs for further development in relation to e.g. the subject they taught.
When urged to think about other examples of CPD that she had
taken, teacher 2 comments on a course taken at the National Agency of
Education in 2015:
T2: there was something organised by the NAE it must have been like
2015… autumn 2015… so we went to Helsinki… the problem is every
time it is organised by NAE it is like they have several lecturers… there
lots of people there… and the other speakers don’t know what the others
talk about… so there might be slideshows that resemble one another and
we were just talking about this… (…) the speakers did not know what
the others said and there was a lot of overlapping…
This is a critique about CPD courses that we have often heard during
interviews or informally with acquaintances (see Heikkinen et al. 2015;
Huhtala and Vesalainen 2017). There does not always seem to be cohesion and coherence in the way CPD courses are organised.
The first two teachers are language teachers and, as seen earlier, there are many opportunities to apply for funding to do CPD
abroad. However, neither of these teachers have taken part in such
initiatives, although they remember having applied at some point
in their career. The reasons given for not taking part include having
young children, which limits the opportunity to spend time abroad,
and financial reasons (although all is covered and a substitute teacher
is even paid for).
Teacher 4 explains that she does CPD at least once a year, which she
refers to as “short courses… a weekend, an evening or a day or something… nothing very extensive” (see Aspfors 2012). She only gives
120 Y. Li and F. Dervin
the concrete example of a course on using new technologies and IT in
teaching organised by a university three years earlier. She adds:
T4: The headmaster suggested I should take this course and I went and
that was very useful and I have used things I learnt, it was organised
locally so I did not need to go to Helsinki
I: so the municipality paid for everything?
T4: yes, everything, so that was good…
As explained earlier, teacher 3 appears to be the most engaged and motivated for CPD. This is how she talks about a CPD course she had completed just before the Christmas break:
T3: I just finished in December studies that I became a student counsellor. That was a one and a half-year programme. I was working here and
then one week in [name of Finnish university].
I: and the municipality had organised all the substituting?
T3: yeah, I did all my lessons for that time and when I was away I did not
get any salary… well you know teachers are like that…
Unlike other teachers, T3 seems to be even willing to ‘sacrifice’ her own
time and money to get extra qualifications. It is important to note that she
is younger than other teachers, with no family ties. Furthermore, she was
the only teacher who did not have a permanent position—although she
had been working in the school for at least 8 years—and who was considering embarking on a PhD. Her case could show that personal motivation
and circumstances can have an influence on participation in CPD.
Discourses on VESO-Days
As a reminder, VESO further training days consist of CPD organised by
a school or a municipality for all staff (Hellström 2012). They are compulsory half-days or full-days, usually organised outside teaching time.
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Teachers’ Views on CPD 121
The teachers’ views on this major source of CPD are rather negative
in the interviews. Teacher 1 is very strongly critical of VESO-days:
T1: (…) VESO if you remember but the usefulness of that is like zero or
minus three or… something like that
I: when we came here in August there was a VESO day on evaluation, do
you remember?
T1: no… but yes… we had those but they are bullshit… mostly… of
course there is something but… they are not very useful… maybe the
performer has been poor or the subject I feel is something I don’t need in
my every day work…
Teacher 1 is the most experienced teacher of all the respondents and
is known for being an excellent teacher. Her language is very strong:
VESO days are ‘useless’, ‘bullshit’ (see Guiden and Brennan 2017).
The other teachers appear to be a bit more balanced in their opinion.
Teacher 3 argues that the usefulness of these VESO-days is unstable:
“well it depends, sometimes they do, sometimes I get really bored and
hate it and you know…”. Teacher 5 qualifies VESO-days as “always so
‘useful’” in an ironic way, using her fingers to form inverted commas.
We asked teacher 5 why she felt this way:
I: When we came in August you had a VESO on assessment… was that good?
T5: yes, we have had many VESOs on this topic… it brought me very
little… to me because in Finnish language and literature… so I think
that the assessment that I have done has been very versatile so it was not
so much news to me… I have never had this thing that we study this
and then we have exam and then you get the grade… no that is not the
way… (…) few VESOs have been kind of useful but… most of them are
like too general… there’s all the teachers together and then there is no…
and nothing to do with practical stuff…
Again and again the argument of VESO-days not being well targeted
or useful for the respondents returns in the interviews (Heikkinen et al.
2015). We often felt that they experienced them as ‘duty’ rather than
122 Y. Li and F. Dervin
opportunities to learn new things. Teacher 5 gives a certain number of
arguments in the previous excerpt: VESO days are too general and not
related to practices. Teacher 4 reinforces this impression in her discourse
on VESO-days but she also adds an important aspect: the leadership
does not consult teachers about potential topics of interest. We were
aware of a forthcoming VESO-day at the school, so we asked teacher 2
what it was going to be about. She replied:
T2: yes, we are gonna have our next VESO this January, but we haven’t
really decided… because our general idea was to work with teachers from
different schools in the region but… they have all decided to have their
own VESO days.
I: So, is this going to happen?
T2: yes, but I don’t know the exact date or the topic…
I: what topics would you want? Give us a couple of topics.
T2: I don’t know perhaps… cooperating and sharing ideas with the
others…
The teacher’s answer seems typical of the participants: they would want
something interesting and relevant to their own work but they are not
sure what. It is also interesting that the cooperative characteristic of
Finnish teachers, which is mentioned by many education exporters, is
somewhat put into question here when the teacher explains that the
joint VESO with other schools would not take place because “they have
decided to have their own VESO days”.
Critiques of CPD
Throughout the interviews, the teachers don’t mince their words about
CPD as they see it in Finland. The choice of the school, in a rural part
of the country, in the periphery, shows that the teachers experience
some kind of exclusion, by not being able to participate in CPD as
often as they would like to if they lived in a city. Teacher 1 explains:
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Teachers’ Views on CPD 123
“where we are away from city where all the activities are”. She adds “In
Helsinki, it only takes 15 minutes to go somewhere for CPD here I
have to take a train and it takes 3 hours” (see Heikkinen et al. 2015). In
a similar vein teacher 5 shares the following:
I have tried to find some interesting CPD but I haven’t… or I had found
something but it was in Jyväskylä… in Helsinki I could still go – but in
Jyväskylä it is too far away…
The city of Jyväskylä is located in the western part of the Finnish
Lakeland, about 270 km from the capital city and 150 km from the
school. All these assertions go against the somewhat commonsense that
has been built about Finland that all schools are equal in the Nordic
country (Sahlberg 2011).
There are laws, of course, about CPD but the teachers are hesitant
about the number of days they should reserve for CPD. Teacher 1
explains:
T1: I know but two of those days are VESOS. They are legally those. And
then there is one day which you have to find…
I: But do you have to?
T1: I don’t know maybe I should… but nobody is checking this…
Teacher 1 expresses guilt for not being actively involved in CPD (like
many other teachers). The end of her second tour (“but nobody is
checking this…”) represents an argument that we heard repeatedly (see
Hämäläinen 2015). Some teachers assumed that leadership does not keep
track of the use of the third compulsory day of CPD for financial reasons:
the schools have very little budget for CPD and, silence around CPD,
allows them to save money for other things. Teacher 3 goes as far as claiming that, as a consequence, “In Finland, CPD has been quite neglected…”
When asked who takes part in CPD in the school, some teachers
argue that it depends on the teachers’ personality and motivation, confirming e.g. Heikkinen’s et al. (2015) study and Fullan (2005). Teacher
3, however, believes that:
124 Y. Li and F. Dervin
through my experience my older colleagues… they are not so eager… if
you have five years before retirement, but I don’t know how I will feel
when I am 60… But if you look at this new curriculum, everybody has to
change the way they teach…
Some decision-makers and providers that we interviewed also shared
the view that ‘older’ teachers do not rely on CPD to develop. Teacher 3
adds:
I have only been doing this for 5 years so it is OK I can find my way but
for my older colleagues who have been doing a successful job for decades
already, I think they feel the pressure and I don’t think this makes them
happy because it is nearly as if someone is saying to you OK the work you
have been doing for decades is not good anymore, and I don’t think that’s a
good thing and there is always a trend…
Through her discourse on older teachers, she shows her sympathy for
them, especially as she claims, the request to do CPD could be deemed
aggressive to their faces and professional identity.
Teacher 5 brings back the topic of financial limitations to taking part
in CPD regularly and seriously. Teacher 5 is adamant that “maybe the
trainings or educations that are for us are the ones that don’t cost any
money”. In her opinion the school principal would send teachers more
often to do CPD if there was a real budget and if CPD were much
cheaper (see Hämäläinen and Hämäläinen 2011). Money issues also
seem to matter to teacher 2:
T2: I think it is most about money, you really need to ask can I go
there? Can I get the money? CPD is not always good… you can have a
lot of expectations and then you go there and then wow maybe 30 minutes is useful and the rest is useless… when you only have the opportunity to choose one training, you see the title and you go and you get
disappointed…
For teacher 2, CPD is an investment for which one does not always reap
the right fruits (or any fruit at all), depending on the trainer, the topic
and the newness of what is offered (Aspfors 2012).
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Teachers’ Views on CPD 125
The Need for CPD
All in all, the teachers recognize the importance of lifelong learning
through CPD in the career of teachers. For them, ITT is not enough.
When we tell them that some decision makers we had spoken to
claimed that teachers were so well trained that they did not need CPD,
teachers 5 and 6 responded as follows:
T5: No that is not the case
T6: NO
T5: that is truly not the case…
I: so when you finished your studies you felt you were not ready?
T5: No…
T6: No…
T5: never I am gonna be ready… this is how it should be, I think…
T6: ITT gives us a good basis…
T5: but if you don’t keep on building and training…
T6: that would be a disaster.
Teacher 4 is of the same opinion:
T4: no, of course not, I am not ready… it changes all the time, so you have
to learn all the time, for example the new curriculum, for example, I have
learnt all the different programmes and software… I learnt here… I wasn’t
taught anything like that during my studies and I think it is important to
keep up with the language level too because the language changes…
Teacher 1 shares the same opinion about ITT and CPD (see Niemi
2015), and mentions the new Core Curriculum to justify:
T1: No, I don’t feel that I have been well trained… I am not in this moment
when we have all this technology, all these changes and the new curriculum…
126 Y. Li and F. Dervin
The way to do CPD properly, and how to get the time and money to do
it, seem to remain mysteries to our respondents (Pöntynen and Silander
2015). Teacher 4 finds it hard to answer the following question:
I: when you think about your own needs, what would be useful to give
you a boost?
T4: I would… I suppose… of course… hum… a good question… I am
always eager to learn new things… but I think that the phenomenon
based teaching I would love to learn…
Yet some teachers appear to be aware of what would need to be needed
to make a change.
Teacher 1 agrees that there should be a system of more systematic and
compulsory training (Villegas-Reimers 2003). Interestingly, however,
she questions this ‘proposal’ by arguing that “I think my students are
my priority”—meaning: I don’t want to be away from school. She concludes the interview with these words: “I think I need but I don’t have
the time or the energy to go”…
For teachers 2 and 5, there are actual discrepancies in Finnish ITT
as, depending on where the teachers were trained to be teachers, they
might have different approaches and perspectives:
T2: but I think that the standards vary a lot so… sometimes when I listen
to my colleague I think that she has gone through such a different system… it depends on the teacher educators…
For them, this means that, in order to lower the potential gaps between
teachers who were trained differently, CPD would be a good addition.
Finally, teachers 5 and 6 wish to explore forms of CPD that would be
more informal, such as discussions with colleagues. They co-construct
the following discourse of cooperation:
T5: I think that I would like to talk to a few people… maybe about the
same subject I teach… but it is not necessary and just talk…
T6: I have found it very useful to talk to my colleague because she also
teaches history… she has given me many ideas and to think myself these
6
Teachers’ Views on CPD 127
things… and I would like to have more education where we talk to other
history teachers…
T5: and maybe we could even see what the others have done…
Pause
This section has examined the discourses of six teachers about CPD
from a ‘peripheral’ Finnish school. The choice of this context proved
to be fruitful: many respondents argued that living far off the centre,
limits access to CPD, especially when funding is almost nonexistent.
What also emerges from the interviews is that teachers follow very little CPD, although one of our teachers seems to represent an exception (Heikkinen et al. 2015). A lack of funding, family commitments
or simply a lack of motivation explain the low level of engagement
with CPD. The teachers also blame the authorities (school leaders
and municipalities) for not reserving enough funding for CPD or for
‘checking’ if people do CPD regularly. The teachers recommend more
(practical?) CPD related to their own work; more cooperation between
teachers and levelling of ITT through CPD (Niemi 2015). Although
the teachers admit that there is a need for CPD, and that they would
wish to have access to quality CPD, it does not appear to be a priority
for them.
References
Aspfors, J. (2012). Induction practices: Experiences of newly qualified teachers.
Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press.
Dervin, F. (2013). La Meilleure Éducation au Monde? Contre-enquête sur la
Finlande [The best education in the world. An ethnography of Finland].
Paris: L’Harmattan.
European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice. (2015). The teaching profession in
Europe: Practices, perceptions, and policies. Eurydice Report. Luxembourg:
Publications Office of the European Union. http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/thematic_reports/184EN.pdf.
128 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Fullan, M. (2005). Leadership and sustainability. System thinkers in action.
Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
Guiden, V., & Brennan, M. (2017). The continuous professional development
(CPD) of Finnish primary school teachers—Potential lessons to be learned
for Ireland. Irish Teachers’ Journal, 5(1), 39–54.
Hämäläinen, K., & Hämäläinen, K. (2011). Professional development for education personnel as a competence resource. A report on good practices and
development measures in professional development for education personnel.
Helsinki: Opetushallitus.
Hämäläinen, K., Hämäläinen, K., & Kangasniemi, J. (2015). Osaamisen
kehittämisen poluille: Valtion rahoittaman opetustoimen henkilöstökoulutuksen haasteet ja tulevaisuus [Knowledge development direction: A state
funded education in-service training, challenges and future]. Helsinki:
Opetushallitus.
Heikkinen, H., Hästö, P., Kangas, V., & Leinonen, M. (2015). Promoting
exploratory teaching in mathematics: A design experiment on a CPD course
for teachers. LUMAT (2013–2015 Issues), 3(6), 905–924.
Hellström, M. (2012). In-service training of teachers in Finland. Available at
pedagogiikkaa.blogspot.com/2012/05.
