Image by Márcio Cabral de Moura
I’m so glad someone finally has the guts to talk about things with their real names! What I’m referring to is a recent research conducted at the University of Helsinki by Erja Vitikka. Her doctoral thesis brings into daylight an awkward problem in our PISA believer society: the comprehensive school curriculum does not support the learning process. (Unfortunately I could only find the news about her research in Finnish)
Vitikka points out that the current curriculum leads to mechanic learning of isolated pieces of knowledge. She found out that the subjects being taught are lacking connection to each other and that the learning methods do not correspond with the problem-solving and information processing skills needed outside school, especially in working life. Moreover, learning is restricted to the formal school context and the content determined by the school. Informal learning is not recognized and the school is alienated from the natural learning environment.
What really strikes me here – and what should really be taken seriously – is the gap between school context and school working methods and the skills needed in working life. The huge impact of the somewhat artificial school context can clearly be seen in young university students when trying to expose them to a more working-life relevant working style. They find it very hard to adjust to a studying context that differs from the sitting-in-a-row-and-taking-notes-as-the-teacher-speaks format. A friend and a colleague of mine once got a student feedback that said: “the teacher’s place is in the front, next to the blackboard, not next to the students disturbing them”. She had tried to make the students work in teams, herself going from team to team offering advise if needed.
There is not one single company where the workers would solve problems sitting in a row, each one trying to solve the problem alone, listening to someone speak. I think this much we all agree on!
What should be done then? How can schools narrow the gap? Vitikka also comes up with a recipe for this in her research. She recommends that different learning environments, diverse tools and learning methods as well as social media applications should be taken into consideration in the curriculum.
Not because they are fun or fashionable or because kids like them. But because they represent authentic learning of our days.
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Thank you Hanna for referring me to this thesis. My gut feeling, without any support from academic research in senior high schools, has been the same. We are even more geared towards fractured bits of knowledge thanks to the sacred tradition of the national final exams.
Brave of you to challenge ‘the Pisa believer society’. Pisa success is a good excuse to stick to a status quo in Finnish schools. Whenever I dare to suggest that something I’ve seen in a foreign school might be worth considering, I invariably get the Pisa results thrown at me to prove that there simply can’t be anything we could learn from other nations. The truth is, though, that a perfect school system has not been created yet, and there is always lots of room for improvement.
Our students are good at taking tests and memorizing facts, but ask them to express an opinion of their own, and most have nothing to say! Just as many teachers, students have also built their comfort zones for school. They should be allowed just to sit there doing nothing while the teacher goes on, if they so choose. Why should they bother, as they will be able to cram through the course content just before the exam and then simply regurgitate it. Group work, portfolios, projects? No thank you, too much trouble. In any case, most teachers don’t demand these, so you shouldn’t either!
This gap between the isolated school context and the demands of working life seems to be rather universal – at least in Britain similar discussions are going on
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/16/peter-hyman-education-teaching-exams
I totally agree with you about the comfort zone of the students (and teachers)! That’s exactly what happens when being physically present in the classroom and keeping one’s mouth shut qualifies as “active participation in classroom education”. I’ve had this kind of experience with my students. Moreover, they are used to measuring their own contribution in pages of notes taken, and when this is replaced with discussion or team work, some feel they haven’t been studying at all.
Thank you for the article. It’s encouraging to see that the phenomenon is more or less universal. I have a strong feeling that we’re entering a new kind of era of learning.
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