Abstract
After decades of performing on an international top level, Finnish schools demonstrate a plurality of dilemmas. As a response to these urgent challenges, this initiative aims at identifying and constructing research based concepts for multilevel collaborative pedagogical leadership of curriculum work between the schools, municipalities, national education authorities and university. This project draws on and expands the international research program Non-affirmative theory of education and Bildung at ÅAU.
Background, objectives and implementation
The challenge and societal relevance of the project
Finnish comprehensive education reached global awareness in the year 2000 (Uljens, 2007; Uljens, Wolff & Frontini, 2016). After years of harboring an internationally top performing school system, the decline of students’ achievements in Finnish comprehensive started about a decade ago (Minedu, 2013) – and it continues. On top of this, recent international and national evaluations continuously confirm that Finnish schools feature among the largest differences not only between immigrant and native students, but also between boys and girls. A final observation: some of the lowest performing municipalities exist among Swedish speaking areas in the South and in the West of Finland. School related variance is also increasing, especially in larger cities, while it is still small in international comparison. Taken together, these and related developments represent serious cracks in the picture of Finnish compulsory education as a high-performing and egalitarian system. These results do not correspond well with ambitions to raise the percentage of the cohort entering higher education institutions from 40% to 50%. For the time being, the public debate is confused, as neither researchers nor education authorities seem to be able to provide conclusive explanations (e.g. Ukkola & Rautapuro, 2023). The situation is awkward and the system is in need of repair. But how?
This project aims at producing education theory informed and empirical research based knowledge on how multi-level pedagogical leadership in Finland may contribute to developmental processes aiming at solving dilemmas presented above, in a shared manner between practitioners, administration and research. The project acknowledge that Finnish education system features large degrees of freedom and high professional qualification in teaching and leadership. In a last stage, the experiences are utilized to expand the research program towards to an international project. In three steps below, we will point at how we anchor this developmental research initiative empirically and theoretically.
(a) How to explain successful change processes in schools – empirical findings
The research literature on school effectiveness research regarding malleable factors paints quite a coherent picture. For example, a meta-analysis made by a Nordic research team, including the main applicant (Nordenbo et al., 2010), covered more than 300 publications on school factors explaining students’ performance. The consistently strongest malleable predictors of students’ performance were: 1) teacher-related factors (e.g. behavior and beliefs, self-efficacy, subject knowledge, organizational action), 2) management and leadership activities, 3) curriculum and scheduling, and 4) school culture and climate (disciplinary climate, achievement/progress orientation, inter-relational climate, social norms and values).
However, identification of malleable factors explaining students’ performance level is not identical to identifying activities resulting in changes in a school’s pedagogical operational culture (curriculum work, teaching practices and climate). To run schools on a given level is one thing, to initiate and lead change is another thing. As Möller (2018) observed “less research has been done on how leaders at different levels work to build such school cultures”. A study of our own confirmed this. Let us explain.
Ten years ago, we re-analyzed parts of the Finnish PISA 2009 data (Uljens & Korhonen, 2012), provided to us by Finnish Institute for Educational Research in Jyväskylä. Totally unexpected, the results showed that by 2009 the Åland schools were over-performing. These students’ performance level was ‘higher than could be expected given the socio-cultural composition of the region’. In addition, Åland region was the single over-performing Swedish speaking/bilingual region in Finland. While Helsinki, Turku and Vaasa schools were all performing well, they did not perform better than what was reasonable to expect. We realized that from 2003 to 2009, the district of Åland significantly improved the level of students’ achievements in mathematics in schools. These results proved that it was possible to raise the student performance level from a low-performing level, via an over-performing level, even to a level above the national average. At the same time, the national PISA 2012 results in the Finland started to decrease (Harju-Luukkainen et al., 2014).