Huhtala, A., & Vesalainen, M. (2017). Challenges in developing in-service
teacher training: Lessons learnt from two projects for teachers of Swedish in
Finland. Apples: Journal of Applied Language Studies, 11, 55–79.
National Agency for Education. (2016). Teachers and principals in Finland.
Available at http://www.oph.fi/download/185381_teachers_and_principals_in_Finland_2016_brochure.pdf.
Niemi, H. (2015). Teacher professional development in Finland: Towards a
more holistic approach. Psychology, Society & Education, 7(3), 279–294.
Pöntynen, L., & Silander, T. (2015). Opettajat koulutuksessa - nappikaupasta
rohkeisiin ratkaisuihin [Teachers in training—The most daring solutions].
Available at https://www.sitra.fi/blogit/opettajat-koulutuksessa-nappikaupastarohkeisiin-ratkaisuihin/.
Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish lessons. What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia
University.
Sahlberg, P. (2018). Teachers need a sense of mission, empathy and leadership. The
Conversation (Zhuoying, Z.). 3 January 2018. Available at https://www.jiemodui.com/N/90187.
Villegas-Reimers, E. (2003). Teacher professional development: An international review of the literature. Paris: International Institute for Educational
Planning.
7
Paratexts to CPD: Decision Making,
Leadership, Teacher Education
and Project Work
In this section we examine what we refer to as paratexts to CPD in the
Finnish context. We borrow the term paratext to the French literary
theorist Gérard Genette (1987: 1–2) who defines it as follows:
A literary work consists, entirely or essentially, of a text, defined (very
minimally) as a more or less long sequence of verbal statements that are
more or less endowed with significance. But the text is rarely presented in
an unadorned state, unreinforced and unaccompanied by a certain number of verbal or other productions, such as an author’s name, a title, a
preface, illustrations. And although we do not always know whether these
productions are to be regarded as belonging to the text, in any case, they
surround it and extend it, precisely in order to present it (…).
In order to extend the metaphor, we could say that a paratext is also like
supporting actors in a film or theatrical performance; background singers; on-site medical staff in sporting events, etc. In other words, paratexts are secondary, but, at the same time, they play an important role.
In the previous sections, we have listened to CPD providers as well
as some of their ‘customers’ (teachers). In what follows we examine
the discourses of individuals who represent, like paratexts to a book,
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_7
129
130 Y. Li and F. Dervin
“other productions” that accompany and have an influence on the
perception and discourses on CPD in Finland: decision makers, a school
principal, a teacher educator and a CPD project coordinator. They all have
a role to play for CPD: decision makers set priorities, manage and fund
CPD; the school principal (should) make(s) sure that teachers do CPD;
the teacher educator is involved in ITT but also in questions related to
teachers’ CPD and has intervened in many CPD courses; the project
coordinator works on a CPD project for teachers in a Finnish city. Each
of these individuals were interviewed at their work place in English and
Finnish.
Decision-Makers: The NAE
The first category of paratext is that of decision-makers. We felt it was
essential to get the perspective of those who fund most of the CPDs in
Finland. We thus contacted people at the National Agency of Education
in Helsinki, especially the Counsellors of education who manage different aspects of education. We were referred to individuals who are
directly involved in managing CPD. Three participants came to our
interview: one national coordinator for CPD (C1 hereafter), and two
for international mobility of teachers (C2 and C3).
The interview started with a presentation of facts about Finnish education and CPD (legislation, statistics, etc.). The coordinator for CPD
had prepared a PowerPoint presentation that seems to be a presentation used for Finnish education export purposes. Although we had
requested an interview, we felt that the session would be mostly about
promoting Finnish education. After 10 minutes, we told our respondents that we appreciated the fact that they wanted to share information
about Finnish education but that we already knew a lot, having lived
and worked in the country for more than 20 years. It was interesting to
note the change of ‘tone’ when we started questioning (diplomatically)
some of the participants’ assertions. For example, we noticed that the
coordinator kept using the phrase “these are wonderful figures” when he
presented us with comparative statistics about Finnish education. But
we wanted to hear about other aspects, more critical aspects. In what
7
Paratexts to CPD … 131
follows the coordinator shows us figures demonstrating that Finnish
teachers are the most respected in the world. We question him:
I: But there is no research on that… but from our observations this is
changing a bit…
C1: in Finland you mean?
I: Yes… there are new discourses about teachers… they are changing…
C1: Maybe parents are challenging the school more and more? And also
that we want to include not only professionals building up the whole
school system and the curriculum but also other counterparts in the society like parents… it is the same in other Nordic countries, colleagues
complain about that and you know some teachers even leave the profession because they find it a bit stressing
C2: I think that one thing is that teachers are more concerned about the
extra work that they have to do outside the class hours as well because it
has increased so much with the new curriculum.
From this moment in the interview, the respondents started opening up
and being more critical, less ‘official’ in a sense.
Answering Critical Points: Official Parlance
vs. ‘Truths’?
The interview oscillated between what we wish to refer to as propaganda and ‘truths’. As a reminder the NAE actively takes part in Finnish
education export (Schatz 2015); receives many foreign delegations per
year, whom they charge; set up a growth programme entitled Education
Finland in 2018, which aims at supporting businesses, higher education
institutions and other education and training providers in expanding in
the international market.
Like for the providers and teachers in the previous sections, we asked
the decision makers if they felt that teachers had received so good ITT
that CPD was not always necessary. This discussion follows a part of the
132 Y. Li and F. Dervin
presentation that shows that Finnish teacher education is the best in the
world:
I: Many researchers… they keep saying that ITT is so great that teachers
are so well trained that they know how to self-develop or develop with
others… Do you think this is true?
C1: Well I think that there is a certain truth because they are master’s
students even at the class teacher level… so they have a good initial
training…
We noticed that C2 seemed to disagree. We thus asked her to share her
views:
I: You don’t seem to agree too much…
C2: I think that it is a very good basis and I think that the success of our
basic education relies on the very good and thorough teacher education
and training but nevertheless the world is changing all the time…
C1: yes of course
C2: and it is in a great speed which means that each and every one of
us needs further education all the time… and there is versatile offer
and teachers are quite independent in Finland… and then you have the
capacity of choosing also that you stay and take your in-service training
sort of in your own surroundings… and maybe this is the Finnish vision
that it is sort of how should I say very open or…
C1: there is not one model that suits everybody you can have different
approaches
C2: and even… so open-minded somehow…
C2 disagreed with C1 somehow but she seemed to be constructing an identity for Finnish ITT, which is that of freedom, diversity and open-mindedness (see Sahlberg 2012 and critiques in Sitomaniemi-San 2015). When we
told her, that this aspect “is a bit confusing for some people abroad… it is
too flexible maybe…”, she used a typical argument based on what Dervin
(2016) refers to as ‘culture as an alibi’ (an easy explanation):
7
Paratexts to CPD … 133
C2: yes but you have to think that we have different cultures and… if
one generalises in our country it is always… the same teachers who are
doing in-service training and then there are those who think that they
never need anything… but it is like your hairdresser someone wants to
go on in-service training every day and then some get stuck to what they
learnt in their initial training…
The use of the visit to the hairdresser metaphor allows C2 to divide
teachers into two clear groups: those who are willing to self-develop and
those who rely on their basic teaching skills only. Interestingly, this limited view of teachers seems not to take into account views and opinions
as those of the teachers we interviewed for this study. For instance, the
(sometimes) ‘castrating’ role of both schools and municipalities that do
not always provide funds and opportunities to take part in CPD (see
Heikkinen et al. 2015). In the rest of her turn, C2 mentions (yet again)
the ‘trust culture’ of Finland as a way of justifying the freedom and
motivation that teachers have to develop:
also the trust culture in this country they are adult trained people and one has
to expect that they think by themselves when they need and what they need
and then pick from the offer, so in this respect even though we try to make
the system better and also offer a lot we basically trust very much in them
We note here again a total ignorance of the importance of local decision-making mechanisms in allowing teachers to take part in CPD.
Finland might have a ‘culture of trust’ towards teachers (Sahlberg 2018)
but if no efforts are made to allow them to develop properly, this rhetorical point falls on its head on many fronts.
Later in the interview, the idea that CPD can be imposed on some
teachers is suggested by C1:
C1: And then it is up to the local administration to decide what is acceptable, what sort of programme and the forms of training… and then
in addition, it says you can assign teachers for two more days and the
employer has to pay extra for that they are actually working days…
I: “Can assign”… what does this mean?
134 Y. Li and F. Dervin
C1: It means that, for example, the principal sees that there is a teacher
who needs such as ICT skills so the principal can assign or say to the
teacher now you have to go… but I think it does not happen very
often… it happens very rarely but it is possible…
This part of the discussion seems, in a way, to contradict the ‘trust
culture’ (see in previous quote: “they are adult trained people and one
has to expect that they think by themselves when they need and what
they need and then pick from the offer” C2). At the end of his turn, C2
operates a repair when he claims that assignment to CPD by principals
does not occur “very often”—substituted by “very rarely”, which mitigates somehow the meaning of the claim.
In brief, what we note in this section is that discourses on teachers,
ITT and the need for CPD, oscillate between officialised discourses and
alternative truths, especially when ‘disrupted’ by our questions.
Awareness of the Problems with CPD
The further we moved into the discussions, the more the respondents
appear to let critiques emerge. After half an hour into the discussions,
when prompted about the issue of funding, the following discussion
ensures:
C1: the economic situation is what it is… and it has been very difficult
for some teachers to get that money for accommodation… so many
teachers have complained that they don’t even get the permission to go to
these free in-service trainings…
I: here again there appears to be differences between municipalities?
C2: and I think that OK… the travel costs and things like that… but
substitute teachers are the highest cost I think… and this is a problem for
many municipalities…
We find the same arguments and explanations as the ones identified
by both providers and teachers (see Pöntynen and Silander 2015).
The national decision-makers are very aware of these issues. We then
7
Paratexts to CPD … 135
asked them how they took this into account when they select the CPD
courses that they fund. C1 explains:
C1: That’s why when we select the projects we fund… we look at the whole
map of Finland that they are all over so they don’t have to travel so far…
Another issue that we discussed with the decision-makers is the lack of
transparency in terms of feedback from the providers (see Huber 2012).
We tried to have access to feedback but the providers always claimed
that for business reasons they could not be shared. C2 makes the following claim about this issue:
C2: If it is business well… of course you have your sort of business integrity and certain level of secrets but then again… I would not know…
This claim is somewhat surprising since, as a funding agency, one would
expect the NAE to be interested in what the providers do and how their
trainings are perceived by teachers. We thus asked our respondents if
they, themselves, had feedback from teachers who had taken part in
these trainings. C1 tells us that “we don’t have a summary of the feedback but sometimes we read them, in individual cases”…
At the end of the interview, it became clear that our respondents were
very aware of the main problems behind CPD in Finnish education.
Although they had spent time trying to convince us that Finnish education is a ‘miracle’, the final evaluation of CPD in Finland shows that the
Nordic country faces big issues, very similar to the ones experienced by
other countries:
I: one last question: what do you think should be done about CPD in the
future? From your side?
(20-second silence)
C1: I think that the municipalities and schools should invest more to see
the importance of in-service training and invest on it to let teachers go to
in-service training sessions and it should not be so tight…
I: and the Ministry of Education cannot say anything about this?
136 Y. Li and F. Dervin
C1: No, the money is not earmarked so… even if they get the money
from the government, they are free to use it as they want… they can use
it for social services or anything…
Again, like the providers and teachers, the consequences of decentralisation (decisional power resides in the hands of municipalities) are clearly
stated and somewhat criticized here: Municipalities are in control and
no one can force them to make an effort to promote CPD.
From the perspective of European programs for teachers’ CPD, to which
Finnish teachers are entitled, C2 notes that many of the issues mentioned
above can play against Finnish teachers participating in these programs:
C2: from our perspective, at least we see that there are a lot of applicants… so there is a demand definitely and what we hear from the field is
that the substitute teacher issue is a very big problem… and even though
many teachers do it during the summer vacation… and of course many
schools in Europe are working when our teachers are on vacation but still
one feels always a bit bad so… This has been noted at the Commission
level also… even though of course it is a question of money…
As a reminder none of the teachers that we have interviewed were able
to take part in these EU programs, family and financial matters always
being mentioned as hindrances.
Views from a Principal
The second participant in is section is a school leader: A vice-principal
for basic education in a peripheral school (rural area; VP hereafter).
She had worked at the same school for 23 years when we met her, also
teaching health education and textile. We started by asking her about
her own experiences of CPD:
VP: Mainly the IT and then health education, the whole diploma and
then of course the vice-rectorship… I did the official… it was during
the work… it was five credit points or I don’t remember… it is not so
much…
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Paratexts to CPD … 137
Throughout her career, VP has acquired new skills through CPD. Her
original training was in textile work education, and then she specialized
in health education—which is taught at lower secondary school level.
10 years ago, she obtained the full qualifications to be able to serve as
vice principal in her school.
CPD and Teachers
When we started discussing teachers’ CPD, we asked her about ITT and
preparedness for their work when they enter the field (see Niemi 2015):
I: Usually because there is not so much research on CPD in Finland, they
say ITT is so great that teachers can self-learn for life?
S: No, I don’t think… they are always well prepared because someone…
they need more… and they find their ways… others think they have the
education so they don’t need help… I KNOW… so you are not the right
person to tell me I should learn something…
VP disagrees with the assertion that CPD is not so much needed in
Finland. In the excerpt she divides her teachers in two categories: Those
who know they need CPD and try to do it, and others who do not
want to do CPD. She ‘performs’ the voice of the latter in a somewhat
ironic tone, mimicking their voice (“I KNOW… so you are not the
right person to tell me”). The performed utterance is actually an interaction. Based on current knowledge about dialogism (i.e. the performance
of multivoicedness in people’s utterances, see Aveling et al. 2015), one
could imagine that this performance is based on real discourses and
interactions heard by VP.
The next point made by VP concerns newcomers, new teachers who
just graduated. We shared with her the wish of the NAE for new teachers
to be better inducted in schools. VP explains how new teachers are treated:
S: They start because it is so… to tell how our school usually works, if
you tell too much we have our new habits but I trust the teachers, they
know how to do their work… we don’t give too much information…
138 Y. Li and F. Dervin
yesterday I told our new teachers how to do a few practical and admin
things but never about how to teach… For the teaching we have nothing
to say… it takes some weeks and the students come and tell if there are
problems… but the young ones they are not problematic but the older
ones… Usually I like new teachers because they teach us new things, new
habits… it becomes CPD for us the older ones….
