Changing School Management Status Review – May 2012

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies, 2019

Comprehensive school system, Local education authorities, Decentralization, 'Culture of trust', Pupil welfare staff Comprehensive school system: An education system in which the schools are publicly funded and are commonly not able to select their intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. It is the opposite of a selective school system, into which admission is based on selection criteria (Kalalahti, Silvennoinen, Varjo & Rinne 2015). Culture of trust: The unarticulated cultural principle in Finland, meaning that the central administration (Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish National Agency for Education) have confidence that local education authorities, together with principals, teachers, parents, and their communities know how to provide the best possible education for their children. Municipality: An administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government as granted by the national laws to which it is subordinate. In 2018, Finland consists of 311 municipalities. They are the main providers of basic education (Varjo & Kalalahti 2018). Research on management, leadership and governance In Finland, local education administration at the primary level is the responsibility of the subordinate bodies of the state, municipalities. According Aho, Pitkänen and Sahlberg (2006), rather than unifying the education system through centralized decrees and standards, Finnish education policies have nurtured cohesive diversity and developed material and human resources. Hence, the practices on management, leadership and governance are distinctive.

2016

A significant body of evidence shows that the goals of educational reforms are seldom fully achieved. Some research suggests that the problem lies in state-level curriculum reform work that lacks a sufficient understanding of the educational reality. However, views and perceptions among the central architects of the reforms have not been thoroughly studied. This study provides an insight into these views. The data comprise 23 semi-structured interviews with officials from the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) who conducted the Finnish Comprehensive School Core Curriculum Reform (2013–2014). FNBE officials’ perceptions of the triggers and aims of the reform—considered as their ‘theory of change’—are explored with qualitative analysis by identifying issues they wanted to preserve or react to, and the issues that should be worked towards and positioned as goals in the future. The results show that there is a somewhat shared theory of change among the architects of Finnish curr...

2018

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and restored Independence of Lithuania post-soviet countries faced with inevitable transformations in educational management. The article presents school management changes and overlooks Lithuanian school management development and its tendencies after becoming an independent state in the context of educational management paradigm shift. It also unfolds the changing roles and functions of school principals in the alternations of political ideologies. Scientific literature unfolds exclusive role of school principals in the process of educational management transformation. The article is based on the principles of paradigm shift and systematic approach on management. KEYWORDS: school principals, management, administration, educational management paradigms, educational change. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/tbb.v79i2.1783

Paris: Organization for Economic …, 2007

This report is part of a larger OECD study exploring school leadership policy issues. It aims to provide analysis on the particular Finnish approach to school leadership for systemic improvement that contributes to their educational success. In a decentralised environment, Finnish ...

Metodički obzori/Methodological Horizons, 2010

A change of the school principal's role was marked as one of the most important catalysts in reforming Finnish educational system, the world leader in terms of learning results and students' achievements. Two factors have influenced the change of principal's role in schools in Finland: 1) rapid economic growth generated by technological innovation; and 2) the process of municipalization.

Foro de Educación

The aim of this article is to examine the historical and present changes in educational policy in Finland. In this article we track and describe the development of the comprehensive school reform in Finland by asking: What was the background to the comprehensive school reform in Finland? What was the main content of the reform and how did it lay the foundation for the success today of Finland's educational model? What are the main contemporary challenges for the Finnish educational model? The article is supported by bibliographic, qualitative document analysis and makes use of state-of-the-art sources taken from studies pertaining to Finland's education system. It also draws from official government documents and multilateral institutional documents in which Finland's educational policymaking is investigated. We argue that the comprehensive school reform in Finland laid the foundation for the success of the country's educational model in international comparisons and that the success of the reform was the result of a set of historical, social, cultural, political, economic, and ethical-moral factors that have shaped Finnish society since the mid-19 th century.

2019

The paper presents a research project of the Finnish school in an educational inclusive reform process. The study focuses on asking how the comprehensive schools cope with the reform in a time of economic instability and contradictory goals. The first phase of the research program took place during a continuing education program about inclusive education and school development. The participants comprised 530 in-service teachers and 14 school principals in fourteen primary and secondary schools. The two and half year long continuing education program offered spaces for reflections in the school community and in tailored seminars for the schools involved. The participants were engaged in discussions of gaining understanding of inclusive education and of how to respond to students´ diversity. In the study inclusion education is seen as a complex transitional process and a multifaceted question, which involves different levels from educational policy on a national level to the local sch...

ISBN 978-951-39-3095-0 (PDF), 978-951-39-2989-3 (nid.) Finnish summary Diss.

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2015

Through a partnership between the University of Oradea in Romania and New England College is the USA we sought to corroborate whether or not teachers in the field agreed with the information we have been receiving through the media, change agents, and the leaders of the Finnish educational system. We believed that Finnish teachers agreed with the journalists then we would have an important message for our teachers and educational and political leaders. Our findings overwhelmingly indicated that teachers should be given the respect, support, resources, responsibility, freedom, training, and authority to effectively and professionally teach their students.