Theory of Everything
International bestseller
"In his wondrously lucid and engaging essay
the author demonstrates what many of us
have long suspected."
(The Hakunila Book Review)
Pasi Vilpas
Teacher in Biology and Geography
Sotunki Upper Secondary School & Distance Learning Center
Vantaa
Finland
TO SUCCESSFULLY REDIRECT LEARNING AT SCHOOL ASKS FOR A DEEP RECONSIDERING OF ITS CONVENTIONS
It has become of importance to improve learning skills, creativity, cooperative abilities, network competence and learning motivation of the school students. However, goals of qualitative nature are difficult to reach in the quantitatively orientated school reality. Evaluation of the learning results, which traditionally is done quantitatively, is in a deep philosophical contradiction with widely approved attempts to modernize the school. Quantitative ways of measuring seem only to make the goal escape further and further. The problem ceases from becoming solved, because a school without (quantitative) marks would not anymore be The (?) School.
Contradiction is also evident with the views typical for philosophers, sociologists and computer scientists such as Pekka Himanen, Manuel Castells and Linus Torvalds theorizing on the values of the future network society. Getting these contradictions solved may ask for lots of changes in our conventional perception of the school institution. Solving them, though, may possibly be one of the main conditions for the school education to stay at all valid in the future.
Although, in the text below, I am mostly writing from the point of view of a Finnish upper secondary school teacher (about equivalent to the High School teacher in the USA), I suppose the problems I am going to deal with are about the same in all educational levels and all around the globe. I apologize for the fact that I am not able to explain my points of views simply and shortly. I personally would prefer just a compact list of abbreviations.
I needed four years to get this text sound good in Finnish. Unfortunately, my sence of nuances doesn´t reach such a depth in English. If you run into linguistic somersaults I still hope you can trace the clue!
Quantitative measuring gives a kick start to School Mark Economics
Measuring results is the most important and far reaching part of the school work. From the point of view of a teacher, this determines the concept of knowledge and the form of pedagogics favoured. From the student´s point of view, evaluation determines the aspects in the school subjects that he or she considers important. If the student has an interest of getting high scores, he or she has to concentrate on not making mistakes in the exams.
This kind of a teaching and learning strategy regularly reaches a level which, with a good reason, can be called School Mark Economics. In the branch of economics in question, the school marks are currency by which the successfulness of the school work is measured. The flow of the currency is regulated by the teacher. The efforts, that don´ t have an effect on the marks (= on the teacher), are not respected and are not worth putting on. The one dimensional “quantity of quality” (= school marks) supersedes the multidimensional “quality of quality”. The popular misconception, that it is wise to measure quality of learning quantitatively, is difficult to change, even though this mode of action is the biggest hinder of the deep orientated high quality learning .
When looking at the school system from an outsider´s point of view, learning does not appeal as the most prominent goal of the school at all. Instead of this, the goal seems to be getting the students into a ranking (?) order. In its attempts to successfully do this, the school is ready to sacrifice the students` eagerness to learn, willingness to produce new ideas, cooperative skills, strive for the depth of thought, aim for self-realization, ability to break common paths of thought etc.. Still, these are the qualities regularly considered and emphasized as the most important characteristics required in the tomorrow´ s society (I will later have a closer look at the basics of my argumentation).
Putting the students into a ranking order is a pedagogically harmful waist of time (appendix 1). This though becomes clear for the teachers only (but immediately), if the schools or the teachers are in a threat of becoming put into a ranking order as well. Still, the students are supposed to react with an incessant enthusiasm during a constant treatment of this kind.
The effects of school evaluation on the students´ learning motivation
Let us suppose that an assessment would be organized about the way the teachers realise their role in the school. Let us in turn suppose, that a third part (for example the teachers) would become interested in the level of the assessor` s professional competence. A group of meta-assessors would be sent at the place to solve the question. What sort of an effect would the arrival of the meta-assessors have on the work motivation of the actual assessor? Would the situation change , if the meta-assessors told the actual assessor to keep an eye not at all on the quantity, but only on the quality of the assessment?
By the previous example we possibly notice how easily externally performed evaluation becomes interpreted as lack of confidence. It is important to be aware, that this sort of an interpretation mostly not at all can be controlled by the assessor. Despite the attempts to avoid it, there is a considerable danger that the object begins to feel disparaged. The extent of this may even become so high, that the level of his or her work motivation collapses. This kind of an annoying dependence is familiar to the most of the upper secondary school teachers (in Finland) in relation to the jury of the national matriculation exam. Every day the same applies to the students´ relationship with their teachers.