In order to explore the reasons to the Åland turn around, interviews were carried out during two consecutive years at all levels, from teachers to the highest administrative actors. We discovered that the change in Åland was highly dependent on leadership on the municipal and the regional level (Uljens, Sundqvist & Smeds-Nylund, 2016). These results clearly deviated from the standard explanation saying that the Finnish PISA wonder depends on the extraordinary level of teacher education (Simola, 2005; Uljens, Wolff & Frontini, 2016). Thus, a teacher perspective is insufficient in explaining successful change or turn-around processes. Our own survey supported that conclusion: 50% of the teachers in the successful Åland schools had received their teacher education in Sweden, not in Finland (Mertaniemi & Uljens, 2015; Roos et al., 2018).
(b) Research supported interventionist school development
Utilizing these results, our research group engaged in interventionist research, designing, testing and studying three different school development projects, with a focus on educational leadership.
The results from these form a crucial point of reference to the present proposal:
1) In the Toppkompetens-project (2012-2015) with the National Board of Education we realized how the significant, but overseen, role of district and municipal education leaders was. This professional development project gathered all municipal education leaders from Swedish and bilingual municipalities in Finland (see Uljens, 2021; Sundqvist, 2021). This project resulted in a significant renewal of the operational culture among school leaders in Swedish and bi-lingual municipalities – district leaders developed a new professional identity from acting administrators to pedagogical leaders.
2) To find out how we could utilize quantitative data as a resource for developmental dialogues with principals and district leaders, we designed and collected data with the SKUTT 2014 Leadership Inventory, very much developed with support from the ISSPP-project (International Successful School Principal Project, Moos, Johansson & Day, 2011; Uljens, 2014). This data was then analyzed and prepared for each municipality separately to be used for critical and constructive developmental dialogues. In this process we learned how important longterm engagement is for reaching results.
3) Together with the Pedersöre municipality we designed a three year longitudinal multi-level development project applying our insights thus far and generating new (Uljens 2014; Sundqvist 2014; 2021).
(c) Theory development and conceptual framing
In addition to the previous empirical studies and interventions, this initiative is anchored in theory development carried out within the ongoing international research program on non-affirmative education theory and research. This research program brings together 36 researchers from 12 countries. This theoretical approach allows us a) to better understand the relation between processes of Bildung as supported by educative teaching, b) to bridge educational leadership research, Anglophone curriculum research and European Didaktik (Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017) and b) understand pedagogical dimensions of educational leadership as a multi-level phenomenon. The Uljens & Ylimaki volume has been internationally well received in terms of downloads (14.000 volumes or 240.000 chapters/5 years).
In July 2023 a second major open access volume (Springer) on non-affirmative theory was published (Uljens, 2023). A third volume (Springer) based on the same non-affirmative approach but focusing higher education leadership is submitted (Elo & Uljens, in press). A fourth open access Springer volume with several contributions from our team focusing e.g. curriculum leadership in Finland (Ahtiainen, Hanhimäki, Leinonen, Risku & Smeds-Nylund, 2023). Besides this strong theoretical grounding, a novelty in this CoE is that non-affirmative education approach will be complemented with the change laboratory methodology developed on the basis of cultural-historical activity theory.
Objectives
Drawing upon the empirical results described, interventionist experiences and non-affirmative education theory combined with cultural-historical activity theory, this project aims at constructing and testing concepts for pedagogical change leadership on curriculum issues, adapted to a Finnish context. We will refine concepts and procedures on educational leadership for curriculum development. While developmental concepts need to be sensitive for conditions between and within various countries, the present project does not search for the one and only solution valid in the whole country. Rather, given the substantial variation between municipalities, we need experimental collaborative designing and testing out of various leadership practices.
Our research questions
(a) How do the municipal superintendents, principals and teachers interpret and translate multiple policy demands to raise academic standards and develop the quality of practice?
(b) How do school leaders (at different levels) and teachers interact to build a culture of high expectations and a commitment to change?
Implementation
Based on non-affirmative education theory we apply both cultural-historical activity theory or CHAT (Engeström, 2016; Sannino, Engeström & Lemos, 2016; Mäkiharju, Autio & Uljens, 2023) as the main empirical methodology in our pedagogical design research.
References
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