Teacher Education in Finland
I think the American education policy debate is probably going to start focusing more and more on how we train and credential teachers. And yesterday, I learned about how this is done in Finland. For background, the Finnish equivalent of high-school (”upper secondary school”) teachers students who are 17, 18, and 19. So obtaining a Bachelor’s degree from a Finnish university typically only takes three years. A master’s degree takes five. To qualify as a “kindergarten teacher” you need a bachelor’s degree, but that doesn’t actually mean you teach kindergartens. Rather, you’re qualified to staff certain positions in Finland’s municipally administered daycare centers.
Primary and secondary school teachers, by contrast, need master’s degrees. But within this group, there are two different kinds of degrees. There are “class teachers” for younger kids and “subject teachers” who are mostly for older kids. A class teacher has a class of children, all of whom are basically the same age, and teachers diverse subjects. A subject teacher teaches one subject to kids of different ages. To become a class teacher, you apply to a university’s Department of the Practical Science of Education and spend five years doing a mix of classes on education theory and pedagogy (in general terms like what we do in US education schools) and “practice teaching” on actual students in actual schools. To become a subject teacher, by contrast, you first need to get into the regular department in that subject and do coursework there, and then on top of that apply to the Education Department for admission to a brief course of pedagogical instruction.
One important difference between how this works and how equivalent systems work in the United States is that the education programs are highly competitive. Only 10-20 percent of applicants are accepted, and the applicants typically come from the top half of upper secondary schools which themselves only basically the top half of Finnish primary school graduates (the rest go to vocational schools). Along the same lines, it’s generally quite common for Finns to foot-drag there way through university, since the price is actually negative (free tuition, plus a stipend, plus subsidized loans) but we’re told that teachers usually do the five year course in five years because the job market for graduates of teacher programs are strong.
It’s a bit hard to say what accounts for the strong level of interest in a teaching career in Finland. Finnish teacher compensation seems about average for the US (which is to say considerably more generous than some states, considerably less generous than others). The relative salary is higher because other professionals such as lawyers and doctors earn less in Finland than do their US equivalents. And the subjective quality of the job experience seems better in Finland since the kids have many fewer discipline issues.
But at the same time, there seems to be a somewhat circular phenomenon at work. Teaching is held in high regard not just in the abstract, but in practice as a profession a lot of people want to get into. Consequently, the teaching programs are quite selective. And the selectivity itself makes teaching prestigious since everyone knows teachers are graduates of selective programs. Which helps make going into teaching seem appealing to a lot of people. And so on and so forth in an interesting way. It seems to me that it’s easy to see how it’s socially beneficial to increase the number of talented people who want to be teachers; by contrast, it’s difficult for me to see what kind of social benefits from from increasing the number of talented people who want to be lawyers. Finland and the United States seem to be on different spots on the teacher/lawyer curve, and I don’t think it’s difficult to say which is the better spot.
49 Responses to “Teacher Education in Finland”
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December 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Again, you’ve done no research. Teaching is considered an attractive profession in Finland, because teachers are treated as professionals. They are encouraged to conduct class-based research in collaboration with their peers. They are empowered to make educational decisions [pedagogical, curricular, etc.]. Their class sizes are small. In the primary years, they work with the same groups of students over multiple years. The list goes on… You’d know some of this if you’d done some research on the subject. Instead, you’re a tourist blinded by your own assumptions.
There is more to creating incentives for talented people to enter the teaching profession than pay. We lose half of all new teachers within five years, and a big part of why they leave has to do with the working conditions. Of course, you think that turning teachers into technicians who regularly proctor standardized assessments is a step in the right direction.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Also interesting to me is that “subject teachers” actually learn their subjects. My impression (which of course could be off) in the U.S. is that all teachers do “class teacher” training, with minor forays into subject matter.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:30 am
We need a few numbers on top of that, Matt: for teacher salaries, and the cost of education to become qualified. That’s to say. how much of a debt burden (if any) does a newly-qualified teacher carry?
(One reason for lawyers and doctors earning what they do in the US? The amount it costs to get law/medical degrees. It’d be good to know whether the Finns are closer to the British model, where you can start a law or medical degree as an undergraduate and be qualified by your early 20s, or the American one where law/med school is a typically-expensive postgrad.)
December 12th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Hey, Matt quite clearly at the beginning of this series said that he was coming to Finland as an outsider, and that his posts will consist more of questions that came to mind rather than as the results of rigorous research. Lay off, please.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:42 am
It’s hard to say what accounts for the strong level of interest in a teaching career in Finland.