The following list of the unwanted side effects of the way of evaluation (external and teacher centred) at the school is probably not comprehensive:
1. Gives an impression of nuisance by intention (“I myself certainly know best how little I have learned.”)
2. Leads to the School Mark Economics and by doing this, strengthens the use of superficial learning strategies.
3. The student` s role as an externally manipulated object is highlighted. The work satisfaction is lost because of this.
4. Reciprocal cooperation does not prove clever anymore (cooperation lowers the rank of the altruistic students), it does not be indispensable, and in fact in the only serious real life situations (= in the exams) it is not even allowed.
5. The dream of the teacher` s role as an encourager to openness changes into reality, where weaknesses must be kept hidden. The role of a coach cannot be combined with the role of a school mark controller.
6. Creativity is not learned by avoiding mistakes, except of course creativity in avoiding mistakes.
Finally, instead of learning, the students begin to concentrate on how best to come off the teacher (appendix 2). Point four often transforms co-operationally intended pedagogy into a completely chaotic mess (appendix 3).
The teachers usually see their role as school mark controllers solely as a catalyst for good quality learning. Often this role is considered even as an immediate condition for it. Possibilities for the opposite kind of circumstances are difficult to see. The students, too, have become so used to the system, that they find it difficult to identify any lack of appropriateness in it.
The upper secondary school students cannot remember anymore, that they lost their cognitive curiosity only after having begun their school career. This may as well be caused by other reasons, but the most essential difference between the kinder garden and the school is the abundance of the teacher centred evaluation in the latter.
The teachers use exams to motivate students. At the same time the students lack motivation, because of the exams. What if the Sun were not orbiting the Earth, but the Earth the Sun instead?
Student centred evaluation
Evaluation motivates its performers because of the feeling of power it arouses. The feeling of power could, in a larger scale, be utilized for pedagogical purposes as well. Nowadays, the teachers are mostly concentrating only on minimizing it. The feeling of power could most easily be fed by making the students evaluate themselves.
In the student centred way of evaluation, the school marks serve mostly as just pedagogical baits, instead of being used for manipulative purposes between the teachers and the students. The student could, for example, be encouraged to plan, write and mark the school tests independently without the teacher. This would make the student consider, what sort of knowledge is important and to develop feasible tools for measuring how well the goal has been reached.
At the same time, the students would also end up considering the question: “What is learning?”, in other words the qualitative dimensions of education. The usual approach has mostly laid stress on the question: ”What have we been taught?” if even that. Processing these kinds of questions makes the students take into account the principles of handling, organizing, analyzing and presenting information.
The most famous paradox of quantum physics where measurement (= quantitative approach to evaluation) makes its target (= qualitatively orientated learning attitude) disappear, may not disappear completely, but will become milder and a number of advantages can be derived out of it.
An average upper secondary school student takes approximately 60 exams during his or her upper secondary school carrier (in Finland). This treasure cist of litterature is mostly left intact in the pedagogical sense. Although the student would not at all be in a need of, for example mathematics, it still is clear, that everybody benefits from becoming able to analyze notes of mathematical kind. This kind of an advantage is deeply independent of the person` s later professional orientation.
At school, the students are put to play learning games, even though the life outside the school requires abilities to create learning games by one´s own.
In a school interested in better work motivation, the previously presented methodological suggestions would not be interpreted as signs of idealism, but as signs of realism instead.
The phenomenon does not depend on the type of exams the teacher favours. If the target is on a deep orientated learning strategy, all the teacher´s tests may serve only for pedagogical and diagnostic purposes.
In fact, for the modern learning concepts to become established, there is a need for completely new perspectives on measuring the learning results. Usually, when considering the effectiveness of new learning and teaching methods, the final big question presented is: “But what are the learning results?”. When presented in the school, the question could as well be translated into ”But what marks have the students got?”. In other words, already asking the question, and hence also answering it, contains as given, a hidden preassumption, that only criteria characteristic for School Mark Economics are justified.
This paradigm-level failure becomes obvious also in the internationally organized comparative surveys on school learning. When the yardsticks are from yesterday, success in the surveys gives questionable basics for selfesteem.
