The Finnish education mystery: historical and sociological essays on schooling in Finland 9780415812580, 0415812585, 9781138096998, 1138096997

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I Education policy-making and governance: struggling between egalitarianism and market liberalism
1. Firmly bolted into the air: wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reforms?
2. Abdication of the education state? Constructing a new system of reason in Finnish schooling
3. Quality assurance and evaluation in Finnish compulsory schooling: a national model or just unintended effects of radical decentralization?
Part II Teachers and their education: paradoxes in a successful professionalization project
4. Educational science, the state and teachers: setting up the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland
5. The birth of the modern Finnish teacher: a Foucauldian exercise
6. Didactic closure: professionalization and pedagogical knowledge in Finnish teacher education
Part III Schooling practices: a peculiar marriage of the traditional and the progressive
7. From exclusion to self-selection: the examination of behaviour in Finnish primary and comprehensive schools from the 1860s to the 1990s
8. ‘It’s progress but . . .’: Finnish teachers talking about their changing work
9. Changes in Nordic teaching practices: from individualized teaching to the teaching of individuals
Part IV Understanding the Finnish PISA miracle: decent work ethics, reasonable leadership and lucky constellations
10. The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education
11. Against the flow: path dependence, convergence and contingency in understanding the Finnish QAE model
12. Education politics and contingency: belief, status and trust behind the Finnish PISA miracle
Aftermath
A selected English bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Finnish Education Mystery

Finnish education has been a focus of global interest since its first PISA success in 2001. After years of superficial celebration, astonishment and educational tourism, the focus has recently shifted to what is possibly the most interesting element of this Finnish success story: that Finnish schools have been effectively applying methods that go against the flow of global education policy with no testing, no inspection, no hard evaluation, no detailed national curriculum, no accountability and no hard competition. From a historical and sociological perspective the Finnish case is not merely a linear success story, but is part of a controversial and paradoxical struggle towards Utopia: towards egalitarian schooling. Bringing together a collection of essays by Hannu Simola and his colleagues, this book analyses the key dimensions of schooling in Finland to provide a critical, analytical and uncompromising picture of the Finnish education system. Going beyond the story of success, the book reveals the complexities of educational change, but also identifies opportunities and alternatives for smart political action in complex and trans-national societies. Including a selection of key chapters on Finnish education policy and governance, teacher education and classroom cultures, the book will be of interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in comparative education, teacher education, educational policy and educational reform. Hannu Simola is Professor of Sociology of Education in the Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland.

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The Finnish Education Mystery

Historical and sociological essays on schooling in Finland

Hannu Simola

First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 H. Simola with I. Carlgren, S. Heikkinen, J. Kauko, O. Kivinen, J. Kivirauma, K. Klette, S. Myrdal, H. Pitkänen, R. Rinne, K. Schnack, J. Silvonen and J. Varjo. The right of H. Simola and contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The Finnish education mystery : historical and sociological essays on schooling in Finland / edited by Hannu Simola. pages cm I. Education—Finland. 2. Education and state—Finland. I. Simola, Hannu. LA1012.F59 2014 370.94897—dc23 2014018435 ISBN: 978-0-415-81258-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-06876-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction

vii ix xii

PART I

Education policy-making and governance: struggling between egalitarianism and market liberalism

1

1. Firmly bolted into the air: wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reforms?

3

2. Abdication of the education state? Constructing a new system of reason in Finnish schooling (WITH R. RINNE & J. KIVIRAUMA)

27

3. Quality assurance and evaluation in Finnish compulsory schooling: a national model or just unintended effects of radical decentralization? (WITH R. RINNE, J. VARJO, J. KAUKO & H. PITKÄNEN)

48

PART II

Teachers and their education: paradoxes in a successful professionalization project

67

4. Educational science, the state and teachers: setting up the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland

69

vi Contents

5. The birth of the modern Finnish teacher: a Foucauldian exercise (WITH S. HEIKKINEN & J. SILVONEN)

95

6. Didactic closure: professionalization and pedagogical knowledge in Finnish teacher education (WITH O. KIVINEN & R. RINNE)

115

PART III

Schooling practices: a peculiar marriage of the traditional and the progressive

135

7. From exclusion to self-selection: the examination of behaviour in Finnish primary and comprehensive schools from the 1860s to the 1990s