There are many interesting claims in this excerpt. First as a vice principal who introduces the school to new teachers, VP tells us that they
are not provided with too much information as she would want them
to discover things by themselves: “we don’t give too much information”. Second it is not her duty (or anyone else’s in a sense) to teach
these new teachers how to teach (see similar argument in Aspfors 2012).
‘Trustspeak’ (The trust argument) is used to justify this argument. It is
interesting to note, however, that VP adds that students would report if
there were any problems with the new teachers’ teaching. Third, in this
part of the interview, VP further divides teachers into ‘new’ and ‘older’
teachers. She often accuses (gently) the latter of being negligent of CPD.
Finally, she makes the interesting point that, by joining the school, new
teachers usually bring in new skills that help others to develop.
During our discussions with the representatives of the NAE, we were
told that school leaders can “assign” teachers to do some CPD. We
wanted to find out more about this with VP:
I: So, there are examples when you have told people maybe you should go
on CPD?
VP: yes… but for the new teachers there is the trade union that can help
and I remember they have support for young teachers…
I: But as a vice-principal do you have the power to force people to do CPD?
VP: Yes, my colleague does because he makes the plans with the people, they have the development discussions and there you can ask for
CPD and if it is possible… and some people might need more but they
feel they don’t need and they have studied 20 years ago and they feel
they know everything. Sometimes, if there have been some problems
with teachers… some teachers are not forced but guided to take some
training…
7
Paratexts to CPD … 139
In order to answer the question, VP refers to the task of her superior (the principal of the school) who has a yearly appraisal with each
teacher. The issue of CPD is usually put on the table during these meetings (see Pöntynen and Silander 2015). But, as we have seen with teachers in a previous section, very few are entitled to do CPD because of a
lack of funding. She also mentions that the trade union organizes (free)
trainings for new teachers. She only deals with the core of the question
we asked her at the end of her turn. Although it may sound contradictory to ‘trustspeak’, she admits that some teachers are asked to do
specific CPD when needed (i.e. when there are problems) (she operates a shift between the verbs ‘to be forced’ to ‘to be guided’ to do so).
This indicates a potential approach to CPD which is somewhat punitive
rather than precautionary.
Organising CPD
Part of VP’s role in the school is to organize the compulsory VESO-days
(see Guiden and Brennan 2017). We asked her how these days are set up:
I: You have the VESO every year and how does it work?
VP: It depends what is the actual happening, whole Finland, at school or
in a municipality. In January, we have a training on evaluation and maybe
the two last years is the new curriculum but sometimes we have together
high school and primary and sometimes even with the preschool, but
when we do at school our leadership discusses what is needed right
now usually beforehand so now, for example, we are planning next year
because we have to take care of what is official so we can hire somebody
or what we have to do by ourselves.
In this excerpt, VP shows the complexity of organizing VESO-days
in terms of format, participants, topics, trainers to hire, etc. Many of
the teachers we interviewed complained about the fact that they were
not consulted to propose topics for VESO-days. VP confirms that in
the case of her school, it is the leadership that decides on that. VP was
140 Y. Li and F. Dervin
then asked to share some ideas about the topics that could be covered in
future VESO-days:
I: If you look at the situation now, what sort of topics would be needed?
VP: …learn how to use modern teaching techniques, how to behave with
students…
I: what about the phenomenon-based learning thing?
VP: you know… as much as you have learnt by yourself… there is some
training but…
The question might have been difficult for her but it is quite surprising
that the proposed topics are so broad.
We finished our interview with VP by trying to find out how she
deals with teachers’ potential demands/needs for CPD—beyond VESOdays. Without any surprise, the financial argument emerges:
I: If the teachers want to do some extra training, how does it work?
VP: because lack of the money there is usually one day per year… of
course you can go if you want and it depends your boss if you get paid
or unpaid… and maybe for craft teachers it is in the summer time and
weekends but also during school days but it is about one day a year and it
depends how much it costs but usually the trainings are not so expensive
if you think about those in the business world….
I: do all the teachers use this one day per year?
VP: no, so it means that then others can go for two days or more, it
depends how much it costs because the money is…
Views from a Teacher Educator
The data from this subsection derives from an interview with one of the
most influential and experienced teacher educators (TE) in Finland.
Besides her position at a faculty of education, she has played an important consulting role with decision makers and teachers in Finland.
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Paratexts to CPD … 141
CPD in Finland: An Eternal Issue
From the beginning of the interview, it became clear that TE shared
similar views as what we have noticed in this study. As her experience
is long-term, she notes many times during the interview that the points
we are making have been discussed by teacher educators, school leaders and teachers for many decades… but that nothing ever seems to be
done to meet these issues.
TE: Thank you for choosing this thematic because it is so important.
So, if I give a little historical background, maybe not so far away, but
I have been a member and chairing committees in Finland in teacher
and teacher education, and during the last 20-25 years every document
has said the same thing that teachers’ CPD should be better integrated
with teachers’ ITT… and it should be systematic in those schools and
school areas where teachers are working. Now during last fifteen years
there has been in every document that there should be induction,
which is missing in Finland and that is something that has been discussed… so that is the background and now there is teacher education
forum established 2016 this big network and it has identified the biggest difficulties, problems and challenges in Finnish teacher education
sector and that is in-service training and induction so again these are…
(…) so anyway I could say that the same burning issues have been all
the time discussed and how to solve them? that’s the issue we haven’t solved because, you know, that funding is coming from different
sources so university is funded by state money and teachers are working
in local municipalities and employer is responsible for teacher PD so
how to put these together? And then coming labour market negotiations… so unfortunately that kind of discussion has been so far… and
many good pilots have been, for example, for induction and there has
been peer mentoring and individual mentoring projects but they have
been project-based and every time the project finishes and then it is
over, it vanishes…
This is the very beginning of the interview and TE makes a list of many
of the issues that have been discussed by the different actors interviewed
142 Y. Li and F. Dervin
in the previous sections: CPD lacks systematicity, induction is lacking,
and funding is a big issue (see Heikkinen et al. 2015 for similar arguments). The last problem mentioned by TE is an important one, and
we shall have the opportunity to present a project coordinator’s experience of dealing with CPD in the next subsection. TE’s point is that,
often, CPD is based on project-work and that this leads to short-term,
inconsistent and incoherent use of resources created during the projects
(Aspfors 2012). Although TE does not clearly define what she means by
CPD in this first part of the interview, the short historical overview that
she proposes sets a critical and reflexive tone for the rest of the interview. TE notes herself that she has tended to be negative about issues of
CPD in Finland and attempts to correct her position halfway through
the interview:
TE: I am very pessimistic now because we have not succeeded to
change… but still when I look at statistics I think that Finnish teachers
in-service training there is quite a lot happening and different models for
that but I see that we give to our teachers high quality training and we
give them the capacity to make research based activities in schools but we
don’t use this capacity enough…
In a similar vein, at the end of the interview, when we suggest that
Finland could learn from other countries how to implement CPD, she
reminds us that Finland has a somewhat unequal approach to education
provision based on decentralisation:
TE: There are good examples. In Finland… I have seen very good
examples but then the question is is it some areas project or is it systematic project? We have also wonderful schools and wonderful projects where teachers are supported, are trained so there are… there
are wonderful principals who create so good atmosphere and they
take new tools and different kinds of actions… so the whole neighbourhood is admiring what is happening in schools but then there
are totally different kinds of schools…. That is a big problem in a
decentralised system, how can we keep all these teachers and schools
in high lines?
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Paratexts to CPD … 143
Problems with CPD
‘Trustspeak’ is widespread amongst many teacher educators in Finnish
education, especially when they work with the education export industry (see Itkonen et al. 2017). TE is quite critical of it in what follows:
I: Another issue is trust of teachers… but sometimes it seems to be used
as an excuse for not acting…
TE: I think you are right it is used as an excuse for doing nothing or
doing less as they could… I think that the danger is that teachers are getting too tired to repeat same things… there are some things to activate
them to find new things then it is more rewarding… it is keeping them
more interested in their work… the emphasis of the new curriculum is
the learning community ideology and I discussed and even we wrote an
article about what is the most important issue and it is how to create
learning community and if they are not ready for that they can’t do it
with their students… teachers and students work together and teachers
and parents work together… and that creates a new culture… but there
are problems in Finland… cooperation is difficult… we get this information from new teachers…
TE refers to the 2016 Core Curriculum, which lays a strong emphasis
on cooperation and community, to insist on the need for teachers to
learn new ways of being, new ways of being a teacher. She first criticizes
trustspeak as a potential barrier to learning new things. She even goes as
far as claiming that it can be used as an excuse (by e.g. school leaders)
to create some kind of state of inertia. She notes, however, like some of
our respondents in previous sections, that “cooperation is difficult” in
Finland… (see Huhtala and Vesalainen 2017). The fact that she mentions that this is hinted at by new teachers might indicate a generation
or a seniority gap between the latter and teachers who have been in the
field for longer.
The role played by school leadership in making CPD available—or
not—is discussed by TE when we ask her about the “project culture”
concerning CPD in Finnish education:
144 Y. Li and F. Dervin
TE: projects can have nice outcomes… but… maybe because if there
would be leadership in schools that would activate that kind of schoolwide projects making community projects to collect data and make conclusions I think they would have much more… I think that then it comes
to the idea of teacher leadership and especially principals leadership in
schools it varies… I published an article about ICT in Finnish schools
and then we collected data in different schools and we could see how
much it depended on the principal and on how he activates the school…
we can see that some principals only blame that we don’t have resources
we don’t have money we don’t have anything but others they say oh but
we have a plan we have tried to get that that and that and that if there
were calls for projects they were ready to apply because they had a plan…
principal leadership is essential and they need to be trained for pedagogical leadership and I think that this is the direction we could get…
Again, TE is very much aware of the problems teachers face in their
own schools in terms of CPD. She creates two categories of school leaders: on the one hand, those who spend their time complaining about
the dire financial situation—and thus do not facilitate CPD, on the
other hand, some principals take it seriously and make long-term plans
and apply for extra funding to help their teachers. Although this picture
is a bit ‘black and white’, it shows again that Finnish education seems to
oscillate between different positions, especially because of the decentralization of decision-making (see OECD 2014). In the conclusion of her
turn, TE insists on the central position of school leadership, especially
in pedagogical terms.
TE gives the following example to illustrate the gap between actions
from school leaders and/or municipalities and the lack of training of
teachers:
TE: in the city of Vantaa [near Helsinki] when they decided that everybody in school… they have IPads every student in the school will have
IPads two years or three years ago. The teachers didn’t have any capacity… to use IPads… what we are doing?
Like all other respondents, TE also notes problems with the way(s)
CPD is organized (see Aspfors 2012). In what follows, she also uses the
7
Paratexts to CPD … 145
metaphor of the ‘jungle’ to describe what is happening, especially in
relation to providers (quality and choice of training):
TE: It is a bit of a jungle and what we worry about is the quality of some
of these providers… it is very much market driven… there is a variety of
programmes too…
VESO-days are also discussed. TE remembers that she was herself used
as a trainer for such days in the past:
TE: I have been there and younger I was very often a trainer and I can
remember all these Saturday mornings when they came and they were
knitting… and they were not interested at all to come Saturday morning
it was so frustrating to be a lecturer there…
Her memories of such days are far from positive… When we explain
to her that we had heard similar stories from teachers and trainers,
TE adds:
TE: I can understand because they are planned somewhere and they are
given information about what you should do… I think that different
options to organise would be better and especially if people are not forced
too… There should be discussions about how important these days are…
and what they mean
Need for Systematic CPD
TE is convinced that CPD is essential to teachers and that ITT is never
enough to ensure lifelong teacherhood. She explains:
TE: I think that there is a misunderstanding because schools are so complicated places and contexts are all the time changing… and even if you
have this high standard teacher education, it can lead you to all these
changing situations… and that is especially for young teachers or those
146 Y. Li and F. Dervin
who are newcomers… because even though they have good education,
they have analytical thinking, and they have conceptual understanding
of what happens… but when they are in school that is local circumstances… and there happens so many things and you need to make decisions at the moment. During teacher training time you had the time to
plan but then in one school day there are many decisions to be made…
and different kinds of partners, if there are learning difficulties, the
teacher must deal with school welfare, that means you have to meet with
different groups of people and how you can get this experience during
teacher education time, that is impossible.
For TE, ITT gives a good background but it is illusionary to believe
that it suffices (Hämäläinen and Hämäläinen 2011). As she explains,
the school ecosystem is a complex one, which necessitates working with
different kinds of actors and dealing with difficult situations, and sometimes with urgency. So, in a sense, she argues that teachers are never
fully prepared to work in such conditions and that CPD is needed
(Hämäläinen and Kangasniemi 2013).
Our readers will have noticed that until now TE has not really
explained what she means by CPD or how she sees it. In what follows,
she positions herself, preferring “long-lasting school-based projects”
rather than “courses” (or at least not only courses):
TE: (…) we want to promote more long-lasting continuous school
based projects, not just courses, which are a consequence of the funding procedure of what our minister of education and the NAE have
used… you have had the opportunity to propose and apply for funding but then they have split into small unit courses: one-day, three-day
courses but anyways it does not make any kind of I could say learning
community ideology that schools would take some project and move it
forward…
Based on her own experience of offering courses to teachers, she adds:
sometimes I feel that these general big lectures they are not so useful
… I remember once I was in school to tell about the new curriculum
and when I left the hall… and when I left the place, a parent came to
7
Paratexts to CPD … 147
me and whispered: “do you think that your lecture has helped anything? ”
(laughter).
All in all, TE seems to follow the current trends pushed forth by decision-makers of making teachers responsible for their own CPD, especially with the school community, rather than them taking CPD courses
(Hämäläinen et al. 2015).
Project Work
This last subsection is based on an interview with a project coordinator (P1) and a teacher (P2) who was taking part in the projects she
led. They have both been trained as language teachers for basic education. The project coordinator worked in the same school as the other
teacher two days per week as a complement to her project work, which
was sponsored by the Ministry of Education for a couple of years. The
projects she was leading aimed at promoting language awareness and
multiliteracy in schools and ‘small’ and ‘rare’ languages. One important
aspect of the projects was to organise CPD for teachers in a given city in
Southern Finland.