The Teacher´s self evaluation
The quality of learning can as well be measured in a more neutral and pedagogically reasonable way than the traditionally favoured way has been. The fact, that mostly the volume of the transferred knowledge is percepted as the sign of valuable learning, is the main reason for the methodological rigorousness of the school. More feasible, but still easily detectable indicator of quality would rather be the rate of the students´ internal motivation. Waking this up and keeping it on a high level should be the main objective of the school work. Instead of heavy cognitive and manipulative approach, the students and the teachers should widely be encouraged towards more flexible and relaxed forms of interaction.
In ordinary language, learning with a defect on internal motivation, is called habituation. Methodologies, which require this, are not serving goals of pedagogical foundation.
The exam based artillery is only a small (and in fact detrimental) fraction of the other wise wide motivational playground. Because of the exams, though, the areas beyond that have been very difficult to take into proper use by the teachers.
Teacher mediated double signalling and its side effects
The problems of the school, that I analysed earlier in my text, and the spectrum of reflections they create, are difficult to percept clearly by the teacher. In addition to their fuzziness the problems do present themselves in a manner, that makes them appear structural and evitable parts of the school system. Although the problems give an impression of being independent from each other and of separate character, they all share the same basic origin. They are caused by the teacher, who has to combine two basically incompatible roles of profession: the coach and the controller of the school marks.
This double role is against any rational as well as emotional reasoning. The student is supposed to confide to a coach, who in the student´s mind belongs to the opposing team. This slight nonreasonability shoots down (all?) the ideals of modern pedagogics. This is the main cause of friction, that all too often can burn out the student as well as the teacher.
The situation results into a self supporting two way lack of trust. I recommend the reader to remind him- or herself of the feelings of (understandable) suspect, which the previously suggested ways of student based evaluation possibly woke up.
The problems of the school are not anybody´s fault. They are only emerging as a result of the prevailing school concept. Still it is typical, that the teachers are mostly ready to take the blame. Often though, the guilt is gladly pushed on the fellow teachers or the students. The career of a young teacher all too often begins with a “What was it we experienced old teachers did warn you about?” –humiliation. To completely recover of this may prove to be impossible forever. The teachers´ room is filled with an atmosphere of blame so dense, that no space is left for the teachers to take risks.
In addition to the facts explained in the previous paragraph, the teachers often blame the students´ bad home conditions and today´s high prevalence of light entertaining for the problems of the school. In other words circumstances, which at all can not be influenced by the school. The connections are lost preferentially to the homes, that are in the biggest need of them.
Does Information and Communication Technology give us solutions?
Developing the school has only little to do with information technologies. A massive use of ICT based pedagogy is usually not a sign of qualified learning culture. The interdependence rather points to the opposite direction: a qualified learning culture has a high tendency towards ICT based pedagogy. At the focus, of course, is not the technical equipment itself, but some of the ways it can be utilized.
It simply is not clever, and especially there is no urge whatsoever, to use ICT as long as the school is organised around ranking orderism. This target can as well be reached by cheaper and less complicated means. Because of its co-operational essence, ICT often makes managing the traditional ways of school work even harder. This is why the formula, which would unite ICT with the students during the lessons, still largely stays unsolved. The computers at schools easily end up just for the students´ recreational purposes during the breaks.
The way information technology is used, can not be controlled by external rules or wishes (they easily lead to games of hide and seek and poison the relationship between the students and the teachers). An optimal solution would be a strategy, where the pedagogical use of ICT could be catalysed as a result of endogenous needs of the students. If the students at the school have time to play computer games, it is only a sign of the fact, that the teachers have not utilized the pedagogical applications served by the ICT to their largest extent. The universe of ICT-hidden possibilities could begin, for example, by looking at the students` habit of copying texts and essays from the Internet merely as a sign of the structural failures in the concept of the school. As a result of this kind of an interpretation, this behaviour could transform into an important and valuable message.
Characteristics, which naturally lead to a more intensive use of ICT, are problem based learning (= instead of learning facts the students learn how to do research), collaborative learning especially when it grows up from the students´ own needs, aim for deep orientated learning, low borderlines between separate school subjects, true team work relationship between the students and the teachers etc. The minimum condition for these characteristics to develop is preferring the student based point of view not only in the exercises and evaluation, but in all other branches of the school work as well. But lots of challenges make it hard to change the routines of the school.