137

8. ‘It’s progress but . . .’: Finnish teachers talking about their changing work

161

9. Changes in Nordic teaching practices: from individualized teaching to the teaching of individuals (WITH I. CARLGREN, K. KLETTE, S. MYRDAL & K. SCHNACK)

178

PART IV

Understanding the Finnish PISA miracle: decent work ethics, reasonable leadership and lucky constellations

205

10. The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education

207

11. Against the flow: path dependence, convergence and contingency in understanding the Finnish QAE model (WITH J. VARJO & R. RINNE)

224

12. Education politics and contingency: belief, status and trust behind the Finnish PISA miracle (WITH R. RINNE)

252

Aftermath A selected English bibliography Index

273 283 287

Illustrations

Figures 1.1 The vicious circle of educational reform discourse 4.1 Exchange relations between the actors and structures of discourse in the field of teacher education in Finland 5.1 Technologies of truth 5.2 Truths about the modern teacher: a preliminary questionnaire 12.1 The expansion of schooling in Finland, 1880–1970 12.2 Two Nordic population cohorts aged 55–64 with at least an upper secondary education 12.3 Changes in the working population engaged in agricultural work in the Nordic countries, 1880–1970 12.4 Changes in the working population engaged in industrial and service work in the Nordic countries, 1880–1970 12.5 The timing and rapidity of the changes in occupational structure in three Nordic countries: the period during which the agrarian labour force decreased in proportion from 50 per cent to 15 per cent 12.6 Public employment in the Nordic countries, 1970–85 12.7 Growth in the public-sector work force in the Nordic countries, 1963–87 12.8 The percentages of applicants accepted for teacher training and for university education in general in the 2000s

17 88 100 102 258 258 259

260

260 261 261 263

Tables 4.1 Development of professorship numbers in education (including associate professorships) in four Nordic countries 6.1 Professors of education in Finland by department, 1995 and 2006

90 123

viii List of illustrations

6.2 Professors and associate professors of education in Finland by sub-field, 1995 and 2006 9.1 The extent of the use of three teaching forms in Swedish schools at three points in time 9.2 National evaluations from the Swedish National Agency for Education 9.3 The frequency of different types of lessons in Swedish schools, 1993–95 9.4 Occurence of three different teaching forms in the different stages of Swedish primary schools 9.5 Reported frequency or estimated time from three research projects conducted 1960–1976 of instructional patterns used in Norwegian compulsory schools (percentages) 9.6 Estimation of instructional patterns across Norwegian primary and lower secondary levels, 2003 10.1 Comparisons of teaching in grade 8 in comprehensive schools, 1973 and 1995

