pasi_sahlberg

Second Annual Teacher Leader Fellowship Program InstituteNew Britain, CT, UNITED STATES

22nd May 2018

SUPPORTING CREATIVITY, COLLABORATION, AND INNOVATION IN STUDENTS AND IN TEACHERS:

THE FINLAND STORY

FIVE WAYS TO KILL TEACHER LEADERSHIP

1 Design and implement education policies and incentives that will reward school-to-school and teacher-to-teacher competition and punish the losers.

2 Create externally mandated standards for teaching and learning requiring that all teachers in every school must adjust their teaching to these standards.

FIVE WAYS TO KILL TEACHER LEADERSHIP

3 Insist frequent standardized census-based testing and use test results to hold teachers and schools accountable for student outcomes and school performance.

FIVE WAYS TO KILL TEACHER LEADERSHIP

Accept fast-track teacher preparation pathways to ease teacher shortages and lower professional and academic requirements at entry to initial teacher education.

FIVE WAYS TO KILL TEACHER LEADERSHIP

4

Expand teachers’ and school principals’ workloads to the point that they don’t have any time of energy to do anything else but what is required by authorities.

FIVE WAYS TO KILL TEACHER LEADERSHIP

5

WHAT DID THE FINNS DO?

CREATIVITY: SCHOOL-LED CURRICULUM1

Teacherleadership

COLLABORATION: EQUITY AS A DRIVER2

“Equity in schooling means ensuring that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions.”

- Review of Funding for Schooling (2011)

Collaboration

for equity

School health and wellbeing

Special education

Whole-child approach

Positive discrimination

Early childhood education

3INNOVATION: SMALL DATA

Big trends

Processed by machines

Algorithms and analytics

Reveal correlations

Predict the future

Tiny clues

Processed by humans

Collective professional voice

Reveal causations

Understand the present

Example: “Why kids don’t like mathematics?”

!

Usually fat male

Unstylish

No friends - except other mathematicians

No romantic relationships or social life

Wrinkles in their forehead from thinking so hard

Very short tempers

“Imagine a mathematician at work”

Lead with Small Data, or you’ll be led by Big Data.

Conclusion

Collaboration

Trust

Risk-taking

The cultures of teacher leadership

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Thank you!