The School does not change by educating the teachers
Our ideas about teaching, learning and the school are largely influenced by our own past experiences as students. This is the reason for anxiety, with which most of the parents (they, too, are professionals of attending school) are prone to guard the state of the school. Their main purpose is to make sure the routines stay the same as they were on their own school days. Instead of expressing their wishes and points of views face to face to the teacher, the parents tend to put words into the mouth of their children.
The most prominent victim, as well as the supporter of the unchanging school routines (in Finland), is the arrangement and the jury of the national matriculation exam. In the eye of an average lay person, the marks reached in the exam are identical with the learning results of the school. The teacher or the headmaster interested in his or her employment can not overlook this fact. The more the schools or the teachers are competing with each other, the more difficult the overlooking becomes. The School Mark Economics is an inevitable consequence of the system, based very much on the presence of the national matriculation exam.
It is important to realise, that one is not able to escape the phenomenon by renewing the exam. These sorts of actions would not change at all the (exam centred) ways of thinking, but only the strategies, according to which the students and the teachers prepare themselves for the exam (appendix 4 and appendix 5).
It has been suggested that the exam should be developed into a direction that would enhance the students´ intellectual activities. When suggesting this, one forgets, that exactly this has always been the goal until today. The whole ideological background of the final exam has always laid on the rigorous faith on its effectiveness to stimulate the students´ own thinking. What kind of a secret quality would the renewed exam have that would make it philosophically different from its predecessors? After years of experience, the most important thing we have learned about the matriculation exam is, that to study thinking for an exam in thinking does not make much pedagogical sense.
Not any teacher, even of the most conscious kind, is capable of releasing oneself from the routines determined by the School Mark Economics. The routines do as well have an influence on the way computers and information networks are used for teaching and learning. This explains why the teachers may have it difficult to percept and to understand the social and ideological upheaval of ICT. The companies which sell and develop pedagogically orientated computer programs do not have much influence on the play ground. For commercial reasons, they have to concentrate on meeting the teachers´expectations. This is the reason why, in spite of the changes in the technical equipment, the culture of routines at the schools follows faithfully the limitations determined by ranking orderism (appendix 6).
To be able to change the presented circumstances, we would need a school, which is not The School. This, in turn, would ask for a complete renewal of the prevailing school concept. The renewal would need to reach through the whole society, including the highest tops of the school hierarchy.
The school is doomed to follow the public´ s perception of the school education. Maybe some business enterprise, with dimensions wide enough will one day take seriously the fatal effects of the school, and independently solve the problems by organizing the world´ s ever first learning orientated school. While waiting for this to happen, the today´ s school can only pretend as fighting for modern pedagogy.
Anything or nothing -phenomenon
Lots of signs for a good learning culture are listed in the pedagogical literature. I have collected some of them into a compact table (under). In the right column the signs are closer, and on the left column less close, to the goals discussed earlier. The listed signs are characterized only on an overall level.
Of the most significant importance in the table is the fact, that every sign in the same column is connected to all other signs in the same column. If the school is aiming for what ever specific sign, the sign in question becomes understandable only if it is joined with all the other signs in the same column. If separately transferred to the opposite column, every single sign begins to sound like nonsense (try this). The columns seem to reject each other with such a strength, that they basically could be seen as two separate groups of tight internal coherence.
|
Under developed learning culture |
Well developed learning culture |
|
1) The student is - an object for manipulation, lacking internal motivation |
1) The student is - an independent subject with strong internal motivation |
|
2) The teacher is - the Lord of the Marks |
2) The teacher is - an encouraging coach |
|
3) The students are - a group of individuals with superficial social connections |
3) The students are - a real community with strong internal connections, cooperation brings the keys to enjoyment and success
|
|
4) The teacher is focused on – excellent results in the exams (normally at the expense of the students´ internal motivation) |
4) The teacher is focused on - feeding and protecting the students´ internal motivation (raising up the quality of learning)
|
|
5) The main target of the student is - to be successful in the school mark economics |
5) The main target of the student is - successful learning
|
|
6) Evaluation is - teacher centred |
6) Evaluation is - student centred |
|
7) Typical to the atmosphere at the school is that - teaching is difficult to bring to completion - the student is teacher orientated
|
7) Typical to the atmosphere at the school is that - studying is difficult to bring to completion - the student is knowledge orientated
|
|
8) Creativity of the student - gets orientated to the curriculum mostly only when asked for
|
8) Creativity of the student - gets often orientated to the curriculum without external pressure |
|
9) Relationship between the student and the teacher is - manipulative
|
9) Relationship between the student and the teacher is - real and fair companionship
|
|
10) Relationship towards ICT - the use of ICT is controlled by the teacher - the students orientate spontaniously mostly to entertainment
|
10) Relationship towards ICT - there is no need for external control - the students utilize ICT spontaniously mostly for gathering information and maintaining the community spirit |
The moral of this table is that it is difficult to develop learning culture in small steps. Instead, there is a need for an abrupt and all-inclusive plunge of the school concept.
