Networks and School Development: Enhancing Education for Identity in the Finnish Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 90
  In Roundtable Session: School Networks and Sustainable Educational Change

Abstract

University and school networks aim at developing both school and teacher education. Universities benefit by being able to provide teacher students with practice opportunities and getting access to empirical data for research. The Tampere network has a strong history in developing student teachers’ practice teaching co-operatively with the ordinary schools (Autio & Ropo 2005).
Developing school education is another prospect for networks. Despite the good results in the PISA studies concerning academic subjects, Finnish schools have problems in students’ social and personal development (For PISA results see www.oecd.org/edu/pisa/2009). The general goal of the Finnish education is to prepare students to live a good life as autonomous and ethical human beings and productive citizens. In addition to providing students with knowledge, skills and values, it is important to promote the development of personality, self, and identity.
International research findings reveal that schools do not support identity formation in the extent they are supposed to (e.g. Lannegrand-Willems & Bosma 2006). In the current Finnish national curriculum framework identity or identity development is not even mentioned. Identity as a concept is closely related to values, personal or social development, moral development, and citizenship education (Veugelers 2007). It may as well be related to the knowledge and skill acquisition in different school subjects.
To address the above problem the network has designed and implemented interventions to develop education for identity. The aims of the intervention project are 1) to enhance the construction of positive and ethical identity at the personal, community, and societal levels, 2) to help students to build their action competence, personal agency, and find their own talents and strengths, and 3) to strengthen students’ feelings of hope and prospects for their personal future.
Four mid-sized schools participate actively in the network. Two schools have grades 1 through 9, and two are high schools. In primary and lower secondary schools researchers with schools have developed programs to enhance students’ identity formation and development of functional agency. The high school pilots focus on developing, together with teachers, subject specific courses to promote the development of both personal action competence and students’ practical capabilities (Jensen & Schnack 1997). The pedagogical approach is based on the discourse model developed by Yrjänäinen (2011). Research data are both qualitative and quantitative. Main data for this paper are the teacher and principal interviews of experiences of the network interventions.
The results show that intensive co-operation between researchers and teachers to benefits both parties. The network seems to benefit schools and teachers by, for instance, providing them with theoretical concepts for understanding the complex processes of school learning and student identity development. The network seems also to empower teachers to experiment new instructional practices. This kind of model seems to strengthen also the school and university cooperation in general and the school relations with parents and the community.

Authors

• Eero T. Ropo, University of Tampere

• Veli-Matti Varri, University of Tampere

• Sari Maarit Yrjanainen, University of Tampere