123 181 182 182 182

184 185 215

Acknowledgements

Like everything in human life, the work of a researcher is fundamentally relational. Although often working alone, nothing is written alone: everything involves personal interplay and infl uences, social effects and impressions. The chapters comprising this anthology cover almost all my academic career, from 1993 up to 2011, and thus this is a good time for me to make a confession to my travelling companions. It was nice to see in the acknowledgements of my PhD thesis in 1995 that most of the colleagues and friends I hailed there are still within the circle. I am grateful to the network of excellent colleagues, for not only tolerating me but also supporting and stimulating me intellectually over all these years. My gratitude goes, once again, to Tom Popkewitz, Ingolfur Jóhannesson, Sigurjon Myrdal, Jim Ladwig, António Nóvoa, Miguel Pereyra, Edwin Keiner, Jenny Ozga, Martin Lawn, Sverker Lindblad, Kirsti Klette, Ingrid Carlgren, Lisbeth Lundahl, Jens Rasmussen, Bob Lingard, Sotiria Grek, Christina Segerholm, Peter Dahler-Larsen, Agnes van Zanten, Nicholas Rose, David Halpin, Sally Power, Geoff Whitty, Stephen Ball, Alejandro Carrasco, Javier Corvalan and Dagmar Raczynski von Oppen. Equal gratitude is due to my Finnish colleagues and friends Risto Rinne, Joel Kivirauma, Arto Jauhiainen, Piia Seppänen, Heikki Silvennoinen, Johanna Kallo, Markku Jahnukainen, Sakari Heikkinen, Pauli Kettunen, Marja Jalava, Leena Koski, Anu Kantola, Risto Heiskala, Pekka Sulkunen, Risto Eräsaari, Antti Gronow, Jussi Silvonen, the late Pekka Elo, Pertti Kansanen, Reijo Miettinen, Juhani Hytönen, Seppo Kontiainen, Hannele Niemi, Erkki Komulainen, Jan Löfström, Sirkka Ahonen, Jukka Rantala, Vesa Huotari, Eija Syrjäläinen, Nelli Piattoeva, Tuomas Takala, Katariina Holma, Merja IkonenVarila, Jaana Poikolainen, Nina Santavirta, Leila Pehkonen, Anne Negvi, Kirsi Pyhältö, Jukka Husu, Auli Toom, Anna-Leena Riitaoja, Ilse Eriksson, Gunilla Holm, Elina Lahelma, Kati Hakala, Reetta Mietola, Pirkko Hynninen, Jukka Lehtonen, Kristiina Brunila, Sirpa Lappalainen, Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret, Kaisu Mälkki, Jan-Erik Mansikka, Venla Bernelius, Petteri Hansen, Jarkko Hautamäki, Sirkku Kupiainen, Markku Niemivirta, and Pasi Sahlberg. During the past decade or so, my research group New Politics, Governance and Interaction in Education (KUPOLI) has provided my most treasured intellectual

x Acknowledgements

environment and greatest source of joy and inspiration. For that, I give my most sincere thanks to Jaakko Kauko, Janne Varjo, Mira Kalalahti, Fritjof Sahlström, Juan Carlos Llorente, Anu Särkijärvi-Martinez, Susanna Hannus, Hannele Pitkänen,Tommi Wallenius, Sonja Kosunen, Antti Paakkari, Sari Eriksson, Mari Simola, Eero Väätäinen, Heidi Vartiainen, Saija Volmari, Lauri Ojalehto, Satu Koivuhovi, Reijo Aholainen,Virpi Pakkanen,Anna Medvedeva, Sari MononenBatista, Tuija Veinite, and Soo Myung Jang. Thank you for your existence! It is not only colleagues who create research. Without the living research subjects it would not be possible to carry out the kinds of studies in which I have been engaged. I wish to thank the hundreds of people who have agreed to be interviewed, surveyed or discussed in my work over the past two decades. Many of them relate their experiences and share their wisdom in a way that brings new understanding, especially concerning the institutions they represent, which would otherwise have remained obscure to an outsider. Thank you, in particular, Erkki Aho, Jaakko Itälä, Simo Juva, the late Jukka Sarjala, Jaakko Numminen, Aulis Pitkälä, Eero K. Niemi, Kaisu Toivonen, Ilkka Kalo, Ulla Nurmi, Marjo Kyllönen, Satu Elo, Anneli Kangasvieri, Kirsi Lindroos, Olavi Arra, Kauko Hämäläinen and Reijo Laukkanen. I have been lucky enough to work with and for people who have been enablers, who have made a point of making things possible. In particular, I would like to mention Tuomo Aalto, Marja Junnonaho,Tiina Aitchison,Tuire Salonen, Mikael Kivelä, Kirsi Sivukari, Anna Kuuteri, Anita Holm, Päivi Lamari, Max Ingman, the late Marja Martikainen, Raija Lahdenperä, Mira Huusko, Turkka Lavaste, Heljä Linnansaari, Antti Hulsi, Kalevi Reinikainen, Kaisa Atosuo, Ritva Ahonlinna, Anne Vierros, Anu Sahama, and, last but not least, Jussi Saarinen, the head of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Patrik Scheinin, the Dean of the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, who have always been a sympathetic and encouraging facilitators. However, Joan Nordlund, my language consultant since the late 1990s, has been an enabler overall.To her I owe all the recognition for my readable English, sometimes allegedly even elegant due to Joan’s extension of her assistance to being my publishing editor de facto. All the texts republished here are authored by myself as the only author or as the first co-author except one. Ingrid Carlgren is not only the first co-author of the chapter 9 in alphabetical order but also the idea and the main responsibility of the text was hers. The following articles and chapters are reproduced with the kind permission of the respective publishers:

Simola, H. (1998) Firmly bolted into the air: wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reforms? Teachers College Record, 99(4): 731–57. Simola, H., Rinne, R. & Kivirauma, J. (2002) Abdication of the education state or just shifting responsibilities? The appearance of a new system of

Acknowledgements xi

reason in constructing educational governance and social exclusion/ inclusion in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 46(3): 237–46. Simola, H., Rinne, R., Varjo, J., Kauko, J. & Pitkänen, H. (2009) Quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in Finnish comprehensive schooling: a national model or just unintended effects of radical decentralisation? Journal of Education Policy, 24(2): 163–78. Simola, H. (1993) Educational science, the state and teachers: forming the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland, in T.S. Popkewitz (ed.) Changing Patterns of Power: Social Regulation and Teacher Education Reform in Eight Countries (pp. 161–210). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Simola, H., Heikkinen, S. & Silvonen, J. (1998) Catalog of possibilities: Foucaultian history of truth and education research, in T.S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (eds.) Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education (pp. 64–90). New York: Teachers College Press. Simola, H., Kivinen, O. & Rinne, R. (1997) Didactic closure: professionalization and pedagogic knowledge in Finnish teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(8): 877–91. Simola, H. (2002) From exclusion to self-selection: an examination of behaviour in Finnish primary and comprehensive schooling from the 1860s to the 1990s. History of Education, 31(3): 207–26. Simola, H. (2002). “It’s progress but . . .” Finnish Teachers Talking about Their Changing Work. In K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen, & H. Simola (Eds.) Restructuring Nordic Teachers:Analyses of interviews with Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Teachers. Oslo: University of Oslo, Institute for Educational Research. Report no. 3. (Pp. 49-70) Carlgren, I., Klette, K., Myrdal, S., Schnack, K. & Simola, H. (2006) Changes in Nordic teaching practices: from individualized teaching to the teaching of individuals. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3): 301–26. Simola, H. (2005) The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education, 41(4): 455–70. Simola. H. & Rinne, R. (2011) Education politics and contingency: belief, status and trust behind the Finnish PISA miracle, in M. Pereyra (ed.) PISA under Examination: Changing Knowledge, Changing Tests, and Changing Schools (pp. 225–44). Rotterdam: Sense Publisher.

Introduction

This anthology is about Finnish basic education, more precisely about the pursuits and coincidences, contradictions and paradoxes that have constructed it as it appears nowadays: a celebrated case in the global education policy space, created by international rankings, primarily the PISA studies. Monographs on the Finnish Comprehensive School, Peruskoulu, have been published in several countries. Many of the world’s great newspapers and broadcasting services have reported on this educational phenomenon. Countless official delegations have visited Finnish authorities, schools and communities to learn about the drivers of excellence in education. Given that this book is written in English, the reader may ‘naturally’ ask: ‘Isn’t the Finnish case just a curiosity, an exception that is valid and meaningful only for those living in a similar nation-state, in other words one that is small, culturally homogeneous and technically and politically advanced?’ I think not. Allow me to give five good reasons why the Finnish case should be taken seriously in the international space of education research. First, Finland is a small country only from the perspectives of bigger ones. It seems to be rather the rule than the exception internationally that jurisdiction covering basic education is smallish in scope: consider, for example, states in the USA, Canada and Brazil, countries in the UK, Länder in Germany, regions in Belgium and cantons in Switzerland. Taking countries, nations or areas with rather autonomous basic education policies as cases in point, one could say that the great majority of them cover populations of around ten million. Second, Finland is not as culturally homogeneous as is often assumed. It has always been multicultural (two official languages, four national cultures), and although traditionally low, the proportion of immigrants has grown quickly since the 1990s on the average European level in cities. With regard to technical and political advancement, is it not the case that the ideas referred to below are even more valid in developed learning societies swearing by the knowledge economy than in underdeveloped environments? Third, and what is spoken about far less frequently in the Finnish case, is the peculiar claim that the Finns have gone ‘against the flow’. Peruskoulu is an example of an educational system that lacks school inspection, has no