The goals determined in the rightmost column are surely stated in the curricula in most of the schools. When considered only superficially, the list seems to give a good alternative to the left one. As a following, though, of the strong internal coherence, the right side alternatives do practically never get realized. Represented, instead, are the points found in the left column, and also with such a strength that they hardly can stay undetectable. The students crystallize the observation into an effectively short sentence: “Are you going to ask these things in the exam?”.
If in the previous presentation the word teacher is substituted for boss, student for employee and school for business enterprise, commonplace but still new perspectives are opened into making people more motivated, productive, relaxed and creative at work outside the school as well. These perspectives are of importance for anybody who has got with creativity leadership to do.
Pasi Vilpas
pasi.vilpas@edu.vantaa.fi
Teacher in Biology and Geography
Sotunki Upper Secondary School & Distance Learning Center
Vantaa
Finland
Because school evaluation happens by relational means, it is never possible for every student to get the maximum scores. The complete number of the very successful ones determines, how big an effort is required from the rest of the students. As a simple and clever consequence of this, the students find it most practical to perform at the level close to the medium standard. Hence the typically low ambitiousness of the students´ does not result from a lack of competition, but instead from its considerably high level.
If the overall learning results prove to be too low, the teachers can improve them by composing easier exams. An other possibility is to place topics, that will be asked in the test, to the lessons given immediately before the test. If the learning results prove to be too good, acts of the opposite kind will be realized.
As a result of this basically tautological nature of evaluation, the scores given by separate educational institutions or even teachers are not, should not be and could not even theoretically be comparable. Only this can serve as an assurance against inequality, which otherwise could result from the differences in the teachers´ (or the student groups´) level of skills.
An interesting implication of this is, that the school marks loose their identity as proper measures of competence. This applies as well to the teachers as to the students. Also in the matriculation exam (at least in Finland) the scale for separate score categories is determined only after the exams. This way of action is based on an assumption, that the level of competence among the separate age cohorts of the teachers and the students stays constant year after year.
A slightly more tragic reason for the habit is, that using absolutically tuned learning criteria (which would require repeating the same questions year after year) would make the unwanted pedagogical effects (one example below) of this sort of an exam unbearably evident. Hence paradoxically, taking the scores seriously leads to a situation, where it becomes very difficult to take them seriously. In fact, such a closer look at the system reveals, that it is difficult to find good logical or pedagogical arguments for quantitative evaluation at all.
For the most, we now have good reasons to suspect the validity of, and also the need for, quantitative evaluation as a tool for social discrimination (appendix 6) either. A consensus of the criteria can never, not even theoretically, be reached. Instead of this they are, and will always be, in a state of constant transformation. Their nature depends completely on the preferences of individual teachers as much as the favoured branches of pedagogy.
The tautological nature of measuring the results becomes most obvious if we imagine a theoretical situation, where all the students get maximum scores. For the teacher this would mean a great success (as long as there is even one weaker student the teacher can improve his or hers work).
In reality, though, the presented score distribution would, for the most, be interpreted only as a sign of the teacher´s professional incompetence. This would happen, because an elemental characteristic of a good exam (hence a good teacher as well) is its segregativeness. This explains why a completely successful teacher would, in fact, not be successful at all.
Maximum scores could easily be reached simply by owning all affordable time to practising ideal answers for the future exam. The unwanted side effects of a learning strategy like this are immediately apparent. This, though, is exactly what an exam (= segregation) concentrated school system requires from its students. Hence, the only thing which the students truly study in a constructivist manner in the school, proves to be the teachers. The teachers´ constructivism is similarly restricted towards the jury of the matriculation exam.
This phenomenon makes obvious the common statement, that constructivist pedagogy cannot be successfully realised in the everyday life of the school. It is not surprising, that inside the school this state of things is interpreted as a sign of faults in constructivism. For an outsider the explanation lies in the philosophical and pedagogical nondurability of the school´s most traditional and prominent evaluation tools.
