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After having spent over two months visiting Calgary schools in 2010, and in my role with the Finland–Alberta (FINAL) partnership, I have had the opportunity to compare two of the highest-performing jurisdictions globally. I am a special education teacher and vice-principal at Kilpinen School, in Jyväskylä, Finland. In this article, I offer my impressions of what is promising and what is challenging in both of our educational systems.
Our Different School Systems
In Finland, basic education lasts nine years: there are schools that offer all grades (1–9), and schools for Grades 1–6 that feed neighbourhood schools for Grades 7–9. After basic education, students continue their studies in high school or vocational school.
Alberta’s public education school system appears much more fragmented than Finland’s. There are more private schools, charter schools and home-schooling situations in Calgary than in my home city of Jyväskylä. I noted little cooperation between the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) and the Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD), not to mention other school authorities operating in Calgary. Although I didn’t notice any school-level cooperation, there was some cooperation between individual specialists working in both school jurisdictions.
I learned about the history of the two school authorities and how amalgamating the boards would be politically challenging, given the constitutional rights of parents to choose a Catholic education. However, coming from a system in Finland that is focused on building local vibrant communities, I wonder about the effectiveness of committing resources to separate and oftentimes competing administrative structures.
Organizing the School Day
In my city, our school days start between 8 and 10 am and end between 1 and 4 pm. School schedules vary daily. School transportation doesn’t fall to the schools to provide; it’s a parental or municipal responsibility. As a result, students take care of transportation by themselves; they walk, bike or take a public bus to school. If students live further than five kilometres from school, the school pays for bus tickets.
By comparison, the school day in Calgary appears compressed and busy and is influenced by busing schedules. Students and teachers enjoy few breaks during the day. The only long break is the lunch break. The daily timetable is tight because of the need to fit seven lessons, including breaks, into a seven-hour day (8 am–3 pm).
I wondered about the rigid and almost minute-by-minute schedule—how can students follow such a regime? While students appear to do so, I was struck by the lack of flexibility in their day. The lunch break was the only extended break from guided activity. Other short breaks occurred when students changed classes. Personally, during my first week in Calgary’s schools, I was exhausted by the students’ schedules. (I discovered some of the rationale for the tight schedules—for example, it reduces students’ opportunities to leave the school for a cigarette break. The problem of students smoking also exists in Finland’s Grades 7–9 schools.)
How would I arrange the timetable based on my experiences? I’m not sure, but when I hear happy voices and see active children playing in the yards of the Finnish primary schools, I see the necessity of having breaks. As well, Finnish teachers benefit from breaks; they’re able to meet each other to consult or to share news about their lives. Teachers shape their lessons on the basis of what they’ve heard from their colleagues.
Teachers’ Work
In Finland, our group of educational assistants is much smaller than in Calgary. In Calgary, teachers appear to have few colleagues to work with in teams or other support personnel compared to Finland. I was struck by how teachers work alone and under the pressure of not having time to complete tasks or address the needs of each student. Teachers’ coping skills are always on trial. As a result, I hope for a mutual international understanding that we need more teaching personnel in relation to the number of students and the complexity of classrooms.
Alberta’s curriculum contains much content and appears to feed teachers’ feelings of hurriedness in their work. It is the same in Finland; however, these expectations are often self-imposed. The focus on covering content appears to be a challenge we all share. This raises important questions: Should teachers have more opportunities to focus on skills processes in the classroom? Could teachers in both our systems enhance learning through the principle that less is more?
Calgary teachers specialize in teaching the same grade year after year, whereas at Kilpinen School, teachers teach the same students in their subject through the three years of junior high school.
The system in Calgary provides teachers with the opportunity to develop more specialized curriculum content management and allows them to develop expertise in their grades or subjects. Finnish teachers are required to manage the content of three different grade levels, but they get to know their students for longer periods and are able to see progress. The Finnish model supports the development of the student and classroom instruction, and shares responsibility more equally.
As I work with colleagues in Finland and Alberta, I wonder about the ability of Alberta teachers, year after year, to familiarize themselves properly with the diversity and complexity of their students. I observed Grade 7 teachers in Calgary sorting out each new student’s background in a short time, only to see these students move on to another teacher or school in the next year.
Finnish teachers try to solve challenges on a weekly basis. In contrast, Calgary teachers work hard to address the diversity of students by collecting student data, which is often shared through files and documents, such as individualized program plans (IPPs). I see some benefit in collecting this student data.
Testing and Data Crunching
Evaluating education and student learning through standardized and provincial tests plays a larger role in Calgary than in Finland. Finnish students write a matriculation examination after high school; otherwise, we do not have nationwide testing.
What about the meaningfulness of the external provincial examinations? If a student hasn’t been successful in smaller school-based assessments, how can teachers expect him or her to cope in a larger school? What and whom are such tests serving (especially where there are few resources for a teacher to teach and exercise professional control over the preparation for the tests)? Further, I noticed the emphasis on gathering data about students and reporting to officials outside the classroom. This is odd, since it is the teacher who knows the students best.
As I compare Alberta’s and Finland’s approaches to assessment, I find Alberta’s focused on comparing students and schools, rather than on addressing students’ individual strengths and talents. While Finnish teachers might find it interesting to compare students using data, we focus more on mentoring and assisting students as individuals with unique gifts and talents.
Special Education
I was surprised to see that Calgary schools use coding to determine the level and type of support a student with special needs receives. These codes seemed to be much like medical codes and have little educational value. The coding system appeared to slow the delivery of support to students. (In 2011, Alberta’s coding of students, in its previous form, was stopped. After consulting with my Calgary contacts, I see this as a positive change, because even if psychological assessments were providing important information, the process delayed the delivery of support to students.)
Challenging Changes We Share
As I reflect on my experiences in Calgary and with the FINAL partnership, I see that schools must be where teachers’ professional practice and student engagement become the heart of schooling—teachers must adapt their instruction to meet the learning needs of all students.
I see my role clearer now in the work that I do in the Kilpinen school community. I’m more able to participate in exchanging information and ideas with my colleagues. I’m more able to take a lead in organizing our resources and creating materials that support teachers’ work. We’ve redeveloped our co-teaching strategies at Kilpinen School. Our teaching practice is more focused on the challenges we have as teachers and on individualized approaches to teaching. We have made changes in our school culture and we’ve achieved much.
My international experience has afforded me the opportunity to ask questions about my own assumptions and practices. How can we support teachers in both our systems in meeting the future challenges related to the growing diversity of students? How can we learn from each other how to create teaching environments that break the cycle of teacher isolation and hurriedness? How can the best of Alberta and Finland—two of the world’s top-performing education systems—be brought together to improve all our schools?
Tiina Saarenketo is a special education teacher and vice-principal at Kilpinen School, Jyväskylä, Finland.