Oh, sure, the teachers have relatively more prestige, instead of being constantly described as an educational variant of Teamsters goons from the 70s. All of the kids have access to healthcare and they start school after a pre-school program in which the ratio is three staffers to 21 students.
Still, it remains a mystery as to exactly why there is more interest in becoming a teacher in Finland.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Lay off, please.
Gimmee a break. Matt regularly posts ignorant crap about education policy on his public blog and we’re supposed to lay off because he’s in Finnland? It’s almost like he’s studying to become the next Thomas Friedman.
Also, I have to say that I agree with Al’s wife that classes on education theory and pedagogy are completely useless. Actually, a lot of them are worse than useless. They give young teachers a lot of stupid ideas that will never work in a real classroom.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:50 am
In the United States, a lot of what drives talented people into law is that it’s a proxy for public participation. Not just service, as in elected office, but having a law degree makes you able to participate in the public world — understand and comment on its laws. I know tons of people who hate being lawyers but drift quite easily with their credential into government service or nonprofit work. That kind of badge of legitimacy would go a long way towards creating high-status teaching, but I’m not sure how easy it is to manufacture.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:54 am
EVERYONE ELSE DO THE DIFFICULT AND IMPORTANT THINGS WHICH WE DON’T PAY MUCH FOR! THEY ARE IMPORTANT! AND DIFFICULT!!!!
December 12th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Do teachers in Finland belong to organizations that collectively bargain?
December 12th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Adding to the circular reinforcement in Finland, I would guess, is student respect for teachers because students know how selective the profession is. I would thus expect fewer discipline issues and more attention paid in class. Student respect for public school teachers in the United States is lacking, in my experience as a public school graduate, due to the belief that a U.S. teacher wouldn’t do such work if he or she had other options.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Obviously there are a lot of reasons at work here. I would be really curious to know what the working hours of the top 10% of Finland’s teachers are compared to the top 10% of American teachers. Sure if you teach in the states you can get away with 8 hours/day and 2 months of vacation, but if you actually take your job seriously, you’re going to work a lot more than that. Add in the fact that if you are actually willing to work a lot in the states you can make up to 4x-10x more as a lawyer. Then consider that since we have no social safety in the states, making lots of money is a lot more valuable in helping you to feel secure, that you, your kids and your loved ones will always have healthcare, the opportunity to vacation, pursue educational dreams and retire comfortably.
All told I don’t think there’s one huge outstanding reason for people to want to teach in Finland, but there are a lot of factors that will add up, plus the positive feedback loop MY identified of status. But due to the other factors in the states I don’t think the Finland model would be remotely helpful. As MY pointed out in an earlier thread, in Finland they take it as a given that school districts will strive for excellence. That’s a laughable assumption here.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
“The relative salary is higher because [1]other professionals such as lawyers and doctors earn less in Finland than do their US equivalents. And the subjective quality of the job experience seems better in Finland since the kids have many [2]fewer discipline issues.
I’ve wondered why [1] above is true. How do doctors and lawyers command so much more money in the US than elsewhere.
And [2] will be a real problem in all communities that do not seriously value education, except as a vehicle for football.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
“Lay off please” -Scott de B
No. In order to ask the right questions you have to do some research first. Otherwise, you miss a lot of opportunities.
“Do teachers in Finland belong to organizations that collectively bargain?” -crimelord
Yes.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
As a former teacher and current lawyer, I feel compelled to comment, even though I have little to add.
There, that feels better.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
There, was that hard? Politeness, what a concept!!!
December 12th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Actually I guess I could have added further anecdotal evidence that graduate classes on pedagogical theory and methods are useless. At least, they felt that way to me when I arrived at my first (and last) teaching job and was handed three classes full of the lowest-performing, least-disciplined students in a semirural school district, and told to give them lots of worksheets to keep them busy, and given a list of topics that were on the end-of-11th-grade standardized test and told to cover them all. I quit after 6 months.
I’d have been better served by classes on “Planning and Time Management,” or “How Not to Give a Shit when Your Students Threaten Your Physical Safety.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t make much more money now as a lawyer, and I’m not at all sure I’m contributing much more to society than I did as a failing and inept teacher.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
The Finnish system sounds similar to the Canadian system (i.e. middle and high school teachers have a BA in their subject and then take a 1 year masters on top of that in order receive credentials to teach), which makes infinitely more sense than what we have.
