The Finnish Success Story of PISA - SIEC-ISBE Home · The Finnish Success Story of PISA - What are the reasons for better PISA results in Finland: Historical, educational and sociological

2012 SIEC-ISBE 84th Conference

Denver, Colorado

July 29th - August 3rd, 2012

The Finnish Success Story of PISA

- What are the reasons for better PISA results in

Finland: Historical, educational and sociological

remarks on teaching, learning and teacher education -

Hely Westerholm, Ph.D., MBA Helsinki Business College, Finland

[email protected]

1

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Finland

Hely Westerholm, Ph.D., MBA 2


Introduction

• The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide evaluation in OECD member countries (currently 34 member nations) and in non-member countries (31 nations and territories in 2009) for 15-year-old students’ scholastic performance, implemented first in 2000 and repeated every three years.



• It is coordinated by the

Organization for

Economic Co-operation

and Development

(OECD), with a view to

improving educational

policies and outcomes.

(http://www.oecd.-ilibrary.org, 2012)


…Introduction


…Introduction

• Developed from 1997, the first PISA

assessment was carried out in 2000.

• The results of each period of assessment take

about one year and a half to be analyzed.

• First results were published in November

2001.

• The students participating in the assessment

are chosen by random sampling.



…Introduction

• Every period of assessment focusses on one of

the three competence fields: reading,

mathematics, science; but the two others are

tested as well.

• After nine years, a full cycle is completed:

after 2000, reading was again the main domain

in 2009.



…Introduction

• PISA aims at testing literacy in three

competence fields: reading, mathematics, and

science.



…Introduction

• The PISA mathematics literacy test asks students to apply their mathematical knowledge to solve problems set in various real world contexts.

• To solve the problems, students must activate a number of mathematical competencies as well as a broad range of mathematical contents of knowledge.

• PISA claims to measure education's application to real-life problems and lifelong learning (workforce knowledge).



…Introduction

• In the reading test, "OECD/PISA does not

measure the extent to which 15-year-old

students are fluent readers or how competent

they are at word recognition tasks or spelling".

• Instead, they should be able to construct,

extend and reflect on the meaning of what they

have read across a wide range of continuous

and non-continuous texts.



Sampling

• The test design, implementation and data analysis are delegated to an international consortium of research and educational institutions led by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).

• The students tested by PISA are between 15 years and 3 months old and 16 years and 2 months at the beginning of the assessment period.

• The school year/grade of students is not taken into consideration, however, only students at school are tested, and not homeschoolers.



…Sampling

• To fulfill OECD requirements, each country

must draw a sample of at least 5,000 students.

In small countries like Iceland and

Luxembourg, where there are less than 5,000

students per year, an entire age cohort is tested.

• Some countries used much larger samples than

required to allow comparisons between

regions.



Results

• All PISA results are broken down by countries.

• Public attention concentrates on just one outcome: achievement mean values by countries.

• In the official reports, country rankings are communicated in a more elaborate form: not as lists, but as cross tables, indicating for each pair of countries whether or not mean score differences are statistically significant.



…Results

• In some popular media, test results from all

three literacy domains have been consolidated

in an overall country ranking.

• Such meta-analysis is not endorsed by the

OECD.

• The official reports only contain domain-

specific country scores.



…Results

• An evaluation of the 2003 results showed that

countries which spent more on education did

not necessarily do better.

• Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic,

Finland, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and

the Netherlands spent less but did relatively

well, whereas the United States spent much

more but was below the OECD average.



Historical tables



… Historical tables



…Results

• The Czech Republic, in the top ten, spent only one third as much per student as the United States did, for example, but the USA came 24th out of 29 countries compared.

• Another point made in the evaluation was that students with higher-earning parents are better educated and tend to achieve higher results.

• This was true in all the countries tested, although more obvious in certain countries, such as Germany.



Research on causes of

country differences

• Systematic analyses across different paradigms (culture, genes, wealth, educational policies) for 78 countries were presented by Heiner Rindermann and Stephen Ceci (2009, pp. 551-568).

• They report positive correlation between student ability and educational levels of adults, amount and rate of preschool education, discipline, quantity of institutionalized education, attendance at additional schools, early tracking and the use of central exams and tests.



…Research on causes of

country differences

• Rather negative correlation was found with

high repetition rates, late school enrollment

and large class sizes.

• In their opinion the results suggest that

international differences in cognitive

competence could be narrowed by reforms in

educational policy.




country differences

• PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS, their organizers and

researchers, are restrained in giving reasons for

the large and stable country differences.

• Cautiously, they leave this task to other

researchers, especially from the economic

sciences and psychology.




country differences

• Economic researchers studied single educational policy factors like central exams (John Bishop, 1997), private schools or streaming between schools at later age (Hanushek/Woessman, 2006).

