Appendix 5.
Many schools have recently begun to present themselves as open learning centres. By this they point out, not only to the opened doors, but to the openness of teaching and studying as well.
Open teaching and learning contains by definition unpredictability, that extends itself also to the substance level, selection of the students, time tables, choosing of the study environment, learning materials, technical means, methods and so on.
This explains why qualification orientated learning, if using methods designed for open learning, leads to an intellectual impossibility. Persuading students into such, will lead to a large scale “Go and make it clear for yourself how a blood sample is taken from the upper limb vein.” –style waste of time.
Correspondingly, open learning can never be organised around a quantitatively orientated final exam. This would make no sense, because in such a case, the openness and unpredictability would simply be destroyed. Results of open learning can only be measured by qualitatively orientated surveys.
According to this, also the upper secondary school could merely summit, not in a matriculation exam (of closed nature), but in a matriculation survey (of open nature) instead. This approach would bring along much more sensitive, detailed and valuable information about how and what the students learn during their school years. If our goal seriously is to steer school pedagogics towards more cooperative and problem based learning, a final exam, that prices the best competitors is not uniform with this.
Hence, targeting on qualifications necessarily leads to studies which by their very nature will be closed. This cannot be avoided because it must be possible to express the required criteria clearly, not least for the sake of the students´ equality of justice.
It might be surprising that this can nowadays be difficult to admit. The reason for this is, that the branch of closed pedagogy has easily an old fashioned appearance. In search for avoidance of an old fashioned image, even the matriculation exam (in Finland) has become more and more seasoned with questions, which somehow try to mimic the spirit of open (= constructivist) learning.
Though, in a context of qualificational status, these kinds of questions only loose their original idea and become objects of an unintended transformation. The transformation is done by the students, who understandably look at the questions from the point of view of the closed learning model. As a result, the students waist their energy wondering, what on Earth this time could be the criteria for a top quality answer.