I was an English education major for two and a half years (basically only student teaching stood in the way of my being qualified to teach high school). My education classes were worthless and I was taking fewer English classes in order to make room for the education requirements, and so felt like I didn’t have enough preparation in literature either. I eventually switched my major to regular English literature and am now a PhD student. When I changed my major, I wrote a letter to the Dean of the College of Education explaining how the structure of teacher preparation at this (large state) university had destroyed my desire to be a high school teacher. I copied the provost, the university president and others. Everyone else responded to my letter except for the Dean of Education.
My friends who finished teaching certifications are by and large not teaching any more (I’ve been out of undergrad for five years). A few went onto law or graduate school in other fields. The one who is still teaching feels overwhelmed and under-supported. I’ll be shocked if she is still teaching in a year or two.
Regardless of the intricacies of the Finnish system, can we agree that we have doesn’t serve either teachers or students?
December 12th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
“La la la. Nothing to see here. Nothing Finland does or has done could ever apply here because of our race problem.. Besides, Matt is just a trust-fund tourist. So let’s change the subject and move on.” Such is the tenor of the comments here.
Hmm. Wonder what is it that upsets the trolls so much about Finnish educational policy?
December 12th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell
This piece by Malomb Gladwell in the current New Yorker about is a bit dumb but still manages to point out how huge a factor teacher quality is in how well a group of students does. One of the experts he interviewed calculated that academic performace of US students compared to the rest of the world could move from midling to the high end simply by removing the bottom 6-10% of bad teachers and replacing them with average teachers. The report also says that graduate degrees and certifications have zero to do with teacher performance. The problems is figuring out who the good ones are and getting them into the profession.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
DGJ:
I’m in a credential program and I’ve thought the same thing – pedagogical theory classes are a bit of a waste in that they teach empathy of race, gender and social status, something a teacher’s probably already predisposed to, and liberal arts majors get a heavy dose of anyways, instead of focusing on how to constructively deal with behavioral issues that arise from those causes.
Hopefully I won’t feel that way about the rest of the program.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Am I misreading or are you saying that overall Finnish students are educated in separate tracks – upper secondary schools and vocational schools? To what extent does the difference in student composition impact the teaching and learning experience/environment? One of the American challenges (and theoretical advantages) is the commitment to try to teach everyone K-12. This sounds good in the ideal, but we struggle with this in school districts throughout the country where insufficient funding, local politics and socioeconomic factors can trump good intentions.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Yeah, if Matt were serious, he would do something like go to Finland learn from the sources what their methods were.
Stick, your real position is that in order to ask the right questions you need to do all the research first. That’s ridiculous. The right questions are the ones that lead to further, useful research.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I am a high school AP World History teacher.
My kids kick ass on the exam as sophomores and are pretty amazing students in a public school. My college education classes did not prepare me for being a real teacher. The classes were jokes.
Not everyone can teach, just like not everyone can be a stand-up comic. I would love to see some people get locked in a room with 31 fifteen year olds for 55-70 minutes at a time, five times a day.
Teaching is half art-half science.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Njorl- “Stick, your real position is that in order to ask the right questions you need to do all the research first. That’s ridiculous.”
No, that is not my position. I’m currently working on the Finnish model in my own research, and there really isn’t that much out there to read right now… not written in English anyway. What bothers me about this post [and the others related to Finland] is that MY is demonstrating that he has done little to no research of the academic literature on the subject. Therefore, he is overlooking a great deal.
A few hours of reading is all that is necessary. I would start with Pasi Sahlberg with the World Bank.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
One of the things that drives smart people out of the teaching profession in the U.S. is that a gigantic amount of teacher training consists of indoctrination in the reigning dogmas of multiculturalism and political correctness. That’s pretty much a necessity in the U.S. where the most obvious fact confronting teachers are racial differences in average intelligence among students. So, the teacher training process devotes perhaps half its time to telling teachers not to believe their lying eyes, to giving them rationalizations for why they shouldn’t notice what they can all see, and why it’s all the fault of white people.
This need to lie constantly puts a major psychological burden on American teachers.
In contrast, Finnish teachers don’t need this kind of indoctrination in the dogmas of empirical equality since they don’t have to deal with much diversity.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I see it only took a few dozen posts to get to the “the minorities are stupid” card.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
It’s Steve Sailer. That’s the only card he has.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Strange. The pedagogical courses my wife took taught things like childhood development, learning types, classroom management, and a host of other rather useful things.