It is important to note that this interview was the liveliest and the
most critical of all the interviews we did. The two project people did
not mince their words. For example, like the other respondents, we submitted the idea that ITT is so good in Finland that CPD may not be so
meaningful. For the P1 and P2 this is a myth, a preconceived idea. Here
are their reactions:
I: what we hear is that teachers are autonomous and so well-trained that
they don’t need CPD…
P1: N’importe quoi [French: whatever]
I: That teachers work together…
P1: N’importe quoi… notez bien n’importe quoi… [French: whatever…
please note what I am saying: Just whatever]
148 Y. Li and F. Dervin
School Leadership Impacts CPD
Clearly for P1 and P2, the role of school leadership is central for CPD.
Depending on the school principal, teachers can have access to the kind
of CPD they need or not (Heikkinen et al. 2015). P2 shares a bad experience she had with her own principal in relation to a course she should
have taken to be entitled to be an official examiner in the school:
P2: I have like the best example with an official international French
test… cos every year we are testing the students
P1: Ah this is a nice story please listen!
P1: When I started at the school, I was told that I had to be the examiner… so I needed to take the course… and my principal told me that
you can’t take the course because we are not paying anything we are not paying your substitute, your course so you can’t take it. So, we were trying to
explain that yes but in 6 months I have to examine the students… otherwise we can’t organise it and it is part of the programme… but you are the
new teacher and we have the policy that we don’t pay the new teachers…
P1: yeah right
P2: so I could not make it… nothing…so three weeks before the exam he
realized that actually he needs me… so what are we gonna do?… so after
fighting and like… half of the teachers taking part in this fight because
everybody wanted to have their opinion on it… they called the institution responsible for the test and got me special agreements so I could be
an examiner if nobody says anything and if I promise to take the training
in six months then…
P1: The story ended with a huge hassle and because she could not have
the official… she did not have the official diploma and what was the
course? The course was like three days off and you had maybe ten or fifteen lessons so let’s say if you had ten – half of the week – 350 euros for
the substitute… one hour is 35 euros in general so it doesn’t cost anything and even if you whole week, 20 hours, 700 euros…
This long narrative shows how decisions to send teachers to CPD
courses can be Kafkaesque. In this case, what is surprising is that the
7
Paratexts to CPD … 149
training was somewhat self-evident if the school were to organize tests
for the students. The way P1 and P2 enact the story by e.g. replaying
some of the discussions with the school leader (use of (in)direct speech)
somewhat adds to the oddity of the situation (Aveling et al. 2015).
Following the narrative, a discussion ensues about financial politics at
the school level:
I: is there like extra money for CPD of teachers?
P1: there is but it is like nothing… and it works in a way that the principal has the budget for the school that must… with which he must
build the whole year and they don’t want to send people to the trainings
because they are afraid they need to have the substitute… so if they have
the same budget even though I get pregnant and someone needs to cover
me… they need to have that money just in case so they are not wanting
to use the training money because they are afraid someone gets sick or
pregnant…
P2: let us give you an example an extreme one, last year or two years ago
we could not get new books so students are using the same textbooks…
Money issues thus appear to be grim in the respondents’ context.
However, there is another side to the coin. In what follows, our
respondents are critical of the way money is saved for ‘political’ and
competitive reasons:
P1: Yes, it is about the money, but there is a real competition between
schools here which school can manage to use less money. They are
competing…
P2: So, you are a good principal if you manage to use less money and on
the ranking you are like… so it is like business management…
P1 and P2’s testimonies add an interesting element to discussions of
leadership, school management and CPD, which is reminiscent of
‘business practices’ to paraphrase P2. We were unable to find out if this
is a real practice, and a practice supported by municipalities.
150 Y. Li and F. Dervin
Lack of Motivation from Teachers
The two respondents share some interesting insights about their colleagues’ motivation for doing CPD (see similar issues in Heikkinen
et al. 2015). P1 and P2 seemed to infer that they do not want to go on
CPD. P2 shares an interesting anecdote of a discussion she had had at
school on the same day:
I: So, teachers are not interested in CPD?
P2: Yeah, most of them. I think the ones who have been working for a
certain time, they are not interested anymore. Actually today I was telling
that I was going away on a CPD for 4 days and everybody was like Oh four
days in a hotel that’s unfair… but I said yes but it includes study, two hours
of study on your own at home writing a report and you have to apply for
it, write a motivation letter… so you could have done it. Oh no two hours
writing, oh no I am so happy I did not apply and then everybody was…
P1: Yes and they are all very jealous about free food, restaurants and
hotels… because we are…
P2: and if I even told them that they are offering a free drink that would
be even more like… a disaster…
The course that P2 was going to take was to be organized as part of
one of the projects led by P1. The project covered all expenses and any
teacher from the city could have applied to participate.
Following this incredible discussion, we asked the respondents why
they think that teachers are not so much interested in CPD:
P1: I don’t know, is it because they haven’t been encouraged to? Because
you don’t get any credit for that? You are laughed at if you go… You are
crazy? Two hours of personal work… But OK we have an awful atmosphere in this school… in my previous school a lot of people wanted to
do CPD… but if they did you had to prepare all the lessons that will be
substituted, which is so much work…
The end of the excerpt about a different school shows again that Finnish
schools can differ immensely (see Sahlberg 2018)—maybe we could talk
7
Paratexts to CPD … 151
about the Finnish school lottery for teachers. This excerpt thus helps us
to clarify the context of the claims made by P1 and P2. They are talking about a school that is presented as having problems with relations
between teachers (“we have an awful atmosphere in this school”), a
school leader who does not push people to do CPD, etc. Although this is
not entirely relevant to the matter at hand here, we feel it is important to
share the following excerpt, which tells us more about the atmosphere in
the school:
P1: We are done… I am not wasting my time for people who have no
passion with what they are doing… but when you are with the students,
it is great it is like compensation… and we have stopped, we don’t go
to the staff room… never… of course, sometimes we have to… because
when you enter there then you can hear “shitty students”, etc. Why isn’t
there any coffee? And why the coffee is so bad? Etc. and we have been thinking about starting a stand-up comedy show…
In this excerpt and previous ones, the two participants keep mimicking
their colleagues and school principal by making them talk directly (see
highlighted parts in the excerpts). As a dialogical strategy to enhance the
credibility of a statement, this seems to make the excerpts even more
surprising and “authentic” (see Aveling et al. 2015).
The System Is Cracking Up…
Throughout the interview, P1 and P2 use qualifiers such as non-existent,
not serious, not happening to describe CPD in Finland (see Heikkinen
et al. 2015). We would like to use the image of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) to
describe their experience of CPD. Going back to the story of P2’s principal not allowing her to take part in a CPD course, let’s see how she
developed the right skills to be able to serve as an examiner:
I: So what happened? Did you serve as an examiner?
P2: yes, I did it without the license and without the diploma… but then
I did it later…
152 Y. Li and F. Dervin
P1: I am sorry to interrupt but what was the cost for everybody else?
Because she did not have the training so how did they get the information to organise the test? With colleagues needed to explain to her…
P2: yes, P2 was explaining what to do
P1: I had to train her because how could she…
I: Finnish CPD is like Ikea, DIY…
P1: Yes, because we always know that someone is so professional that she
understands that… if we are thinking it is the students who are suffering
if it is not done correctly so they are using that…
P1 and P2 explain that, on many occasions, they have had to train each
other and other people because of the unavailability of funding for
proper CPD. P1 seems somewhat upset by this: “it is always the same
people who give… who do everything… but I also want to learn new
things and not just support others!”.
At the very end of the interview, P1 asserts that “the system is cracking”. We ask her to justify:
I: The system is cracking?
P1: yes… but that’s what it is… but even if you take our principal, our
colleagues, they are laughing at this… they are like we are not even interested in having an education like that… we are just trying to get through
the day…
P1 finishes this turn by even apologizing for being so negative: “and I
feel also bad in a sense when I am presenting this like this, but it reflects
the fact that there are so many things that are…”.
P2 explains the cracking by referring to what she calls “the nationalism of Finnish education” (see Simpson 2018). In other words: even if
there are so many problems, teachers keep up appearances because they
are being told that they have the best education system in the world:
P2: but I think that here is another story… this is like a nationalistic of
Finnish education… I think that most of the teachers they can agree on
7
Paratexts to CPD … 153
it like… yeah in Finland we manage to do something and that’s like the
story… but then everybody would agree also if you asked them what are
your working conditions they’d go it is shit, we can’t breathe here, we don’t
have money, we can’t buy the books, and the students are worse and worse
every year… and that’s what they are complaining about. So it is like two
stories next to each other and I think that everybody agrees on it so this is
just a way to sell it but everybody to laugh at it also… So there is like the
national story about education and then the reality…
P2’s views correspond precisely to the critical work on Finnish education export (e.g. Dervin 2016; Schatz 2015; Itkonen 2018), and the
contradictions that Finnish education experiences (see Chapter 3).
P1 reminds us that lower secondary appears to face more of these
problems than primary schools. She asserts that most teachers in the latter are ‘diamonds’ who are engaged and professional, while the lower
secondary level there are surely ‘diamonds’ but as, P1 puts it, they need
to be ‘polished’: “That’s the place where CPD is needed there are so
many problems…” (P1).
Project Work for CPD
In the previous sections, the respondents shared their frustrations and
the contradictions that they face as far as CPD is concerned. In order
to take action and make a change, P1 applied for project money
at the Ministry of Education. Her first project started in 2016 as
a development project for bilingual classes, with the aim to get more
cooperation and interaction between teachers and to train teachers.
When asked how successful this first project has been, she says:
P1: I think that the cooperation between teachers has increased…
we have had more positive attitudes… but most importantly we have
understood why the lower secondary school is not working for bilingual
classes. The teachers are not good and qualified enough… It is a realistic result, but I am in trouble what to do. Because we can’t do anything
about.
154 Y. Li and F. Dervin
The second project (2017–2020) is a government seed project which
aims to test different models for early language learning to stimulate
language awareness in all subjects (not just language education). P1
admits that she has been struggling to interest teachers in the project
themes (although they are central in the Core Curriculum of 2016).
P1: but we struggle… even though we have the money for substitutes, we
have the trainings, but we don’t have the support of the principals… they
don’t send the people… for this spring we have a lot of things and I will
do… call them and say it is totally free, send them here… Without the project we could never be able to do this…
This could show again the lack of engagement and/or motivation of
some principals.
Pause
In this section, we have listened to what we referred to as the paratexts of
CPD in Finland. Four different kinds of professionals were interviewed:
Representatives of the NAE, a vice-principal, a teacher educator and a
project coordinator. We note some similarities in the critiques of CPD
in Finland, but also some discrepancies in expectations and satisfactions. It is obvious that the position of our respondents does influence
their critical views. For example, it took more energy for us to try to
obtain critical perspectives from the representatives of the NAE than
with the project coordinator who has had to fight to motivate people to
get more CPD.
This chapter confirms that CPD in Finland faces a lot of issues, from
money to a lack of professionalism (Heikkinen et al. 2015). Many of
our respondents are aware of these issues, and although, as the teacher
educator mentioned, these have been discussed for decades, very little
seems to have been done recently to deal with them. What this chapter also confirms is that there are many myths about different aspects of
Finnish education (Dervin 2013; Itkonen 2018), of which we hope our
readers will now be aware.
7
Paratexts to CPD … 155
References
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analysing multivoicedness. Qualitative Research, 15(6), 670–687.
Dervin, F. (2013). La Meilleure Éducation au Monde? Contre-enquête sur la
Finlande [The best education in the world. An ethnography of Finland].
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branding and education export in Finnish academia. In K. Trimmer (Ed.),
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Routledge.
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Hämäläinen, K., & Hämäläinen, K. (2011). Professional development for education personnel as a competence resource. A report on good practices and
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8
Conclusions
After a recent series of lectures on critical intercultural education in a
major department of teacher education in Finland, we received the
following e-mail from a future teacher. He had been critical of our
questioning of ethnocentric (the belief that ‘our’ group is better than
others) and culturalist perspectives (culture as a biased explanation for
others’ behavior and thinking patterns) on migrant students in Finland
(Holliday 2010):
To quote Carl Benjamin, Western culture is at the top of anything that
can be considered good. Some examples:
Human development index.
Internet connectivity.
Freedom of the press.
Property rights for women, and women’s physical security.
LGBT rights.
An absence of child labor.
An absence of slavery.
Overall, it’s an indisputable fact that Western countries have better values
than the rest of the world.
(…)
© The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1_8
157
158 Y. Li and F. Dervin
The series of lectures (four hours) is the only contact student teachers
have with critical and reflexive ideas about the burning issues of interculturality and diversity in education. The reaction of the student
shocked us: How could a young person (he was in his twenties) who
was going to teach at school in a year or two, think that (it is worth
quoting him again) “it’s an indisputable fact that Western countries
have better values than the rest of the world”? He would enter the classroom soon and potentially spread this ideology to his students, colleagues and others. Should no further reflection be offered, through e.g.
CPD, what would be the long-term consequences? Although one might
think that the student’s reaction is marginal, one of our colleagues, who
has a long experience in teacher education, explained that “I have met
this kind of students during previous years, which is sad”. When we
shared this with student teachers who chose to specialize in multicultural teacher education (a minority in teacher education), they asserted
that they had heard similar comments from non-specialists, with one
student remembering someone claim that “he would never want to
work with migrants; they are strange and dishonest”…
The Play That Goes Wrong?
The Play That Goes Wrong (2012) is a British play by Henry Lewis,
Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. One of the most popular plays in
London (UK) in the last years, the play is about a drama society putting
together a murder mystery play. During the production the actors face
countless disasters such as doors sticking, floors collapsing, lines forgotten, etc. At the end of the play, what remains of the set collapse entirely.
At the end of our book on CPD in the ‘miraculous’ education
of Finland, we find the title of the play to be well fitted to what we
found out about the practices and discourses about CPD. Interestingly,
Heikkinen et al. (2015) had described Finnish CPD as “incidental”.