Introduction xiii

standardized curriculum or high-stakes student assessment, is not subject to test-based accountability, and avoids a race-to-the-top mentality in terms of educational change. A hot question thus concerns how it was possible to swim successfully against the tidal wave: standardizing teaching and learning by means of common measurement and data criteria; sharpening the focus on core subjects, particularly literacy and numeracy; teaching a prescribed curriculum; adopting models of administration from the corporate world; and adopting high-stakes accountability policies based on control, inspection, distinction between schools and an ethos of punishment for educators, as Pasi Sahlberg outlines in his bestseller Finnish Lessons published in 2011. Fourth, Finland is a participant in the Nordic welfare-state project. Eminent Finnish social scientist Olli Kangas recently combined the ten most commonly used international welfare indicators from BNP to the UNESCO children’s welfare indicator to compare 18 advanced liberal countries.The Nordic nations are superior in this kind of comparison: Norway and Sweden share first place, followed by Denmark and Finland.The Nordic project has been an indisputable success historically and globally, and education is an essential part of it. As a border country between the West and the East, a non-Scandinavian nation and a late bloomer in the Nordic dimension, Finland sets a good example for all nations, smaller and bigger, who would like to capitalize on Nordic blockbusting. Finally, I would like to see the Finnish case as an accelerated, compressed example of the global process of mass schooling rather than an exception. Finland is among the European nations that have very recently left behind their agrarian society and lifestyle. In the 1930s, it was among the most agrarian states in Europe, and the national future was commonly envisaged as that of a developed agrarian rather than an industrialized country. Although Nordic in terms of culture and politics, after the Second World War Finland was, economically, a typical East European agrarian nation, comparable with Bulgaria rather than Sweden. The transition from an agricultural to an industrial society and further to a post-industrial society took place within such a short period of time that one could say that the agrarian, the industrial and the post-industrial co-exist and are intertwined in the national reality and mentality in a special way. Therefore, and paradoxically enough, the Finnish case might be a particularly interesting subject of study for other late bloomers such as Portugal and Greece, states in the former socialist camp, and the developing countries. However, although respected and celebrated, success stories may have some questionable effects in the current climate in which European, or even global, education-policy space and markets are also emerging for basic education. This international spectacle might be functional enough for an educational quasimarket to rank national systems as more or less successful, but it could also be deeply detrimental to real school development and improvement. Celebrating some nations as heroes and dismissing others as villains may create a certain kind of order and discipline in the field but it says little about advancing schooling in different political, social and cultural contexts. Effective tools for

xiv Introduction

improving quality, equity and efficiency in education are context-sensitive, and separate elements of a complex system rarely function adequately in isolation in a new environment. Moreover, and as sometimes injected into Finnish discussions, what if the Finnish success is just a consequence of the poor state of other nations? It is curious and also symptomatic that nobody in Finland turned himself or herself into a predictor of the Finnish success before publication of the PISA studies, and not even afterwards and with hindsight. Until the 2000s, the great majority of both specialists and laymen thought that Peruskoulu worked reasonably well on a good average level, as evidenced in various international schoolattainment comparisons. Among parents, the elite and the media, it was largely considered good enough, but far from excellent. For a noisy minority, however, the Finnish school system was seen as a catastrophe. Just two weeks before the publication of the first report, PISA 2000, on 24 November 2001, the influential and powerful Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (CIE), which has been fiercely criticizing Peruskoulu since the early 1980s, organized an autumn seminar at one of Helsinki’s main conference venues, Finlandia Hall. Key players in business and industry once again criticized Finnish comprehensive schools for their mediocrity and ineffectiveness, with reference to international evaluations of their quality and efficiency. This time they argued in particular for more competition and better conditions for private schools. Following the first PISA report, published on 7 December 2001, the CIE became completely mute about Peruskoulu. This anthology comprises a selection of my texts from 1993 to 2011 analysing some key dimensions of schooling in Finland. The majority of the texts were written before the publication of the first PISA report. It is therefore obvious that the book gives only partial coverage of and non-direct answers to the Finnish educational mystery – shortfalls that will be compensated in the monograph1 on which I am currently working.The content is divided into four parts: the first three of these focus on Finnish education politics, teacher education and classroom cultures, and the fourth seeks to understand the Finnish PISA success. The contributions to Part I, Education policy-making and governance: struggling between egalitarianism and market liberalism, date from 1998, 2002 and 2009. The first chapter clarifies the tenor of the anthology and reveals my intellectual debts: in social sciences to the French and Continental legacies of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, and in education to the English and American legacies of John W. Meyer and Thomas S. Popkewitz. Following this opening up of the discourse of educational reform, Chapter 2 focuses on the new ‘system of reason’ in education politics, and Chapter 3 on quality assurance and evaluation (QAE), the lynch pin of late-modern educational governance. The aim in Chapter 1 is to promote a better understanding of the problematic relation between the discourse of public reform and the reality of schooling. The subject is the paradox of educational reforms: although superficially

