Pasi Sahlberg is an education superstar. As Pasi describes himself, he “is [a] Finnish teacher, educator and author”. Others describe Sahlberg as an “expert” and a “guru”, and he has won many awards. Sahlberg was on the Expert Panel for Jason Clare’s recent review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System, and Sahlberg is currently Professor in Educational Leadership at the University of Melbourne. By all appearances, Sahlberg is intelligent, dedicated, well-intentioned, funny and charming. And here we are.
We have heard of Sahlberg, of course, but never paid him much attention. We’ve heard about the Finnish success story, which may or may not be a success story, but never paid it much attention. But now Sahlberg is a local, and a Big local, and it seems we’re gonna have to pay attention.
Last week at UoM, Sahlberg delivered the (Education) Dean’s Lecture titled,
Could Australia Have a Better and Fairer Education System?
Sahlberg’s lecture was described as “an amazing presentation” delivered to “a full theatre of enthralled audience members”:
The audience may have been enthralled. Having watching the video last night, we were not.
We’ll leave it there. This is a WitCH, and it is for you readers-viewers to do the work. You can criticise, or praise, as you see fit.
Long on problems, short on solutions.
It seemed so to me.
I will watch the video later, but I am immediately suspicious of ‘fairer’ in the title of the talk.
I’m not. I’m fine with “fairer”.
Extracted from the book entitled “The Finnish Education Mystery” (p. 1) by Hannu Simola:
Finnish education has been a focus of global interest since its first PISA success in 2001. After years of superficial celebration, astonishment and educational tourism, the focus has recently shifted to what is possibly the most interesting element of this Finnish success story: that Finnish schools have been effectively applying methods that go against the flow of global education policy with no testing, no inspection, no hard evaluation, no detailed national curriculum, no accountability and no hard competition. From a historical and sociological perspective the Finnish case is not merely a linear success story, but is part of a controversial and paradoxical struggle towards Utopia: towards egalitarian schooling.
Has it worked?
https://yle.fi/a/3-10514984
From what I remember from reading some publications about the famous “Finnish Educational Mystery”, school teachers in Finland are connected to two Ss (Selectivity and Salary). They are very well Selected to enter teacher education courses and have good Salaries!
Mathematics teachers enjoyed using textbooks and the different textbooks at the time were very similar in struture. So there was a Kind of informal “national curriculum”!
OK, my first question about Finland was “Has it worked?”. But you now raise a second question:
To the extent that Finland has worked, why has it worked?
Your quote above referenced,
“no inspection, no hard evaluation, no detailed national curriculum, no accountability and no hard competition”.
Somehow, there was no quote about “well rewarded and well resourced and well qualified teachers”.
I don’t care about Finland unless there is a clear message. And if there is a clear message, Sahlberg failed to deliver it last week. I don’t see that he delivered anything other than feel-good sermonising.
I have not yet listen to Sahlberg’s talk (the one in the video you posted here). I just made some comments about what I noticed when I attempted to understand (in the year 2017) what was done in Finland during the years in which it was in the first places in PISA.
Thanks, Solange, and sure. I’m simply noting that in an uncontrolled experiment one may choose the variables upon which to focus. I trust none of these people, either for or against.
“The Finnish mistery” seems to be related to many complex factors to hurry up and give you quick answers! To make matters worse, the situation seems to have changed a bit in there:
https://yle.fi/a/3-10514984
Be patient!
You should also get to know what happened to the researcher (Aino Saarinen) who have dared to write a publication about some reasons for possible decline in Finnish results.
What edit?
Ah, this is more interesting. A rabbit hole, but an interesting rabbit hole.
Thank, Solange. I won’t have a chance to look now, but it’s on my list.
I do not care about Sahlberg’s ideas. I think that the school teachers, at the “mistery times”, were the main ones responsible for the good PISA results in mathematics. They did what they had to do: They taught and they did it well, probably using explictily teaching with appropriate representations. They were autonomous professionals!
Did it work?
Yes. I think it worked to some extent. PISA results were excellent in 2001 and some other years. The problems in PISA are very simple and informal, but it is also important to solve everyday problems. You do not need many mathematicians, but it is important to be numerated in any society.
Why did it work?
It is still too complicated. Many factors were raised, but some of them may not be relevant. One thing I remember: The academics in 2001 did not know why it worked!
I was at PME conference and many educators and mathematicians invaded the room where a Finnish researcher was presenting his research. Nobody cared about his results. All the crowd wished was to know “Why Finland (an European country) achieved number one in PISA?”
Including myself!
He said he did not know yet. And the mistery started. It was usual for many asian countries to be at the top of the list, but not many european countries were (and are) at the top 10 places of such list!
In the year 2015, the Finnish academics were still (and still are) investigating the mistery!
The book by Hannu Simola is a good source of many factors:
The Finnish Education Mystery: Historical and sociological essays on schooling in Finland Hannu Simola, First published 2015 by Routledge.
If it worked for PISA and nothing else, I’m not convinced it worked at all.
I just said that Finnish school teaching worked “to some extent”. But somehow the Finnish managed to diminish the good results in PISA. And some academics are not accepting the reasons recently pointed out. I learned (in my statistics training) that we should also pay attention to negative results in order to investigate a research question. By the title you used in this discussion group (Bad Mathematics), I thought you were attempting to understand what the teaching of the subject is doing wrong to achieve so bad results in many places. Is that right? I think that the late Antony Gardiner was here trying to understand the same I am still trying!
My country always does very badly in PISA, but I did my homework. I even learned how to write in English in order to write two thesis in England.
I learned well that educators come from other countries (especially English and Portuguese educators) to convince the teachers in my country to avoid explicit teaching. And I had a very heated discussion with the Portuguese educator. I think there is no translation in the legends, but below I am very much defending explicit teaching.
Solange, I think you’re missing my point, and you’re sliding further from the point of this post.
We all have the issues we chase and of course I’m quite happy for you to chase PISA or Finland or some combination of the two, and I’m quite happy if you comment on these, within reason, even if it is somewhat off topic for the post. But I am not particularly interested in PISA or Finland, and although they are related to the topic of this post, they are not that related.
The topic of this post is Sahlberg’s lecture, which Unimelb seemed to regard as up there with the Sermon on the Mount, but which came across to me as vacuous twaddle. And which no else can seem to be bothered watching. (And fair enough.)
You brought up Finland. I responded by asking whether Finland had worked. This sub-thread ended with you discussing Finland-PISA, and me indicating I don’t care. And I don’t. You can care, others can care, but I don’t care. Because I regard PISA as junk.
I asked about Finland because you brought it up, and I have marginal interest in the success-failure debate about Finland. Enough that if you indicate some non-PISA claim for success or failure I’ll take it on board, and possibly investigate later. But that’s about it.