The testimonies that we collected from CPD providers, teachers and
“paratexts” (decision-makers, a vice-principal, a teacher educator and a
project coordinator) deconstruct the myth of the ‘wonders’ of Finnish
education (Niemi et al. 2012) and point at an obvious Achilles’ heel.
8
Conclusions 159
CPD represents a fascinating ‘Achilles’ heel’, which can tell us a lot
about what is happening behind the scene of an ‘education superpower’ promoted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), before the set collapses…
We found that formal CPD is a lottery and that, depending on the
context, teachers may enjoy different forms of CPD or not. Throughout
our ‘detective’ work on Finnish CPD we came across this argument
again and again. For instance, Olli Luukkainen, Director of the Trade
Union in Finland (Opetusalan Ammattijärjestö, OAJ), has repeatedly
described how the play is going wrong (see e.g. OECD 2011: 126).
One aspect and common misconception about Finnish education
that was discussed in our book is the fact that it is not unified at all
(Sahlberg 2018). Like other education systems, it experiences (contradictory) dynamics (continua), such as a social democratic tradition of
equality and a market-liberalist version of equity (Simola et al. 2017).
The decentralization of education, by giving ‘power’ to municipalities
(OECD 2013: 16), seems to create clear inequalities in terms of CPD.
Although it has some advantages, it often appears to be a neoliberal and
‘wild’ way of delegating ‘decision-making’. While some municipalities/
schools invest seriously in CPD, others do not allow their teachers to
train further. This can create cynicism and resentment amongst teachers who experience this injustice. There needs to be an awareness of
these issues and contradictions to move away from an ‘angelic’ image of
Finland as an education superpower.
We also noted that provision of CPD is fragmentary and somewhat
inconsistent. There does not seem to be long-term planning, systematic quality control and fair access. Our study confirms Huhtala and
Vesalainen’s (2017) claims that Finnish teachers are not always willing
to cooperate with each other, and that some are hesitant and passive to
explore ‘modern’ teaching methods. CPD appears to be a matter of voluntary commitment (Craft 1996; Pöntynen and Silander 2015) in the
Finnish context, which does not really serve the purpose of offering a
continuation of ITT (Helin 2014).
In Chapter 3 we mentioned an article from The Guardian dated 8
October 2013 in which a British scholar, who travelled to Finland to
study CPD, claimed that Finland excels in teachers’ CPD and that,
160 Y. Li and F. Dervin
unlike Japan, its CPD model is “much less formal”. His explanations
were based on the cultural differences “rather than systematic or policy driven.” However, financial issues seem to be at the centre of most
problems concerning CPD in Finland (rather than “culture”), as e.g.
Chinese researchers Liu and Zhang (2017) already noted. In a similar vein, the rhetoric about trust (“trustspeak”) and Finnish teachers’
excellency can often serve as an excuse for laissez-faire. Finally, there is
a trend to over-rely on teachers cooperating with each other, learning
how to ‘coach’ others as a substitute for formal CPD (see Geeraerts et al.
2015). Mentoring and cooperation are not problems as such, but they
tend to serve as excuses for not allowing teachers to get new ideas, new
knowledge from formal learning.
Some of the individuals to whom we talked argued that what we
found is ‘better’ in any case compared to the situation in other contexts.
But we have doubts about such claims: Can one compare apples and
oranges? And is it constructive enough to always compare to others? Isn’t
there a risk of becoming self-sufficient and to remain somewhat passive
by doing so? Comparison should lead to improvement… and not just
observation… (see Li and Dervin 2018 and the Afterword).
We propose the following figure to summarize the (complex) ways
CPD seems to function in Finland. We have included all the main
actors that we have identified and how they relate to each other in order
to provide CPD to teachers (Fig. 8.1).
Recommendations for Finland… and the World?
I will make continuous efforts to maintain and develop my professional
skills, committing myself to the common goals of my profession and to
the support of my colleagues in their work. (Oath for Finnish teachers,
2017)
In this final section, we draw conclusions from the problems that we
identified. Finland, and other countries, have now “long ridden the
wave of Pisa hysteria” (Sitra 2015) and it might be time to refocus
our attention to what is really happening in the classroom and teacher
8
Conclusions 161
DŝŶŝƐƚƌLJŽĨĚƵĐĂƟŽŶĂŶĚƵůƚƵƌĞ;DŽͿ
;ƉůĂŶƐ͕ŽƵƚůŝŶĞƐĂŶĚŝŵƉůĞŵĞŶƚƐ
ŐŽǀĞƌŶŵĞŶƚƉŽůŝĐŝĞƐĂŶĚďƵĚŐĞƚ͖
ƉƌŽǀŝĚĞƐŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟŽŶƚŽƚŚĞŐŽǀĞƌŶŵĞŶƚ
ƚŽƚĂŬĞĚĞĐŝƐŝŽŶƐͿ
'ŽǀĞƌŶŵĞŶƚ ͬWĂƌůŝĂŵĞŶƚ
;ƵĚŐĞƚ͕ƉƌŝŽƌŝƟĞƐŝŶĞĚƵĐĂƟŽŶͿ
ůůŽĐĂƚĞ ĨƵŶĚŝŶŐƚŽ͙
EĂƟŽŶĂůŐĞŶĐLJŽĨĞĚƵĐĂƟŽŶ ;EͿ
;ĚĞǀĞůŽƉŵĞŶƚĂŐĞŶĐLJƚŚĂƚĚƌĂǁƐƵƉƚŚĞŶĂƟŽŶĂů ĐŽƌĞĐƵƌƌŝĐƵůĂ͖
KƌŐĂŶŝƐĞƐƐŽŵĞW͕ĂŵŽŶŐƐƚŽƚŚĞƌƐͿ
DĂŬĞƐƉƌŽǀŝĚĞƌƐĐŽŵƉĞƚĞĨŽƌĨƵŶĚŝŶŐ
WŽŽůŽĨƉƌŽǀŝĚĞƌƐ
;WƌŝǀĂƚĞĐŽŵƉĂŶŝĞƐĂƩĂĐŚĞĚƚŽƵŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƟĞƐ͕
^ƚĂƚĞͲŽǁŶĞĚƉƌŝǀĂƚĞĐŽŵƉĂŶLJĚƵĐŽĚĞ͕
ƉƌŝǀĂƚĞĐŽŵƉĂŶŝĞƐĂŶĚĐŽŶƐƵůƚĂŶƚƐͿ
^ŚŽƌƚͲƚĞƌŵWƌŽũĞĐƚƐ
;ƐƉŽŶƐŽƌĞĚďLJƚŚĞDŝŶŝƐƚƌLJĂŶĚͬŽƌƚŚĞ
EƚŽƉƌŽŵŽƚĞĐĞƌƚĂŝŶĂƌĞĂƐŝŶ
ĞĚƵĐĂƟŽŶͿ
ŶĚƵƐĞƌƐ
dĞĂĐŚĞƌƐ͕ĞĚƵĐĂƚŽƌƐĂŶĚ
ĞĚƵĐĂƟŽŶĂůůĞĂĚĞƌƐ
KƌŐĂŶŝƐĞW
;Ğ͘Ő͘sĞƐŽĚĂLJƐͿ
^ƉŽŶƐŽƌƉŽƚĞŶƟĂů
ƉĂƌƟĐŝƉĂƟŽŶŝŶW
DƵŶŝĐŝƉĂůŝƟĞƐĂŶĚƐĐŚŽŽůƐ
Fig. 8.1
CPD organisation and funding
education, and to pay attention to the reality rather than promoting
certain myths (leading to self-satisfaction and pride) about the ‘best systems of education in the world’. The official discourses that have been
created around Finnish education (often shared by researchers and some
teachers, see Aspfors 2012) need to be put aside to let alternative ‘truths’
emerge—and act upon them. As we saw, many of the practitioners we
interviewed question these discourses (about e.g. teachers’ empowerment and high status, ‘trustspeak’, etc.).
162 Y. Li and F. Dervin
The following recommendations will be of interest to the different
actors of CPD in Finland and elsewhere. The recommendations are
aimed at different actors of CPD: Decision-makers, providers, teacher
educators, and teachers. In the category decision-makers, we include
governmental, ministerial and local levels (principals included).
Decision-Making Level
In general, it appeared quite ironic that CPD for teachers is in a somewhat dire state in Finland, when the Nordic country has been offering
formal CPD abroad for many years as part of its education export (see
Cai and Kivistö 2010; Schatz et al. 2015; Xing et al. 2017). While formal CPD does not seem to be in vogue in Finland, and teachers having
to self-train or mentor each other, education exporters (including state
and university actors) have no qualms in offering CPD for educators
abroad in very formal ways.
In a similar vein, the Finnish education export industry often tries
to sell study tours to explore the work of (selected) school principals.
One such company claims that the participants will learn how “(principals) make sure that teachers and students can perform at their best and
achieve outstanding results” (anonymised). CPD is never mentioned in
such tours, which means that ‘pedagogical tourists’ might miss out on
this important ‘botch’ in Finnish education, especially in relation to the
role of leadership.
Ethically, there might be a need to pause for a while and reflect on
these two very different trends, which are somewhat contradictory and
incoherent.
The government, through the NAE and MoE, as well as municipalities, should also take a more ethical position towards CPD, and move
away from ‘laissez-faire’ models that do not ensure equality between
teachers and schools. In our study, we show that “trustspeak” might
have gone past its ‘best before’ date and needs to be reconsidered in
Finland. In agreement with Li and Chen (2013) a system of quality insurance would be useful to see if and how teachers develop (see
Huber 2012). Most CPD actors know that many teachers do not do
8
Conclusions 163
CPD every year, but nothing is being done to meet this challenge. This
matters for the students too as, when teachers get properly professionally developed, they can have a positive influence on learning and possibility to succeed.
In February 2018 the Minister of Education announced that 2300
tutors had been trained to help other teachers to “use the new curriculum and new working methods in Finland”. This was financed by
the state (26 million euros; Grahn-Laasonen 2018). This laudable initiative does not actually say which part of the country is covered, and
who would benefit from these tutors. Furthermore, how sustainable
this tutorship model is, is a mystery: it won’t take too many years for
teachers to get to know the new curriculum; new working methods are
appearing all the time so how do we ensure that the tutors develop new
skills about them too? Governments and localities do spend money on
different forms of CPD, as this example shows, however, there is a need
to think about long-term engagement and investment, and to invest
in more structured activities (TALIS 2009). We agree with Weiss and
Pasley (2006) that teachers are more likely to be transformed if CPD is
sustained, coherent, and intense.
The role of the trade union could be more central by connecting the
different actors of CPD, assisting the government and Parliament and
voicing clearly teachers’ concerns and supporting them.
If we summarize recommendations to decision-makers, what could
be expected of them should consist in:
Providing a clear framework for CPD;
Guiding and coordinating CPD;
Supervising the way it is done, by whom and for whom.
Teacher Education Level
Teacher educators are not involved directly in CPD. Some give lectures
and courses for CPD providers, on top of their work. However, departments of teacher education are not responsible for CPD. There needs to
be a stronger link between ITT and CPD—not just at induction as is
currently proposed but throughout teachers’ careers (see Aspfors 2012).
164 Y. Li and F. Dervin
The rhetoric of the need for linking ITT and CPD has been omnipresent in Finland for decades but very little is happening. This would be
beneficial for teachers but also for teacher educators who seldom spend
time in schools, except maybe in teacher training schools attached to
universities. This has created a gap of ‘reality’ between teachers and
teacher educators.
We have noted in our book that the provision of teacher education can differ immensely depending on where teachers were trained,
in terms of paradigms, practices, etc. There is not one way of training
teachers in Finland but many different ways. In a sense, this adds to the
richness of the teaching landscape, but it can also lead to gaps in knowledge and practices. This must be discussed openly with and amongst
teachers and leaders in schools so as to see what the individual needs of
each teacher are and what teachers could learn with each other, based
on their ITT. Teachers must be enabled to mix all the “good” parts of
ITT together.
CPD Providers
CPD provision appears to be a ‘jungle’ in Finland as our respondents
asserted. Many different kinds of providers are involved. There is hardly
any control over the quality of what providers offer, which is very problematic. Also there does not seem to be much coherence in the topics
chosen for CPD, level of seniority and inconsistent one-off events are
still prevalent for financial reasons (Aspfors 2012). Although Fuller’s
(1969) classic stage theory of professional development might appear a
bit passé and Westerncentric, it could help providers reflect on how to
think about and organize CPD. Fuller’s model is meant to be accumulative and chronological, however we find the three stages of self concerns
(concerns in relation to survival as teachers), task concerns (performance
as teachers) and impact concerns (influence on their pupils) to be useful to differentiate CPD for teachers. The current neo-liberal system of
making these providers compete for funding is unsustainable. As businesses, they need to compete and look attractive to both decision-makers and teachers. However, there is a need to find a way to help these
8
Conclusions 165
providers compete with each other healthily, communicate and cooperate with each other and to specialise in certain areas of CPD to avoid
stepping on each other’s foot. For the decision-makers this could mean
better use of budgets and less repetitions and overlappings. It would
also be important for them to offer trainings that are long-term, and
that allow teachers to develop pedagogically rather than just technologically—this was a trend observed in 2017. CPD that relates to teachers’
‘real’ questions and concerns is essential (Feiman-Nemser 2001: 1042).
In terms of teaching methods, there seems to be a wide array of
methods proposed by the providers. We believe, however, that there is
a need to include alternative views in these trainings (which are often
given by ‘white’ Finns) to help teachers open up their minds, and accept
knowledge and methods from outside Finland, and the ‘West’.
Summa summarum, a culture of mutually beneficial win-win situations must be established, in order to optimize resource allocation.
Furthermore, providers must take their responsibility in a more systematic and transparent way: They do have a societal responsibility as education providers.
Teachers
In general, we found teachers to be blasé about CPD being “fragmentary, non-systematic and even unnecessary” (Huhtala and Vesalainen
2017: 74) in Finland. They were all aware of the problems they face
when ‘begging’ for CPD, and of the financial ‘game’ played by both
municipalities and schools. Although most of the teachers we interviewed wanted to develop more, it did not seem to be a matter that
concerned them so much. Following Hämäläinen and Hämäläinen
(2011), teachers should “commit themselves to regular development of
their own professional competence in co-operation with their employers”
(our emphasis).