Then again, I’ve seen the occasional teacher who seems to feel none of his/her students are visual learners, and is thus content to drone on and on with half the class struggling because they learn more through their eyes than ears.
Of course, the worst offenders there were college professors who took NO pedagogical courses. Luckily for them, adults can generally adapt. I pity the 8 and 9 year olds struggling through a class that might as well be called “A subject that would be interesting and you’d learn from, if only the teacher had a clue where your brain was developmentally and had bothered to plan his/her lessons so as to maximize learning for EVERYONE in the class”.
December 12th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
NCLB requires that for single subject classes a teacher needs the right degree and in California you take up to 35 units getting your credential. This sounds like what they do in Finland. I have a degree in Chemistry and teach the physical sciences offered at our school.
The credentialing program is as good as you let it be. In California, it includes one semester student teaching at a middle school and one at a high school for single subject credentials along with other classes. I think some of the people who don’t like the classes are the same people who don’t read instructions before they start doing something.
School districts and schools usually try to be excellent. The question is how do you determine what is excellent? We try to shove all of our students through a high school curriculum designed to send them to college and not all of them want to go. Square peg meet round hole. You do what you can.
December 12th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I find it odd that while the Finns demand what seems to be a rigorous teacher training program, the push among US conservatives seems focused on getting rid of that pesky teaching credential requirement so that they can expand the labor pool to those with “real life experience.”
While the rationale is that this is innovative, outside the box thinking, my take is that this is really aimed at sticking it to one of the last great bastions of trade unionism. Stereotypically, proponents don’t send their kids to public schools, anyway, so whatever they can do to reduce the cost of labor has gotta be a good thing.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
There are “class teachers” for younger kids and “subject teachers” who are mostly for older kids.
Isn’t that pretty much the way it is in the US, or at least in some states? I was under the impression that your average, say, third grade teacher was likely an education major (or equivalent) and your average, say, tenth grade teacher possessed a degree in a specific field (such as romance languages, or history, or math, or what have you). At least that’s how it worked in my district outside of Boston. And how could it be otherwise? How could someone without a very solid background in a particular field (as evidenced by a university degree) teach calculus or French or Shakespeare to sixteen year olds?
December 13th, 2008 at 12:16 am
I’m a Finnish guy. I can’t say I know all that much about teaching in Finland, and all my US school system knowledge is based on US TV series (but I’ve watched way too many of those), but here are my thoughts on the issue:
First of all Finnish high school students start at the age of 16, not 17. High school education is pretty respected. Only people who are actually interested in studying go there. Maybe 50% of students go to vocational schools after the 9th grade and other 50% to high schools. I guess some don’t go anywhere after 9th grade, but then you can’t get unemployment benefits, so that’s pretty rare.
I think the high school experience is the first important difference between Finland and US. In Finland teachers and other students suffer from badly behaving teens only through grades 7-9 (13-15 year olds). In US it’s the high school where the worst experiences seem to be, because people who aren’t interested in studying have been forced to go there.
In US students seem to be stressed out about their grades throughout the high school. You won’t get into the best colleges without superhigh grades. I don’t think this is good. In contrast in Finland the grades you get from high school classes don’t matter at all. At the end of high school everyone in Finland does the same matriculation exam. The exams are graded by the same people for everyone in Finland. There are two good outcomes from this: First, students’ own teachers can’t give better/worse grades due to bias. Second, it doesn’t punish students who have had bad times during high school. All that matters is that you actually have learned everything required at the end of the high school.
After high school again students have several options. Again perhaps only 50% (I’m just guessing these numbers) go to universities, others go to “higher vocational schools”. Everyone goes to university to get a Master’s degree. Actually it wasn’t even possible to get a Batchelor’s degree for 20 years or so, it only got changed a few years ago.
You don’t just go to “a college” and select your major later. You have to select your major when applying for the university. There are entrance exams about the subject. Getting in isn’t all that easy. Typically there are one or two books that have to be studied for the entrance exam. For example med school students need to learn about human body and physics (yes, you go to 5 year med school directly after high school), biochemistry students need to learn a book about biochemistry, and so on.
I’ve heard about a joke (or a true story?) about a pre-med student asking organic chemistry professor: “Why do we have to take this class?” “To save lives.” “How does organic chemistry save lives?” “By keeping idiots out of med school.”