• An extensive literature related to cross-countries difference in scores has developed since 2000.



The reasons for better PISA results

in Finland (ref.: Ministry of Education, 2012)

Historical and sociological remarks on teaching, learning and teacher education

a) Equal opportunities • The Finnish education system offers everybody

equal opportunities for education, irrespective of domicile, gender, economic situation or linguistic and cultural background.

• The school network is regionally extensive, and there are no sex-specific school services.



…The reasons for better PISA results

in Finland

...a) Equal opportunities

• Basic education is completely free of charge

(including instruction, school materials, school

meals, health care, dental care, commuting,

special needs education and remedial

teaching).




in Finland

b) Comprehensive Education

• Basic education encompasses nine years and

caters for all those between 7 and 16 years.

• Schools do not select their students but every

student can go to the school of his or her own

school district.

• Students are neither channeled to different

schools nor streamed.






in Finland

c) The respected status of teachers (attracting

good students to one teaching profession)

• As the teaching profession is very popular in

Finland, universities can select the most

motivated and talented applicants.




Open learning environment



in Finland

d) Competent teachers

• In all school levels, teachers are highly

qualified and committed.

• They require a Master’s degree, and teacher

education (includes teaching practice). – In fact all Finnish teachers, to start with, have to

complete a Master’s degree either in education or

in one or two teaching subjects.




in Finland

…d) Competent teachers

– Educating class teachers at universities and the

scope and the depths of their study program seem

to be the factors that make Finnish teacher

education stand out as special, when compared to

other countries.(Välijärvi et al., 2007)

• Teachers work independently and have strong

autonomy towards their work.




in Finland

e) Student counselling and special needs

education

• Individual support for the learning and welfare

of students is well accommodated, and the

national core curriculum contains guidelines

for the purpose.

• Special needs education is integrated into

regular education as far as possible.




in Finland

… e) Student counselling and special needs

education

• Guidance counselors help upper grade students

in their choice of further education and

studying methods.

• Student counselling is based on fast diagnosis

of learning problems and treatment of them

including special schools.




in Finland

f) Encouraging evaluation • The evaluation of the learning outcomes of

schools and students is encouraging and supportive by nature.

• The aim is to produce information that helps both schools and students to develop.

• There are no official national testing of learning outcomes, school ranking lists or inspection systems.




in Finland

g) Significance of education in society

• Finnish society strongly favors education and

the population is highly educated by

international standards.

• Education is appreciated and there is a broad

political consensus on education policy.




in Finland

h) A flexible system based on empowerment

• The education system is flexible and the

administration is strongly based on delegation

and support.

• Centralized steering is conducted through the

aims set by laws and decrees as well as by the

national core curriculum.




in Finland

…h) A flexible system based on empowerment

• Municipalities are responsible for the

organization of education and the

implementation of the aims.

• Schools and teachers have a lot of autonomy

in the provision and contents of education.




in Finland

i) The culture of a small border country

• The culture of a small border country (as in

Singapore and Taiwan); feeling that the people

could survive only with effort.




in Finland

j) Co-operation

• Interaction and building of partnerships are

sought at all levels of activity.

• There is co-operation for the development of

schools among various levels of

administration, among schools and among

other social actors and schools.




in Finland

…j) Co-operation

• Education authorities work in co-operation

with teachers’ organizations, subject

associations and school leadership

organizations.

• This has provided strong support for

development activities.




in Finland

k) Finland’s low rates of immigration and low

poverty rate may be a reason for its success

• The Finnish society is homogeneous. The

number of foreigners is lower than in most

OECD countries (2,9 % at the end of 2009),

which makes the teachers’ job easier.




in Finland

l) A student-oriented, active conception of

learning

• The organization of schoolwork and education

is based on a conception of learning that

focuses on students’ activity and interaction

with the teacher, other students and the

learning environment.




in Finland

m) The Finnish language

• Finnish spelling is regular, thus easing Finnish

schoolchildren’s task.

• Foreign TV programs are subtitled, instead of

dubbed as in many OECD countries, thus

easing acquisition of foreign languages.



• The success of Finnish students in PISA has been

a great joy, but at the same time a somewhat

puzzling experience to all those responsible for

and making decisions about education in Finland.

• At a single stroke, PISA has transformed our

conceptions of quality of the work done at our

comprehensive school, and of the foundations it

has laid for Finland’s future education and

development of knowledge.


Summary




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The Finnish Success Story of PISA - SIEC-ISBE Home · The Finnish Success Story of PISA - What are the reasons for better PISA results in Finland: Historical, educational and sociological