The needs of teachers in terms of CPD must be put on the table regularly and systematically, and renegotiated. It must also be a lifelong
endeavour (Hämäläinen and Kangasniemi 2013). Teachers must thus
be brave enough to question some of the assumptions about who they
166 Y. Li and F. Dervin
are as professionals, speak out their desire to be trained further and
use their rights to be provided with more CPD (Stoll et al. 2012). For
example, the much criticised VESO-days—although they have been
‘celebrated’ by e.g. Guiden and Brennan (2017)—would need to be
more focused and less ‘macdonaldised’ as too many teachers seem to
find them useless—a mere duty.
For those teachers who do formal CPD, passing the acquired knowledge to others must be imposed as there seems that too much knowledge is lost. Teachers’ personal and professional change through the
acquisition of new knowledge during CPD should be discussed and
reflected upon with others (Girvan et al. 2016). Darling-Hammond
(2009) argued that CPD is more effective when it becomes a coherent
part of a school effort.
For All Actors
To finish, it is important for all actors involved (in-)directly with CPD
to consider, together or separately (Perez et al. 2007), the following
elements.
First and foremost, all actors must find ways to justify fully the
importance of CPD, and to motivate each other to take it seriously.
Coordinating the interests of different actors might help to do so.
Fullan’s (2005) ‘capacity building’, or the development of a collective
ability, i.e. dispositions, skills, knowledge, motivation and resources, is
essential in this regard.
Throughout the study, we felt that many of our respondents were not
aware of what was happening elsewhere in terms of CPD, and relied
overly on Finnish ‘know-how’. We believe thus that there is a need for
Finland to listen to others, to learn with others in terms of CPD. There
are great practices abroad that could be tested in the Nordic country
too. Benchmarking from abroad could help to develop a good and reliable system of CPD.
Our next point concerns our surprise at the fact that very little
research has been done in Finland and abroad about Finnish CPD
(Niemi 2015). A few reports have been published (e.g. Hämäläinen
8
Conclusions 167
et al. 2015) but they are usually not known to the individuals we spoke
to. This is a crucial point as research could help the different actors to
get a sense of the problems that CPD faces in Finland, to become aware
of action research in Finland and abroad to get some inspiration and
to take new steps towards ‘refreshed’ CPD. The work of the Advisory
Board for Professional Development of Education (2008–2015), which
described many of the problems that we identified and proposed some
solutions, needs to be made known to the different actors.
To conclude, we would like to insist on an important element,
which has crossed this book regularly. All the actors involved in CPD
must talk to each other systematically, (re-)negotiate what CPD could
be about and learn with each other (not from each other) (DarlingHammond and McLaughlin 1995; Fullan 2005). An open and complex
dialogue between these actors cannot but transform CPD and make it
more consistent and coherent, and fairer.
Since 2016 Finland has tried to reform its Teacher Education and
Training through the Teacher Education Forum (Opettajankoulutus
foorumi ). The Forum identified very similar issues as we did in this
volume:
fragmented models for continuing training will not accomplish the
desired change. Activities supporting teachers’ professional development
must be managed, effective, systematic and long-lasting.
We hope that Finland, but also other countries, will take these (old and
well-known) issues seriously in the near future. A ‘good’ system of education, which believes in the ideas of autonomous learning (a skill that
must be learnt and developed; it is never a ‘given’), responsibility and
lifelong learning and excellence in education, cannot do without properly structured and (in-)formal CPD.
Each system of education, from the ‘superpowers’ to ‘poor performers’, have their Achilles’ heel. Achilles’ tendon problems (which are
often overuse injuries) can be repaired naturally by the body. Sometimes
the tendon needs to be treated by reducing mileage and/or frequency
of sports, taking pain-killers or getting an operation. Prevention is also
important, by e.g. stretching and warming up the tendons. CPD, as
168 Y. Li and F. Dervin
an important backbone (but potentially failing tendon) to education,
should serve the purpose of preventing ‘injuries’ and/or of recovering
from educational ‘inflammation’…
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Afterword: Learning with Each Other
in Comparative and International
Education
We cannot wander at pleasure among the educational systems of the
world, like a child strolling through a garden, and pick off a flower from
one bush and some leaves from another, and then expect that if we stick
what we have gathered into the soil at home, we shall have a living plant.
(Higginson 1979: 49)
This book shows that the ‘miraculous’ system of education of Finland
hides many imperfections and ‘white lies’, which most observers have
missed (or ‘pretended’ to miss, see the idea of “Finnish education as an
excuse”). The topic of teachers’ CPD was useful in unearthing many of
these ‘imperfections’ in the Nordic country. We have decided to include
this afterword as we feel that there is an urgent need to discuss again the
meanings of comparing and contrasting in international and comparative education.
The objectives of this afterword are as follow. Firstly: we are very
much interested in reflecting on the meanings of comparing and contrasting in international and comparative education: what do these
two words mean and what do they entail? Which approach seems best
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1
171
172 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
suited to avoid comparing ‘apples and pears’, which is necessarily detrimental to one of the compared objects? Secondly: Can we take a thorny
and popular concept like social justice (which was central in discussing CPD) and compare and/or contrast how it is ‘done’ in two different countries? What meaning(s) does it have in the two contexts? How
do people get prepared to deal with it in education? Finally: Based on
our observations in schools in China and Finland, and deriving from
our approach to comparison and understanding of social justice, are
there similarities in the ways the teachers and school leaders in the two
schools implement social justice?
In accordance with Birkeland (2016: 79), we try to bridge the
macro-aspects of e.g. the study of educational systems, institutions and
policies (typical of comparative education) with more micro-aspects,
“the internal and intrinsic aspects of schooling” (ibid.), for instance, in
the specific context of a given classroom. We believe that macro-aspects
can often hide certain ‘truths’ about the complex realities of an educational system that micro-aspects can better reveal.
Our readers might wonder how social justice can be used to compare two very different countries such as China and Finland, especially
in relation to the work and training of the teacher. Calling for a perspective that takes into account the enmeshment of broader contexts
(e.g. the residence permit-hukou system in China and the current education export initiatives in Finland) and of micro-contexts such as the
work of a specific teacher in a classroom, the afterword also proposes an
approach to comparing which takes into account difference and similarity between contexts, thus avoiding potentially unjustified and biased
comparisons—which are damaging the way we speak about ‘our’ and
‘their’ education. A preliminary presentation of our observations in the
schools in China and Finland illustrates this perspective.
Our main goal is to explain why there needs to be a shift in the way
we compare education systems and give some recommendations as to
how this could occur. We also suggest moving from the ideology of
‘learning from other countries’ to ‘learning with each other’ when one
deals with social justice in education, as every single country faces issues
of injustice.
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 173
During our visits to the schools in China, we were quite astonished
by the lack of sufficiently available and well-maintained facilities and
equipment in the Chinese school. Furthermore, the demoralization of
some teachers—about which one can often read in the literature (Wang
2013)—was palpable. Yet, we were nicely surprised by the teachers’
general care about the students, especially in relation to well-being and
motivation. Although the context was materially and psychologically
difficult, the teachers still seemed to believe that education can make a
difference.
Although Finland is not listed as achieving high levels of performance
and equity in education outcomes in the latest OECD report on PISA
and equity (OECD 2016), as asserted many times in this book, the
Nordic country is known for its emphasis on social justice, equality and
equity in education (Sahlberg 2011), and is often an object of desire
and copy for many countries. It is also considered a hallmark of high
quality education, while China is often described as authoritarian, competitive and unequal in terms of distribution of educational resources
by geographical region; by class or other social group such as ethnicity;
and at different levels from primary and secondary to tertiary (Wu and
Morgan 2016). The visits to Finnish schools represented an opportunity to see how social justice was ‘done’ in this context and to compare
and/or contrast it to what we witnessed in China—and potentially learn
from it (see Higginson’s quote at the beginning of the article: can we
stick a flower and some leaves from another garden and have a living plant
in another?).
On Comparing and Contrasting
China and Finland: Two Different
Educational Utopias
At first sight, China and Finland have very little in common. Let us
review some basic elements to confirm this impression. While the
People’s Republic of China has a population of 1.4 billion people,
Finland’s population is 5.4 million. The Nordic country covers an
174 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
area of 338,424 km2 and China 9.6 million. China is a unitary oneparty socialist republic while Finland a unitary parliamentary republic.
China has 56 nationalities (55 minorities) and Finland has one official minority (Swedish-speakers, 5.29% of the population) and a recognized regional language (Sami with 0.04% of the population). The
two countries’ Gross Domestic Products are: $23.2 trillion ($16,676 per
capita; China) and $239.662 billion ($43,545; Finland) (ESA.UN.org).
Finally, China has the largest education system in the world with
474,000 schools, 10 million teachers and 200 million students (China
Education and Research Network 2011).
Although they are very different, these two countries both represent
‘educational utopias’ today. The word utopia was coined by English
statesman, lawyer, philosopher and Renaissance humanist Sir Thomas
Moore. The etymology of the word is from the Greek ou-topos meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’ (Giroux 2003). In 1516, Moore published
Utopia about an imaginary ideal nation with highly coveted and/or
nearly perfect qualities. China and Finland represent different types
of utopias, especially in relation to their excellent positions in international rankings in education. Many countries wish to copy Finland for
e.g. her fun-learning approaches, student-centeredness and autonomous
learning-teaching. China is inspiring for e.g. mathematics education to
the rest of the world. As asserted in the introduction, on the one hand,
Finland is said to lay a strong emphasis on equality and social justice, on
the other hand, China is often said to be hierarchical, competitive and a
victim of varied inequalities (Zhao 2014).
Comparing and Contrasting Beyond
Quantitative Indicators? The Importance
of (Hidden) Contextual Knowledge
International comparisons of systems of education (“rankings”) have
become popular and widespread, as asserted earlier in this book.
Simola et al. (2017: n.p.), amongst others, are critical of how quantitative indicators such as the ones provided by PISA studies are believed to
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 175
“provide valid comparisons of education systems”, without further analysis—and many scholars, decision-makers and practitioners from China
and Finland have fallen into this trap (Liu and Dervin 2016; see introduction to this book). They insist that “these remain value-loaded collections of indicators of development that offer at best parallel lines of
comparative analysis” (ibid.). Finally, for the scholars, these often lead to
politically and ideologically motivated comparisons but also to a push
for ‘borrowing’ practices (ibid.).
It is clear that comparing/contrasting Finland and China in order
to try to identify practices from Finland that could be implemented in
China in relation to social justice in education (this is often the one-way
direction people use) is problematic. Simola et al. (2017: n.p.) argue
that there is a need for “a strong and ambitious theory-based framework
with the potential to incorporate sociohistorical complexity, cultural
relationality, and sociological contingency”. Harris and Jones (2017:
431) also explain that one needs to see “the whole picture”, which
requires a “more sophisticated analysis of the cultural dynamics that
operate within an education system”. We share similar patterns in what
follows, but with an emphasis on current practices of the economization
of Finnish education through education export, which, to us, must be
borne in mind when comparing/contrasting with other countries.
Since Finland’s ‘victory’ in PISA studies in 2001 the country has
attracted worldwide attention. As a direct consequence of Finland’s success in PISA studies, a sharp increase in activities related to education
export has taken place (Cai and Kivistö 2011; Dervin 2016). Through
its current proactive education export (Dervin 2013; Schatz 2016),
Finland has been visited by so-called ‘pedagogical tourists’ from China
and elsewhere. Finland has also sold schools abroad (e.g. kindergartens in Inner Mongolia), trained foreign school leaders and teachers
(e.g. from Saudi Arabia), and taken part in education reforms abroad
(e.g. Serbia), amongst others. According to the Finnish Ministry of
Education and Culture (2010: 13), “Higher education institutions
will be encouraged to be active and assume a major role as education
export operators.” Concretely, this means that faculties of education
and, especially departments of teacher education in Finland, are very
176 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
active in ‘selling’ Finnish education around the world with the help of
private businesses, start-ups and companies attached to universities.
What is more, scholars and administrators often accompany education
decision-makers or politicians in their business-related trips abroad. The
consequences of the emergence of Finnish education export include:
ready-made discourses on Finland/Finnish education, including white
lies about equality (e.g. “there are no social classes in Finland”; “there
are no poor people”), manipulation (e.g. “teachers are highly respected”;
“young people want to be teachers”) and unfounded comparisons/contrasts (e.g. “there are no bad teachers in Finland”). It is important to
note here that the ready-made discourses on the ‘miracle’ of Finnish
education, embedded in business practices, somehow camouflage some
‘realities’ of Finnish education (Niemi and Nevgi 2014; Simpson and
Dervin 2017; Liu and Dervin 2016).
For practitioners, decision-makers and even scholars, these can
easily lead to a loss of criticality, but also to contradictions and (auto-)
censorship. It is important to note that foreign media have also very
much contributed to promote Finnish education and to construct narratives and preconceived ideas about its ‘wonders’ (see Itkonen et al.
2017 on documentaries about Finnish education). It is, however,
becoming clearer that Finnish education is experiencing contradictions
and similar problematic phenomena as many other countries around
the world such as a lack of pedagogical innovations, school shopping,
teacher burnout, boys’ lower test results, etc. For instance, a study by
Simola et al. (2015) on primary schools in the capital city (Helsinki)
shows clearly that the pedagogy in practice “appears to be a curious
combination of traditional, teacher-centered tuition and progressive,
student-centered caring.”
In brief, if one wishes to compare/contrast Finnish education
with another system, the first step should consist in (1) questioning
the pre-discourses that the world has been fed with about Finland,
(2) revising one’s own biases about one’s own education system, and
(3) asking the questions: Can one compare/contrast the incomparable/
uncontrastable?
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 177
Comparing or Contrasting? Towards
Difference and Similarity
While we started with the idea of getting potential inspiration from the
‘best’ education in the world for dealing with social justice in China
(after having witnessed the lack of resources in Chinese schools, and
the somewhat luxurious atmosphere of the Finnish ones), we are now
wondering if this approach is worthwhile: Maybe there is more than
meets the eyes in the two schools, maybe our comparative/contrastive perspectives are biased, maybe social justice is noticeable beyond
appearances.
This is where a critical review of the words that we use to discuss
what we are trying to achieve is needed: to compare and to contrast
(Chinese and Finnish education). When we verified the etymology of these two verbs, we noted that they refer to opposite realities: Compare comes from the Latin comparāre, which means to
place together, to match while contrast comes from the Italian contrastare (to resist, to withstand), and from Latin contra (against).