Our role as learners is mostly determined by the common misunderstanding, that to learn means to remember the facts. The attitude develops in the school and for a good reason is usually (at least in Finnish) called “school learning”. Intellectually more honest would be to call it “exam learning”. “Real (good quality) learning” becomes (low quality) “school learning” only if the learning results are known later to become targets for exam based scrutiny. To use the name “school learning” though is very revealing because it clearly demonstrates how widely the exams and the school institution are interpreted as synonyms for each other.
Conditioning to fulfilling the expectations of the teacher prevents the students from using their own brain (which should be one of the most important goals of the school). The students learn at a very early stage, that the teacher is not really interested in the student´s own thoughts but in the student´s ability (not only in the exams) to decipher the teacher´s thoughts. The students, who are good at doing this, will be priced with good marks.
These perceptions on the way the school works can be noticed already in the kinder garden. They perforate our whole school system, reaching also the universities. When grown ups, the former students have lost their strive for independent thinking. Instead, they have developed into masters of foretelling how other people expect them to think.
The teacher may try to use methods, which encourage the students to work in groups as truly interdependent members. One can for example make a deal, that the final mark of the test is determined as a sum or an average of the marks of all the individual members of the group. Although the solution is well stated by pedagogical and social values, it regularly is felt unfair by the students as well as their parents, too.
To study by deciphering and co-operation, to bring down the borders between the separate school subjects and to not be bound to the content of the course books, leads to learning circumstances characterised by an overall unpredictability. During this kind of an approach, unpredictability regularly reaches up also the cognitive contents of the subjects studied.
On the contrary to this, the national matriculation exam (in Finland), even if renewed, would still surely be based on predestinated learning contents. The students` performance would as well still be measured individually. As a result of this, the new pedagogically sensible learning methods, also in the future, would be lessening the students´ possibilities for high ranks in the matriculation exam.
Although, in the celebration speeches, passing beyond the borderlines of the individual school subjects is often demanded, the wish is difficult to fulfil. Separate and clearly identifiable subjects with unambiguous borderlines are simply a prerequisite for evaluation based on existence of the separate school subjects. The borderlines have to be honoured although, in the everyday life, and also in the life of scientific research community, it would be more successful to reach over a variety of branches of the school subjects.
The subject dependent world view is typical to the school. But for a scientist, though familiar from the school years, it is often destructive and for the most even impossible. There is only one valuable subject in science and it is called curiosity.
In a comparable manner, outside the school the ability of foreign languages is a target dependent tool. The value of the tool is clear and of practical nature, and makes its characteristics evident in situations of communication and information gathering. Both of these activities are more and more fulfilled by the means of the Internet. Detailed technical knowledge of foreign languages is seldom needed, although it often makes life easier. Still, studying foreign languages at school (in Finland) basically has to concentrate on the formal knowledge because of the great public value of the national matriculation exam.
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 pedagogy 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.
Scientific research contains a lot of spontanious learning, which almost always happens by means of group work. Individual persons can almost never privately own neither the merits nor the results of the surveys. More and more the research programs are both planned and carried out in a close connection to the ICT based information networks.
The Internet provides an exceptionally effective channel to realize group work and community spirit. The medium easily produces a positive rage for doing things cooperatively. When once born, this rage does not trouble itself with external prices or punishments. Officially justified means of social discrimination typical for the school are in a strong contradiction with this kind of a world view.
The previously presented facts put the school into a little bit strange light. Means of evaluation, which demand social isolation and lead to discrimination are not born of necessity. Neither do the post-graduate studies ask for such. Most of them (in Finland) will anyway begin with an entrance examination of their own. The school prefers ranking orderism only because it has always been preferred, and mostly because the public considers it as an eternal and steady part of the school institution´ s proper identity.