In Finnish system the idiots don’t get into med school because of the difficult entrance exams. It’s only one 400 page book that needs to be studied for it, but still some people fail to get in for years before giving up. Perhaps it’s the math/physics part of the exam that’s most difficult, since solving those problems can’t be done just by having the book memorized.
When getting into a university they usually have two quotas. About half of people get in based on a combination of the high school matriculation exam scores and the entrance exam scores. The rest get in based only on entrance exam scores. So even if you screwed up high school you can still later in life get into practically any university you want simply by doing well in the entrance exams.
Going to a university is cheap. If you live poorly, you can go through the university with no initial funds, no funds from parents and without having to work. Although that is pretty poor living then. Anyway, I think this also encourages people to study what they actually enjoy, instead of where they get paid the most. You don’t have to worry about paying back huge college debts for years after graduation.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:45 am
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December 13th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Why are teachers not as highly regarded in the USA as in some other countries?
“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
and “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”
December 13th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I believe the Finns pay teachers in 1st and 2nd grade higher wages than teachers at higher levels. I don’t know if this helps but they think it does. Our organizaton put together a study mission to Helsinki earlier this year, including looking at their early childhood education programs. Here’s more info on our trip: http://seattletradealliance.com/blog/?p=358
December 13th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I have the same impression, cmholm. If unionized teachers are the problem and they are fired en masse, who will replace them? Personally, when I’ve considered firing people, I also considered the probability that the replacement would be any better in the foreseeable future.
If there’s an untapped pool of bright, energetic, inspirational, motivated, available potential teachers with subject mastery who are restricted from teaching by the lack of a few college courses (some available from a junior college), then maybe firing unionized teachers en masse would improve education results. If the fired teachers were replaced by people with the same qualifications, then I don’t see any point beyond breaking the union.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Amazing. A country where teachers AREN’T idiots.
1) Quadruple teacher pay.
2) Remove all roadblocks for people with *real* degrees (i.e., not in “education”) who want to be teachers.
3) Make professional advancement contingent upon obtaining further degrees in *real* academic fields (i.e., not education).
The problem – insofar as the teachers are concerned – is not the unions, but rather the idiots who populate them. Let the idiots be supplanted by smart people, and things will be better.
Then the harder problems can be addressed, like shitty parenting and the like. Getting rid of our idiot-teacher profession is straightforward.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Ooops – I forgot:
4) Substantially improve teachers’ workload.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Unlike the vast majority of posters, I do not have much to add to the discussion of teaching in primary and secondary schools, as I have never done it. However, as a practicing lawyer for over a decade, I thought I would share some of the social benefits from having talented people go into the legal profession:
1) While I realize that a certain governor had trouble naming Supreme Court decisions, the rest of us, even those who did not go to law school, might have relatively little difficulty naming a number of cases brought by talented lawyers which have greatly improved life in America: Brown v. Board of Ed (school desegregation), Griswald (the right to contraception), Roe v. Wade (abortion), Lawrence v. Texas (gay rights). Think about which profession in America has done the most to fight Gitmo.
2) Following up on point #1, in a day-to-day way, lawyers use their degrees and their professional skills to protect some of the most vulnerable amongst us – victims of domestic violence, people living with HIV/AIDS, the homeless, immigrants, veterans, to name just a few areas where lawyers specialize in helping others.
3) And this is going to be the hardest for non-lawyers to believe, but corporate lawyers, when they do the jobs they are supposed to, do, in fact, protect the public. The scandal that is Enron, to name just one example, could have and should have been avoided by a number of players, not the least of whom are corporate lawyers responsible for ensuring compliance of financial players with all relevant statue and regulations.
4) Government lawyers – those people who write the laws and regulations that should be and often can make life better for all of us. The lawyers who fight for statutes and regulations that protect the environment, promote public transportation and, yes, govern our educational system, are all working for the public good.
I could go on and one, but I think you get the ideas – everyone loves to bash lawyers as parasitic creatures who serve no purpose in life and are otherwise unpleasant (”What do lawyers use for contraception? Personality”), but lawyers can do a lot of good. I’ve worked in government, private sector and non-profit – I’ve worked in policy and in direct service. I’ve spent more time in my current position – helping immigrant victims of domestic violence regularize their immigration status – than in any other over the years. Overall, I think that the work that my colleagues and I do is pretty valuable.
Oh, and by the way, I make less money than the public school teachers I know who live in my apartment building.
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