A look at current definitions of the two verbs (Merriam Webster)
also shows that to compare seems to correspond more to an approach
that goes beyond differentialism, whereby only differences matter
(Dervin 2016), than to contrast: (to compare) “to estimate, measure, or note the similarity or dissimilarity between”; (to contrast)
“to set in opposition in order to show the difference or differences
between”. In the rest of the article, we have decided to use the verb
to compare as it concentrates on both similarity or dissimilarity. We
believe that this approach can help us to go beyond hyper-differentialist observations which can blind us and push us towards flawed
generalisations. Finally, we note that we prefer to add ‘and’ to the
aforementioned definition of to compare—rather than ‘or’—as we
are interested in both similarities and dissimilarities between the two
contexts.
178 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
Introducing Social Justice: China and Finland
One central concept under review in order to problematise the comparison of the two contexts is that of social justice—a central concept in
today’s academic, educational and political discussions. For many readers, comparing China and Finland in relation to social justice might
sound surprising.
Let us note first that a sizable literature has been produced globally on the concept and that, as a result, its meanings are disparate,
inconsistent and shifting over time and space (see e.g. Kaur 2012).
Its definitions may thus vary from context to context, especially when
transmitting values across nations—although many values might concur beyond the borders of a given context. It is also important to note
that problems of inequality and inequity are experienced throughout
the world, often in different levels of importance and forms. Depending
on the context, social injustice may concern different genders; minorities; those with special needs or disabilities; certain kinds of immigrants;
poor people; etc.
Most governments around the world have included the words social
justice, equality or equity in national curricula and policies. In their
2016 article entitled Subtle discourses on equality in the Finnish curricula of upper secondary education: reflections of the imagined society,
Lappalainen and Lahelma note that the idea of equality has been present in Finnish educational politics and policies for the past 40 years.
They explain that the meaning and conceptualization of the concept
have changed with the political orientations of different periods of time.
Finally, they show that a clear neo-liberal educational restructuring into
Finland is noticeable in their diachronic study of the presence of the
word equality in policy documents. It is obvious from this example and
others that concepts and notions associated with social justice fluctuate over time and space. It is without any surprise that the same has
occurred in China.
If we look at more macro-levels of both societies, we note that, for
instance, many words included in China’s Core Socialist Values, which
are divided into three categories (national, social and individual) the
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 179
values of democracy (national), equality and justice (social) and dedication and friendship (individual) are included (see Fig. 1) (Zhao 2016).
These values represent Chinese socialism as promoted at the 18th
National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012. What
these values mean in their English translation or in reality is difficult to
decipher.
As such scholars like Yang (2016) have noted that Chinese education
faces different kinds of social injustice, that would contradict these values, especially at the structural level. The first issue relates to the entire
social system and e.g. the way migrant populations are dealt with in
the country. The issue of college entrance examination (Gaokao) is also
a major problem as it somewhat discriminates against certain types of
students such as those from rural areas. In general, Yang (2016) argues
Fig. 1 China’s core socialist values
180 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
that the differential treatment of rural and urban areas (financial investments in education, availability of teachers, etc.) contributes to social
injustice in China. The dichotomy of rural and urban relates to the
hukou (户口) regime, otherwise known as the household registration
which constraints people’s migration to other parts of the country. The
hukou divides people into two categories (rural and urban) with different access to education, health care and other social benefits within
and outside of their original locations. The urban and rural population
of China was respectively about 771 million people and 603 million
in 2015 (Statista). In the Middle Kingdom, rural schooling can both
refer to the educational experiences of migrant children in Chinese
urban contexts and to those of children who live and study in Chinese
rural areas. Migrant children often follow the 282 million rural migrant
workers employed in an urban workplace (2015, National Bureau
of Statistics). Since 2001 rural migrant children have been allowed to
attend urban public schools regardless of their household registration.
Although progress has been made in promoting access to public schools
many migrant children attend private schools sponsored by local communities or private business institutions. It is important to note that
many migrant workers leave their children behind. In 2010, more than
61 million children between birth and 17 years old were “left behind”
(Chinese National Census).
Chinese rural areas are said to often experience poverty and there
seems to be a rural-urban divide in the country, especially in terms of
income and educational investment. Undernourishment and food insecurity are also said to be widespread in many rural areas (Wang 2013).
It is important to note however that some urban areas also experience
inequalities from within and that certain ethnicities from rural areas fare
worse than others.
If one looks at the Finnish constitution (731/1999, amendments up
to 1112/2011 included, http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1999/
en19990731.pdf ), Section 6 is dedicated to the idea of equality:
Section 6
Equality
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 181
Everyone is equal before the law.
No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from
other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her
person.
Children shall be treated equally and as individuals and they shall be
allowed to influence matters pertaining to themselves to a degree corresponding to their level of development.
Equality of the sexes is promoted in societal activity and working life,
especially in the determination of pay and the other terms of employment, as provided in more detail by an Act.
Finland, like other Nordic countries, is regarded as one of the most gender-equal countries in the world. The last paragraph of the Section is very
clear about equality of the sexes (and the ensuing social justice). Yet there
are still very strong gender equality problems in the Nordic country, especially in relation to the gender pay gap (Saari 2011). Let us give an example of how this is (not) dealt with in Finland. In August 2017, a Finnish
firm attempted to offer women-only discounts to reflect gender wage gap
(which the company claimed was 17%). Complaints about gender discrimination were sent to Finland’s Equality Ombudsman, who decided
that this was illegal. The firm then changed its marketing strategy and
offered the discount to everyone (Yle News, 25 August 2017).
If we make a short summary of our discussions until now, we can
see that both countries seem to take into account certain ideas of social
justice at a macro-level. However, the way social justice is applied (discourse vs. action) can be questioned. Actually, the idea that Finland
is said to be very good at it and that China is not, could potentially
be revised. Going back to the discussions about gender wage gap, we
realized while writing this paper that China has a 20% gap (National
Census 2015) versus and an official 19.6% gap for Finland (OECD
2015).
182 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
Social Justice in Finnish and Chinese
Teacher Education
In this section, we concentrate on the context of education. We agree
with McArthur (2010: 493) that “education and society are intrinsically inter-related and that the fundamental purpose of education is
the improvement of social justice for all.” In most contexts, teachers
are viewed as being central in guaranteeing and promoting some form
of social justice in schools and beyond (Cochran-Smith 2010). Yet,
depending on the kind of initial training and professional development
they receive, some teachers may be readier than other to implement
forms of social justice in their class.
Teacher education plays a key role in shaping the future of education. According to Menter (2016: 3), teacher education influences the
“practice of teachers in schools and colleges and thereby [it has] a strong
effect on the quality of educational experiences for learners”. In the
Finnish context, although words such as inclusion and equality/equity
are omnipresent in discussing education, these words are nearly absent
from e.g. the recent review article entitled The last 40 years in Finnish
teacher education (Tirri 2014). Teacher education is multiform in the
country. Depending on the department and university, emphases might
differ. Some student teachers might get specific courses on social justice
in education, while others may not. Social justice might also be limited to e.g. knowledge on different cultures, worldviews and religions
and the development of an ethno-relative position amongst student
teachers (e.g. Kuusisto et al. 2016) or it might be substituted by multicultural/intercultural education especially in relation to migrant students (Layne and Dervin 2016). Some courses might concentrate on
gender diversity (Brunila and Kallioniemi 2017). The research interests and ideologies of professors and lecturing staff have a direct influence on what, how and why student teachers study specific aspects of
social justice. We also note with Brunila and Kallioniemi (2017: 4–5)
that many initiatives related to social justice in Finnish teacher education “have become caught up in project-based activities. The rise of project-based work or projectisation (…) is a part of a larger societal shift
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 183
towards market economics that has started to challenge the Nordic welfare states”. This means that social justice education in Finnish teacher
education is often short-term and somewhat short-sighted.
Chinese teacher education is also multiform, and is provided by
many different kinds of institutions. The issue of social justice is hardly
taught in teacher education as such, and that seems to be reflected in
the ways teachers reflect on their job. Wong (2014) shows, for instance,
how little engagement with the issue is to be noted in teachers’ individual publications or research activities, which serve as school-based
professional development in China. She writes: “To promote a research
atmosphere in schools, local education departments and educational
research institutes from the state and universities are responsible for
discussing and determining research topics for some selected schools
to conduct. Such research collaboration is usually expert-led. Teachers,
however, are also able to conduct small-scale school-based research,
either at the individual or subject level, based on their interests and
students’ needs” (Wong, ibid.: 79). These practices have been common
since the late 1980s and are used for teachers’ annual appraisals and can
lead to teacher promotion. In her analysis of teachers’ publications, she
found that none had engaged with critical reflection on social justice
and equality/equity. She argues that this relates to the lack of discussions
of these issues, and of the wider social context, in initial teacher education. In a similar vein, Wang and Gao (2013) show that social justice
and equity were rarely discussed in the 2007 Free Teacher Education
(FTE) program. The program, which was set up by the Chinese government, aimed at “attract(ing) outstanding students into the teaching profession and to channel quality teachers into schools located in
underdeveloped rural areas” (Wang and Guo, ibid.: 68). In return, a
strong economic incentive is provided to the students. In interviews
with some of the student teachers, the scholars have identified that they
have a sense of superiority and moral ambivalence towards to objectives
of the programme. The lack of engagement with discussions of social
injustice and inequality during the training programme might have led
the students to such attitudes.
One rare publication in English about social justice in Chinese
education (and directly in teacher education) is included in the
184 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education (Benedict et al.
2015). In their chapter, Ho and Law (2015) examine how social justice is ‘done’ through the guise of citizenship education in China. They
show that the Chinese government uses citizenship education as a way
of maintaining social stability and of consolidating its political leadership. Teachers are taught to promote a love for traditional Chinese
music (such as Beijing opera) and an understanding of the various styles
of China’s 56 ethnic groups (Ho and Law, ibid.) in their music lessons.
Social justice here means including the minorities in teaching.
This short review of how social justice is problematized and implemented in teacher education in the two countries shows a diversity of
meanings, approaches and ideologies, between and within the two
countries. A similarity-based comparison shows that there are signs
that the two countries make attempts at helping teachers to include
the ‘Other’ in education (in Finland: migrants; in China: minorities).
How this is done and taught about in teacher education appears to be
multifaceted.
Comparing Practices of Social Justice
in Two Schools
In this final section, we wish to reflect on our observations in two
schools that we visited in relation to how social justice was ‘done’ by
teachers and school leaders. Before we share our observations, there is a
need for us to review definitions of social justice in education.
Social Justice as a Multifaceted
and Political Construct
As noted before, the two contexts problematize social justice somewhat differently, although it is important to remember that (1) There
is variety from within in terms of how it is discussed and (2) Discourses on
what social justice is and how it should be implemented can differ highly,
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 185
especially if one examines micro-contexts (e.g. work in a given classroom).
We argue that the polysemy and somewhat political-correctness of
the idea of social justice also leads to the different ways it is dealt with
between the two countries and from within. In general, we believe that
social justice can be approached as an empty signifier (Laclau 2005),
which leads to hegemonic struggles. As such, as the word is ‘floating’,
it can be used to impose certain interpretations as the right one. It also
means that there cannot be a common strategy to ‘do’ it, from within or
across countries.
These arguments have important consequences. Since social justice is
polysemic, it can be misused and abused in comparing countries: some
countries are said to be ‘better’, ‘worse’, ‘more civilised’. We thus need
to avoid such implicit/explicit judgments. Second, the instability of the
concept convinces us that every single country in the world faces issues
of social injustice. Finally, we have seen many times until now, there
are hidden realities and discourses about social justice in the two contexts that need to be unearthed if comparison between the two could
be. In the case of Finland, there need to be critiques of the somewhat
empty beautification of how successful the country is at ‘doing social
justice’.
In what follows, we try to look into the polysemy of social justice
in global research in order to form a potential definition that could
serve to compare these aspects in the two schools, as a preliminary analysis. At this stage, we must admit that we feel uncomfortable about
this ‘exercise’. Most of the identified literature originates from the
‘West’. We feel rather awkward about using ‘Western’ ideas to discuss
the Finland–China contexts although we believe, based on our experience, that there are similarities between the ideas below and the ways
social justice is discussed and problematized by Chinese educators and
that some of the Finnish teachers (who would be classified as ‘Western’)
might disagree with them. Concentrating on ‘Western’ research discourses might also give the impression that social justice is exclusively
‘Western’—an idea which we refute (Sen 2005). The end-product of
this review will be, of course, limited and biased. We believe that it
can still help us introduce similarity and dissimilarity in the practices
observed in the two schools.
186 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
The first point that we wish to make about social justice is: Based on
observations and previous research, we agree with De Silva (2013) who
claims that social injustice is often seen as a consequence of a problem
related to the individual child, his/her socioeconomic or cultural background, and/or his/her parents’ education level and their perception of
the importance of education. The more macro-level aspects such as the
educational set up or teaching practices are not always seen as being part
of the problems. This is often the case in China and Finland. In our
observations of the two schools presented in the next section, we’ll concentrate on the practices of both teachers and leaders.
In the English-speaking literature, the idea of social justice in relation
to teachers’ work can have many different meanings. In order to discuss
it, we agree with Shields (2013: 329) that it is interesting to think about
social justice in education by reflecting on what a social justice education could be. She explains (ibid.):
an education that begins with, promotes, and requires a more complete understanding of the social (in)justice issues in the school, the
community, and the world in which students live now and in which
they will work as thoughtful, contributing adults (…) A social justice education therefore teaches students about the world in which
they live, prepares them to become fully participating citizens in that
world, and helps them to take proactive positions for justice, equity,
dignity, and human rights.
In her review of different definitions of social justice, Bialystok (2014:
418) identifies a very important commonality: social justice education “takes up to various degrees the goals of anti-oppression politics,
anti-colonialism, environmentalism, and a critique of corporate globalization, with more or less overt sympathy for the social welfare state and
resistance to educational policies characteristic of neoliberalism. It tends
to depend on or endorse a robust notion of democracy and sees education as an indispensable site of social and political participation.”
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 187
This is one very first aspect of social justice in education: teachers try to
empower the students to reflect on the world around them, to criticise
it and to take action to make it better. Giving the students a voice in the
classroom and school contributes to empower them and prepare them
for the outside world.
