Creative Thinking in the Classroom

The article discusses how current changes in the system of reasoning about education in Finland, Iceland and Sweden are characterised by culturally woven patterns where marketisation strategies, for instance budget reform, are introduced as technically effective devices both for educating the best and to increase inclusion. This system of reason presupposes that the neo-liberalist restructuring changes are inevitable global phenomena and that they are a progress compared with the old arrangements, but is silent about socio-economic issues and the equity goals of the 1960s-1980s. The article also argues that school-based self-evaluation as a practice and as a language is a normalising technique that ensures that school actors will identify the obstacles encountered in the restructuring transition so that neither state nor other authorities intervene.     

Didactic closure: Professionalization and pedagogic knowledge in Finnish teacher education

This article concerns the kind of symbolic and strategic value that science-legitimated pedagogical knowledge has in the professionalization of teacher education. The aim is to try to understand certain peculiarities in this body of knowledge through studying the history of the “science of teaching” and of the professionalization of teacher education in Finland. The conclusion is that there are at least three professionalist drifts that produce and reproduce a kind of “decontextualized pedagogic discourse” in Finnish teacher education: the pursuit of science legitimation, loyalty to state educational reforms and a striving for distinction from rival disciplines. The analysis shows that, at least up to the present day, the science-legitimated knowledge system for teacher education has served as a very successful strategy in the struggles on the field of Finnish higher education.     

Education Governance in Transition: An introduction

The purpose of this article is to present concepts and research problems dealing with education governance and social inclusion and exclusion. Education restructuring, as a recent international movement, is regarded as a combination of transitions in governing and new managerialism. Social inclusion and exclusion is conceived of as a duplet concept, mutually defining each other. The relation between new governance - deregulation, decentralisation, privatisation and steering by goals and results - and social inclusion/exclusion is conceptualised as an equity problematic and a knowledge problematic. It is argued that there is a need to understand the system of reason in order to capture the implications of education governing in transition.     

Abdication of the Education State or Just Shifting Responsibilities? The appearance of a new system of reason in constructing educational governance and social exclusion/inclusion in Finland

The connections between the new governance in education and new procedures of social exclusion and inclusion in Finland are examined. The main focus is on the emergence of a specific discursive formation constituted by an intersection of the myths of competition, corporate managerialism, an educational clientele and social democracy with images of rational choice makers and invisible clients (pupils) and individual-centred learning professionals (teachers) in a mass institution. The research material is extensive, including national statistical data, education policy texts, interviews with educational actors at the national, municipal and school levels and a survey of pupils. The conclusion of the paper outlines a new system of reason as a historical shift of responsibilities in the national education system.     

The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education

One of the recent tributes to the success of Finnish schooling was the PISA 2000 project report. As befits the field of education, the explanations are primarily pedagogical, referring especially to the excellent teachers and high‐quality teacher education. Without underrating the explanatory power of these statements, this paper presents some of the social, cultural and historical factors behind the pedagogical success of the Finnish comprehensive school. From the perspectives of history and the sociology of education, it also sheds light on some ironic paradoxes and dilemmas that may be concealed by the success. The focus is on the problematic nature of international comparative surveys based on school performance indicators. The question is whether they really make it possible to understand schooling in different countries, or whether they are just part of processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’.