What the resource is
This Teachers TV 30 minute video summarises the five-day placement of a Finnish primary teacher in a year 3 class in an inner London school. According to the commentary, the Finnish teacher, Johanna, receives a ‘huge culture shock'. She is introduced to literacy and numeracy strategies, the English National curriculum, unfamiliar primary materials and technologies, a longer working day and the challenges of teaching in an inner city English primary school. She compares critically the systems of England and those of Finland.
The aims of the resource
The resource aims to show why Finland's education system for primary school children achieves better international ratings than England's. The written information on the site suggests that in this week Johanna gains a better understanding of both her own and the English system.
Key findings or focus
Consisting of only one week, it is clear that this introduction is likely to engender only a superficial understanding of the system. Yet the video focuses upon the Strategies, teaching materials and technologies, geography and PE lessons, behaviour management, timings and teaching ideologies. In one lesson she takes the children through a story, in the familiar Literacy Strategy style, starting with an analysis of the cover and children's expectations of what the book might contain. She then reads the story just as an English teacher would. In her PE lesson Johanna attempts to introduce a number of Finnish games but the children have evident difficulties in understanding the unfamiliar rules. Such lessons are all too briefly compared with those of Finland on Johanna's return.
The quality, authority and credibility of the resource
The great strength of the video clip is its honesty. This is a real class with un-primed children. Johanna runs into real problems of communication, over-high expectations, cultural difference and behaviour. She shows her exasperation and disappointment in ways that will be familiar to many ITE students and teachers and has a very authentic, heated, conversation with the English class teacher at the end of a particularly challenging session. ITE students will relate to the difficulties she has and the lessons she plans and delivers.
The video presentation and class teacher suggest that Johanna's difficulties arise from the fact that the class she is teaching is an inner-city school, (400 children, 39 different languages spoken and 34% of children with English as a second language). However, many problems illustrated could also be seen to arise from the particular curriculum and structures Johanna has to work within whilst in England. One suspects that this likeable, experienced and very capable teacher would have had similar problems in any primary school.
Authenticity is also shown in the difficulties this brave and very able teacher has in working in a foreign language to teach details of complex concepts in maths and PE.
Her reflections on returning to Finland are particularly revealing and should have been allowed more time.
Nowhere does the video make it clear in which areas specifically Finland
is so superior to England. One suspects that the video makers mean literacy and numeracy. However significant differently focused international research (WHO, 2004, UNICEF, 2007) suggests that Finland may also be well ahead in some aspects of childhood well-being. For instance comparisons (self-reported) between 11 year olds in England and Finland show Finland well ahead of England in the following categories;
Finland England Av. of 35 countriesLife satisfaction: 94% 84% 87%
good health 92% 84% 86%
Trust of peers 69% 45% 71%
(Source; World Health Organisation, Health behaviour in school aged children report 2004)
Despite these encouraging figures for Finland, English children at 11 seem to like school more than Finns. Only 10% of Finnish children in 2002 could say they liked school ‘a lot', against 27% of their English peers. This is against an average of 34% liking school across all 35 developed nations. Similarly, difficulties in family and peer relationships for Finnish children seem almost as great as those for English children (UNICEF, 2007).
These figures are quoted to emphasise the difficulties of comparison across countries. However, there were some comparisons which do bare greater attention from ITE tutors and mentors. Johanna observed that English children were more articulate and confident than she had expected but that teachers were more restricted than empowered by our national curriculum. Days were shorter for Finnish children, technologies and materials were less but their opportunities for play were more. Teachers in Finland were more free to express their own thoughts and feeling - such freedom she observed, ‘is a fantastic thing'. Johanna's conclusions suggest this kind of teacher exchange could generate interesting staff development discussions on the importance of teacher job satisfaction.
The relevance to ITE students The debates raised in the last five minutes of the video were the most useful to ITE students. However, although the video has limited relevance to ITE students, cross country comparisons are always interesting and raise important debates around teaching and learning. The video is also a reminder of the dangers of direct cross-country comparison.
Reviewed by:
Jonathan Barnes