Sleeter (2015), who has proposed overviews of the concept, can help
us to add other dimensions of social justice. Let us start with Sleeter
(ibid.), who summarized different frameworks for social justice education for teachers into four dimensions:
Reject interpreting problems of students mainly as personal failures but
by looking at the effects of unfair policies and systems (e.g. limited access
to health care) and their influence within and outside the school and
classroom.
Develop reciprocal relationships with students and families (encouraging,
building trust, listening to parents, etc.).
Have high academic expectations by using the students’ intellectual
resources.
Create and teach a curriculum integrating marginalised perspectives and
discussions of social justice.
The second aspect of social justice presented here relates to the role of the
teacher as an active social justice actor in her/his classroom, school and
beyond. The teacher should take into consideration the ‘world’ and
‘people’ outside the classroom. S/he should also try to integrate knowledge and perspectives from the margins to try to include all students.
To summarize the basic components of social justice in education,
we could include the following aspects: the students are treated fairly
and equally, and engaged in dialogues with their teachers; they are
empowered to analyse the world around them against inequalities and
social injustice; visions, ideas and knowledge from the marginalized are
included in teaching-learning.
188 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
Similar Signs of Struggles for Social Justice
in the Schools?
假作真時真亦假,
無為有處有還無。
Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true;
Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real.
Dream of the Red Chamber
In this final section, we share some of our observations of a Chinese and
Finnish school, and at the same time, question the truths and fictions
of certain discourses about Finnish and Chinese education. This section
serves as an illustration rather than a systematic analysis of data. As a
reminder, this afterword serves as a reflective piece about concepts and
methods.
When we visited the Finnish school, we were amazed by the school.
The facilities and equipment were new, clean and working. The atmosphere in the classrooms and the whole school was relaxed. The teachers seemed confident about their work. In the Chinese school, the
facilities and equipment often left to be desired. The teachers looked
stressed and some sounded demoralized. However, when it comes
to the issue of social justice, we are not sure if one context was better than the other. Of course, at a macro-level it is obvious that the
Finnish school had more means. But what about what was happening in the classroom? How did the teachers support e.g. the students’
inclusion and equality?
Sitting in different classrooms, observing and sometimes participating, we noted that the Chinese and Finnish teachers had similar strategies to ‘do’ social justice. We note that the social justice perspective of
including visions, ideas and knowledge from the marginalized in teaching-learning was not noted in either schools.
Let us start with inclusion in the classrooms. Observing the lessons,
we could clearly see that all the teachers made sure that all the students
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 189
were included, and that they were being treated fairly and equally. In
Finland, one teacher systematically raised her hand and waited until
all the students raised their hands and became silent to make sure that
they were on task when she needed their attention (they spent most of
their time working independently on their computers). In the Chinese
school, one teacher made every single student participate in the lesson, making them repeat what she was saying or asking them questions
about a text. She was also very willing to answer individual questions
at the end of the lessons (something we did not observe in the Finnish
school during our visit). Another aspect of inclusion in the two schools
was included in the posters on the walls. In Finland, there were posters about the dangers of bullying, while in the Chinese school, posters
reminded all the students of the importance of respecting each other
but also of hygienic practices.
The second common aspect was related to empowering the students to look around them and reflect on e.g. inequalities. In both
schools, the principals gave speeches about the importance of taking
one’s own responsibilities. In the Chinese school, the context was
that of the end-of-the-year graduation ceremony during which the
principal spoke about creating respect for others. Similarly, in the
Finnish school the principal talked about the misbehaviours of some
students who had damaged equipment or disrespected others by not
letting them sit next to them. He advised all the students to pay
more attention to these issues. Another way of empowering the students was to provide them with new learning opportunities. While
the Finnish school had courses on aviation and ‘rare’ languages, the
Chinese school hired a teacher to provide the students with P.E. and
music.
One final commonality between the Chinese and Finnish teacher
relates to what we could call their professional ethics. We were surprised
to find similar discourses about teachers’ loss of motivation, wishes to
quit their jobs, etc. However, interestingly, at least in the case of two
teachers, although they both had experienced some form of burnout,
they decided to stay in the schools to help the students.
190 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
Concluding Remarks
Talking about American education and Chinese education, Wen Ma
(2014: 173) argues that “Clearly, there is no “best” system. Both the
American perspective and the Chinese perspective evolved as a product
of their own sociocultural circumstances, and both can be strengthened
with complementary elements from the other.” At the end of this afterwords, we argue that a similar ideology should apply to comparative
initia­tives on Chinese and Finnish education.
This foreword served as a reflective piece on comparing two systems
of education, often described as utopias in their own ways. It was triggered by our work on CPD in Finland, that has revealed many myths
and ‘white lies’ about Finnish education. We took the issue of social justice and reflected on how it could be used to compare the two contexts.
Visits to a school in each country convinced us that there is a danger
in relying on preconceived ideas about Chinese and Finnish education
to do comparative work, and that an emphasis on difference rather
than the continuum similarity-dissimilarity, is counterproductive as it
leads to “comparing apples and pears”. Furthermore, the importance of
bearing in mind the influence of wider contexts was discussed (e.g. the
influence of Finnish education export on how Finnish education is seen
around the world).
In what follows we wish to explain further why we feel a change of
perspective is essential. First of all, when comparing systems of education, there is a need to find a common language to understand the
meanings of things and phenomena as well as implicit, hidden political and contextual aspects. Moving from appearances to multiple realities from within is also primordial (for example, when visiting schools
in Finland, move away from the ‘centre’). Second of all, through the
current practices of ranking countries in order of performance, there
is a need to empower those who are said to be ‘weak’ or ‘bad’ and to
give them strength rather than discouragement, to allow them to look
at what they are doing and to find some ‘good’ in it. Third of all, and
directly linked to the previous point, there is a need to force those who
are said to be ‘very good’ to be more modest and to face their own issues
by e.g. learning from others. This will contribute to lessen the current
Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative … 191
intercultural hierarchies created about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ systems of education. This is also a very important message to education exporters and
their customers: Social justice is what exporters claim they are selling
but it is often meaningless or exaggerated. If critical ideas about education and social justice are not taken seriously, there is a risk that education exporters will create more social injustice elsewhere. There is also
a need to move away from ready-made discourses (Finland = equality),
exoticism, and negative discourses about ourselves.
More specifically about social justice in comparing education systems, we wish to make the following recommendations. We should
open up discussions of social justice by comparing contexts said to be
‘good’ or ‘poor’ to deepen our understanding and actions for social justice. This means that we also need to learn to identify and examine and
familiarize oneself with similarities and differences in social justice practices across contexts. As the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss asserted
(2011: 112): “when the traveller convinces himself that practices in
complete opposition to his own, which by the very fact he would be
tempted to despise and reject with disgust, are in reality identical to
them when viewed in reverse, he provides himself with the means to
domesticate strangeness, to make it familiar to himself.” As a ‘traveller’
an education comparatist might want to adopt the attitude of making
the unfamiliar familiar to him/herself and to reverse his/her differentialist views.
To conclude: social justice cannot but be political, as we have seen
in this afterwords, there is thus a strong need to dig into hidden aspects
and ideologies of social justice in a given context and in the way people
discuss and act upon it. We believe that comparative and international
education can lead to better results if the idea that one context can learn
from each other is systematically put into practice through, e.g. action
research. But maybe the idea of learning from each other still creates
unfair hierarchies (one context might want to learn more from the other
because of their reputation or thanks to their great marketing strategy),
wouldn’t it be better to talk about learning with each other then, i.e., by
entering into real dialogues and making a conscious effort to give and
take? Social injustice is a global ‘wicked problem’ against which we may
want to join forces.
192 Afterword: Learning with Each Other in Comparative …
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Index
A
Achilles 1, 2, 18, 20, 23, 24, 35, 58,
158, 159, 167
Advisory Board for Professional
Development of Education 70,
167
assessment 4, 10, 14, 33, 38, 44, 60,
92, 93, 121
autoethnography 84, 87
cooperation 22, 44, 48, 55, 59, 64,
65, 72, 77, 89, 91, 105, 110,
117, 126, 127, 143, 153, 160
Core Curriculum for Basic Education
23, 44, 45
culture 11, 20, 22, 33–35, 43, 60,
69, 73, 76, 77, 91–93, 96, 117,
132–134, 143, 157, 160, 165,
182
C
D
capacity building 35, 166
child benefit 6
China 8, 10, 15, 22, 23, 37, 54, 56,
87, 172–175, 177–181, 183,
184–186
Competitiveness Pact 75, 77
consultancy 9, 102
Continuing Education Departments 90
decentralisation/decentralised 19,
101, 136, 142
democracy 179, 186
Dialogical Discourse Analysis 85
digitalization 47, 60, 65, 91
doxa 2, 50
dynamics 7, 159, 175
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Y. Li and F. Dervin, Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Finland,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95795-1
211
212 Index
Educa 53, 83, 111–113
education export 3, 9, 10, 22, 43, 50,
62, 130, 131, 143, 153, 162,
172, 175, 176, 190
equality 1, 7, 45, 49, 159, 162, 173,
174, 176, 178–183, 188
equity 5, 7, 45, 111, 159, 173, 178,
182, 183, 186
Initial Teacher Education (ITT) 3,
19, 23, 30, 31, 34, 36, 44,
49–52, 57, 59, 65, 71, 72, 78,
104, 125–127, 130–132, 134,
137, 141, 145–147, 159, 163,
164, 183
intercultural 21, 60, 65, 67, 94, 96,
157, 182, 191
international rankings 17, 111, 174
F
K
E
Finnish National Agency for
Education (NAE) 9, 12, 36, 44,
46, 59, 61, 67–69, 72, 89, 90,
93–95, 97, 99, 102, 105, 111,
116, 119, 130, 131, 135, 137,
138, 146, 154, 162
Fourth of December 2001 4
funders 90
Keli 56
Kiky 109, 110
Kokkola 73, 76
L
Good Country Index 17
laissez-faire 160, 162
leadership 52, 67, 77, 96, 112, 122,
123, 139, 143, 144, 148, 149,
162, 184
life-long learning 30, 54, 65
LUMA centre 54
H
M
G
happiness 1
I
ICT 31, 36, 48, 67, 92, 94, 97, 99,
134, 144
ideology 7, 45, 48, 96, 108, 143,
146, 158, 172, 190
imaginaries 12, 14, 45, 174
inclusion 31, 57, 65, 94, 182, 188, 189
induction 30, 34, 36, 51, 52, 57, 64,
141, 142, 163
marketization 8, 9, 11, 17, 100, 101
mentoring 22, 31, 36, 51, 64, 71, 72,
95, 106, 107, 141, 160
migrant 60, 77, 92, 94, 97, 157, 158,
179, 180, 182, 184
Minister of Education 1, 3, 61, 78,
146, 163
motivation 21, 22, 35, 38, 47, 65,
72, 120, 123, 127, 133, 150,
154, 166, 173, 189
multicultural 7, 38, 55, 57, 68, 77,
91, 94, 97, 108, 158, 182
Index 213
nationalism 152
nation branding 8, 16, 17
networking 60, 62, 63, 92
new teachers 34, 51, 52, 71, 75,
137–139, 143, 148
PISA hysteria 8, 12, 16, 18, 19, 160
practicums 52
problem and inquiry-based learning
32, 107
Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) 2–5, 7, 8,
10–13, 17, 35, 46, 173, 174
project 23, 24, 51, 54, 57, 59, 62–66,
69, 76, 89, 98, 103, 112, 130,
135, 141, 144, 146, 147, 150,
153, 154, 158
providers 9, 24, 38, 59, 60, 64, 77,
78, 83, 84, 89, 92–94, 97,
99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106,
110, 111, 117, 124, 129, 131,
134–136, 145, 158, 162–165
Psalmanazar 14
O
Q
Oath for Finnish teachers 19, 160
observation 31, 37, 87, 131, 160,
172, 177, 184, 186, 188
OPEKO 36, 53, 54
Opettaja (Teacher’s magazine) 61, 73,
77, 90, 111
Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development
(OECD) 2, 4–7, 11, 12, 19,
30, 61, 159, 173, 181
Osaava Programme 61, 71
quality insurance 162
reflexivity 23, 32, 33, 87
reforms 2, 24, 31, 52–54, 76, 109,
112, 115, 116, 167, 175
research-oriented 50, 64, 71
responsibility 19, 32, 34, 51, 165,
167
robotics 75, 91–93, 97
P
S
paratexts 24, 87, 129, 130, 154, 158
pedagogical autonomy 19
pedagogical tourists 3, 8, 63, 115,
162, 175
phenomenon-based learning 15, 75,
116, 140
school ecosystem 146
self-aggrandizement 15
SITRA 18, 160
social justice 7, 25, 31, 57, 58,
172–175, 177, 178, 181–188,
190, 191
multiliteracy 65, 92, 147
municipalities 6, 19, 20, 31, 44, 45,
53–55, 57, 59, 60, 62, 66, 70,
73, 74, 76, 79, 90, 98, 100–
102, 104, 106, 110, 120, 127,
133–136, 139, 141, 144, 149,
159, 162, 165
myths 15, 21, 22, 37, 78, 98, 147,
154, 158, 161, 190
N
R
214 Index
special needs education 6, 44, 55, 57
start-ups 10, 176
student teachers 52, 57, 71, 158,
182, 183
substitutes 18, 36, 53, 57, 59, 70, 73,
104, 119, 134, 136, 148, 149,
154, 160
Swedish-speaking 71
T
Teacher Education Forum 62, 66,
141, 167
teacher educators 14, 24, 37, 44, 56,
58, 64–66, 112, 126, 130, 140,
141, 143, 154, 158, 162–164
teacher preparation 3
Teachers’ Trade Union 2, 19, 57, 61,
69, 70, 73, 77, 78, 83, 90, 92,
98, 99, 101, 111, 139
Teaching and Learning International
Survey (TALIS) 30, 38, 61,
144, 163
textbooks 5, 6, 19, 33, 111, 112, 149
transparency 64, 135
transversal competences 46
trust 11, 44, 50, 117, 133, 134, 137,
138, 143, 160, 187
V
VESO-training days 53, 66, 72–75,
93, 116, 118, 120–123, 139,
140, 145, 166
W
wellbeing 4, 92, 95
white lies 10, 13, 24, 171, 176, 190