Finnish Education Forum

Pasi Sahlberg on Finnish Lessons 2.0

Via PasiSahlberg.com: Finnish Lessons 2.0. Excerpt:

New and comprehensively updated edition of Finnish Lessons will appear in January 2015. The first edition that was published in November 2011 has had an unbelievable journey. It has been translated into 16 languages so far and counting. It won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award issued by the University of Louisville, KY, and took me to speak in Parliaments of European Union, Scotland, England, Australia, New Zealand and Latvia. I have had a marvelous journey with it, too. 

Now, with Finnish Lessons 2.0, I have thoroughly updated earlier groundbreaking account of how Finland built a world-class education system during the past four decades. I trace the evolution of Finnish education policies and highlights how they differ from the United States and much of the rest of the world. 

Featuring substantial additions throughout the text, Finnish Lessons 2.0 demonstrates how systematically focusing on teacher and leader professionalism, building trust between the society and its schools, and investing in educational equity rather than competition, choice, and other market-based reforms make Finnish schools an international model of success. 

This second edition details the complexity of meaningful change by examining Finland’s educational performance in light of the most recent international assessment data and domestic changes.

Jan 2015/264 pp./PB, $24.95

What Are Finnish Teachers Made Of? A Glance at Teacher Education in Finland Yesterday and Today

Via the website of Nova Publishers: What Are Finnish Teachers Made Of? A Glance at Teacher Education in Finland Yesterday and Today. Excerpt:

What Are Finnish Teachers Made Of? A Glance at Teacher Education in Finland Yesterday and Today

Retail Price: $85.00 10% Online Discount You Pay: $76.50

Authors: Merja Paksuniemi, Satu Uusiautti and Kaarina Määttä (University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland)  

Book Description: 

The purpose of this book is to provide a special viewpoint on the development of the Finnish school system and teacher education. Understanding the success of today requires information about the past. The book covers the history, ideological background, and development of Finnish teacher education from the 19th century to today. The historical review uses a northern Finnish teacher training college of Tornio as the example. 

 This book provides interesting information about the ideological foundation of the first teacher training colleges, description of how the ideology was applied in the practice of teacher training, and how students were selected for teacher training. The development of teacher training faced certain hardships too. What happened in Finnish society since the establishment of teacher training colleges in the second half of the 19th century affected Finnish teacher training significantly. The book brings out the special circumstances in Finland at the beginning of the 20th century focusing on the war years of 1939-1945. 

 This book, in a very tangible manner, presents the implementation of the educational ideologies of Finnish colleges and elementary schools shedding light on the success story of the Finnish educational system as it has been continuously ranked among the best in the world. The Finnish ethos of seeing education as an act of social justice seems still functional. The belief in the value of learning and education as the means to achieve success has been strong in Finland already for over a hundred years.

The book's price puts it out of reach out of all but some university libraries, but if any of this blog's readers (including the authors!) would like to comment on it, I'd be glad to post their views.