Introduction xv

decisive they seem, at the same time, to be deficient and insufficient. I suggest that one explanation for this ‘vicious circle of educational reforms’ could lie in the discursive dynamics of school reform rather than the reforms themselves. The analysis of changes in the official school discourse since the late 1960s identifies four threads: individualization, disciplinization, goal rationalization and decontextualization.These changes then constitute a specific intertwinement of ‘wishful rationalism’ as a tacit discursive principle of the official approach to school reform. The second chapter on education policy-making was written just before the first PISA report was published. It examines the connections between the new governance in education and new procedures of social exclusion and inclusion in Finland.The main focus is on the emergence of a specific discursive formation at the intersection of the myths of competition, corporate managerialism, educational clientelism and social democracy, with images of rational choicemakers (parents), invisible clients (pupils) and individual-centred learning professionals (teachers). The concluding section outlines a new ‘system of reason’ as a historical shift of responsibilities in the national education system. Chapter 3 focuses on a Finnish rarity in basic education on the global scene: no inspecting, no testing and no ranking. This contribution traces quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) developments in Finnish compulsory schooling. The key question is this: Is there a Finnish QAE model? The conclusion is that although it may be a rhetorical overstatement to speak about a specific Finnish ‘model’, neither is it valid to conclude that what happens in Finnish QAE merely reflects the unintended effects of radical decentralization. The Finnish consensus on certain QAE issues could be characterized as silent, based on antipathy rather than conscious and articulated principles. Finnish hostility towards ranking, combined with a bureaucratic tradition and a developmental approach to QAE strengthened by radical municipal autonomy, have resulted in the construction of nationally and locally embedded policies that have been rather effective in resisting a trans-national policy of testing and ranking. It is significant, however, that those policies represent a combination of conscious, unintended and contingent factors. Part II of the book is entitled Teachers and their education: paradoxes in a successful professionalization project. All the contributions were written in the 1990s, after which time my interest moved from teacherhood to education politics and governance. Chapter 4 constitutes a socio-historical analysis of the social field of Finnish teacher education. This was my first international publication, written during a one-year period as a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990–91. The two remaining chapters further develop this theme, focusing, first, on the birth of the modern Finnish teacher since the 1960s and then on the intertwinement of the new science-legitimated academic teacher education and the professional interests of educational scientists. Chapter 4 gives the historical background of another Finnish rarity, the establishment of Master’s-level education for primary school teachers in the