Word list
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learning concept, school concept, internal motivation, external motivation, ranking orderism, school mark economics, student based evaluation, self evaluation, student centred evaluation, distance learning, virtual school, life long learning, constuctivist, quality of learning, development of the school, measuring the results of education, concept of the school, concept of learning, learning strategies, developing the school, school development, cooperative, collaborative, reciprocal co-operation, quantitative evaluation, creativity leadership, qualitative evaluation, e-learning in Finland, finnish school system, open learning, PISA-survey, network society, ICT, finnish education, learning results, learning culture, modern learning concepts, finnish school education, problem based learning, making people more motivated, productive, relaxed and creative at their employment, working life, PBL, pisa survey, computer aided learning, information and communications technology in learning, ICT use in education, pedagogical use of ICT, creativity leadership, computer aided studies, pedagogical use of computers, computer aided studying, development of the school, network society, learning strategies, internet, learning orientation, deep orientated, surface orientated, superficial learning, creativity leadership, network competence, pisa-survey, discovery learning, pisa survey, develop knowledge structures, information producing communities, finnish school education, computer aided teaching, new learning challenges, development of the school, work satisfaction, making people more motivated, productive, relaxed and creative at their job, employment, pisa survey, oecd programme for international student assessment, teaching and learning, computer aided studies, self-directed learning skills, computer aided studying, measuring the results of education, organize learning situations, computer aided learning, information society skills, school satisfaction, inadequate learning skills, information technology in finnish society, computer aided teaching, information technology in finnish school system, computer aided studies,PISA survey, computers in education, creativity leadership, educational development strategies, oecd programme for international student assessment, computer-aided learning, learning environments, information strategy,
oecd programme for international student assessment, information strategy, computer assisted instruction, computer assisted instruction, creativity leadership, learning concept, school concept, internal motivation, external motivation, ranking orderism, school mark economics, student based evaluation, self evaluation, student centred evaluation, distance learning, collaborative, reciprocal co-operation during the studies, quantitative evaluation, measuring the results of education, qualitative evaluation, e-learning in Finland, finnish school system, open learning, virtual school, life long learning, constuctivist, quality of learning, development of the school, work satisfaction, making people more motivated, creativity leadership, productive, relaxed and creative at their job, employment, concept of the school, concept of learning, learning strategies, developing the school, school development, cooperative, PISA-survey, network society, ICT, finnish education, learning results, learning culture, modern learning concepts, finnish school education, problem based learning, PBL, pisa survey, computer aided learning, information and communications technology in learning, ICT use in education, pedagogical use of ICT, computer aided studies, creativity leadership, pedagogical use of computers, computer aided studying, development of the school, network society, learning strategies, internet, work satisfaction, making people more motivated, productive, relaxed and creative at their job, creativity leadership, employment, learning orientation, deep orientated, surface orientated, superficial learning, network competence, pisa-survey, discovery learning, pisa survey, develop knowledge structures, information producing communities, finnish school education, computer aided teaching, new learning challenges, pisa survey, oecd programme for international student assessment, teaching and learning, computer aided studies, self-directed learning skills, computer aided studying, organize learning situations, computer aided learning, information society skills, school satisfaction, inadequate learning skills, information technology in finnish society, computer aided teaching, information technology in finnish school system, computer aided studies, PISA survey, computers in education, educational development strategies, oecd programme for international student assessment, computer-aided learning, learning environments, information strategy, computer assisted instruction
learning concept, school concept, internal motivation, external motivation, ranking orderism, school mark economics, student based evaluation, self evaluation, student centred evaluation, distance learning, virtual school, life long learning, constuctivist, quality of learning, development of the school, concept of the school, concept of learning, learning strategies, developing the school, school development, cooperative, collaborative, reciprocal co-operation, quantitative evaluation, qualitative evaluation, e-learning in Finland, finnish school system, open learning, PISA-survey, network society, ICT, finnish education, learning results, learning culture, modern learning concepts, finnish school education, problem based learning, PBL, pisa survey, computer aided learning, information and communications technology in learning, ICT use in education, pedagogical use of ICT, computer aided studies, pedagogical use of computers, computer aided studying, development of the school, network society, learning strategies, internet, learning orientation, deep orientated, surface orientated, superficial learning, network competence, pisa-survey, discovery learning, pisa survey, develop knowledge structures, information producing communities, internet, making people more motivated, productive, relaxed and creative at their job, employment, work satisfaction, finnish school education, computer aided teaching, new learning challenges, pisa survey, oecd programme for international student assessment, teaching and learning, computer aided studies, self-directed learning skills, computer aided studying, organize learning situations, computer aided learning, information society skills, school satisfaction, inadequate learning skills, information technology in finnish society, computer aided teaching, information technology in finnish school system, computer aided studies,PISA survey, computers in education, educational development strategies, oecd programme for international student assessment, computer-aided learning, learning environments, information strategy,