INVESTMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION: THE FINNISH EXPERIENCE

This article begins with an examination of the opening up of higher education to market forces and the main channels of funding. It then turns to an examination of Finnish higher education expenditure, and the allocation systems for financing it, stressing the funding of research. A basis is thus provided for a discussion of the current debate within the Finnish universities on the relationship between investment and results, and on the absence up to now of opportunities for market competition. Finally, the article comments on the transformation of studying into a form of salaried employment and of teaching into routine labour.     

Two viewpoints on the challenges of ICT in education: knowledge-building theory vs. a pragmatist conception of learning in social action

The paper contrasts two different approaches to the educational challenges of the ubiquitous, rapidly developing information and communication technologies (ICT). The first is the constructivist ‘knowledge building’ theory spearheaded by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia and recently further developed by Kai Hakkarainen and Sami Paavola; the second is a pragmatist standpoint drawing in particular from John Dewey’s ideas about learning as a natural part of human social actions and transactions. The knowledge builders have set their approach out as a suitable answer to the challenges of the present-day, ICT-characterised ‘Knowledge Age’. But here it is argued that a pragmatist approach can be advanced that avoids the over-intellectualisation of education characteristic of knowledge builders and thereby offers a viable alternative for improving present-day educational practices in ways that promote appropriate utilisation of ICT in schools in particular.