xvi Introduction

1970s: Finland was alone in the world in this. Teacher education is described as a social field, a multidimensional space of positions and relationships in which expert discourse, and thereby also the serious and authoritative way of thinking and acting, are produced, reproduced and transformed. This is a professional success story of primary school teachers, and also of teacher educators and educational scientists on the one hand, and a story about the establishment and functioning of corporative regulation in education on the other. Finally, a model is put forward outlining the mutual exchange relations between the actors, and the formation of the discursive principles that are taken for granted in the field.These relations could be seen as a basis for the structuration of discourse that, in turn, constitutes the political core of Finnish teacher education. Chapter 5 is probably the most theoretically ambitious one in this selection. In it, we propose that Michel Foucault should be seen as a historian of truth connecting knowledge, self and power to each other as technologies of truth, as an intertwining of techniques of discourse, self and government. Playing with this Foucauldian triangle we reconstruct four truths as the cornerstones of modern teacherhood in Finnish official school discourse. We eventually arrive at wishful rationalism and pastoral professionalism as the tacit principles of discourse in the reconstruction of the modern Finnish teacher. Chapter 6 on teacher education outlines a phenomenon characterized as ‘didactic closure’: how the new science of teacher education tends to isolate itself from its academic neighbours to create a genuine and legitimate scientific base for the teaching profession. This contribution discusses the symbolic and strategic value of science-legitimated pedagogical knowledge in the professionalization of teacher education. The aim is to enhance understanding of certain peculiarities in this body of knowledge with reference to the history of the ‘science of teaching’ and the professionalization of teacher education in Finland. The conclusion is that there are at least three professionalist drifts that produce and reproduce a kind of ‘decontextualized pedagogical discourse’: the pursuit of science legitimation, loyalty to state educational reforms, and a striving for distinction from rival disciplines. According to the results of the analysis, the science-legitimated knowledge system for teacher education served as a very successful strategy in the battlefield of Finnish higher education, at least up to the 1990s. Part III of the book, Schooling practices: a peculiar marriage of the traditional and the progressive, outlines the dynamics in Finnish classroom practices. Chapter 7 gives a historical overview of the long span of individualization in the examination of student behaviour. This contribution is useful to non-Finnish readers also as a periodization of Finnish basic schooling: the old primary school (1866–1943), the new primary school (1943–70), the early comprehensive school (1970–94) and the late comprehensive school (1994–). Chapters 8 and 9 continue on the same theme of individualization, focusing specifically on teaching and learning.

Introduction xvii

Chapter 7 makes a historical journey through the assessment of pupil behaviour. Official and unofficial documents are used as a source in tracing the process of individualizing and normalizing the function of schooling. Examination during primary school was focused on deviant pupils or special groups rather than all pupils. It was only comprehensive school that brought the entire cohort under the scrutiny of more and more sophisticated and comprehensive forms of behaviour examination. The most ambitious techniques, often proposed by academics, were used only for short periods of time, or were never realized, or their implementation deviated essentially from the original intentions. Paradoxically enough, the innovations seem in some ways to have strengthened and particularized traditional behaviour assessment rather than broadening its scope in a more progressive and liberal direction. Chapter 8 describes and analyses changes in teachers’ work, based on interviews with teachers. At the time of the interviews in 1999–2000, I had been away from classroom work for just a decade, and thought that I knew what people working in schools would have to say about everyday life there. Therefore, their positive and optimist attitude, their ‘politically correct’ repertoire and their relatively high level of work satisfaction really surprised me. Regardless of the increasingly fast pace, the constant flow of top-down reforms and the ever diminishing resources, these Finnish teachers seemed to see recent developments in schooling as progress. The interviews were conducted in connection with two research projects, and on this point the Finnish teachers seemed to depart from their counterparts in the other countries. This went almost unnoticed in the projects, however: PISA was two years ahead and I was astonished to find this early explanation. Chapter 9 compares the individualizing pedagogy in all five Nordic countries. In the light of a fairly long tradition of comprehensive schooling embracing the idea, we expected this to be an important aspect of on-going changes in Nordic schools. Individualization could be seen as continuity in pedagogical ideas: its meaning changes along with other changes in schooling and society. Although self-regulatory individualized ways of working made quite a strong appearance in Sweden and Norway at the end of the twentieth century, it was not so obvious in the other countries. This contribution considers the theme of individualization from the perspective of each country, and discusses the similarities and differences based on the case descriptions. The final part of the book, Understanding the Finnish PISA miracle: decent work ethics, reasonable leadership and lucky constellations, takes the miracle out of the Finnish case, describing it instead as a contingent intertwinement of specific socio-historical dynamics in education politics, governance and classroom cultures. Sustainable leadership, social trust and teacher professionalism appear to have played an essential role alongside certain lucky constellations and historical conjunctions. Chapter 10 is my most frequently cited article and gives the socio-historical background of the success story.As befits the field of education, the explanations

xviii Introduction

are primarily pedagogical, referring especially to the excellent teachers and high-quality teacher education. Without underrating the explanatory power of these statements, this contribution presents some of the social, cultural and historical factors behind the pedagogical success of Peruskoulu. From the perspectives of history and the sociology of education, it also sheds light on some paradoxes and dilemmas that the success may conceal.The focus is on the problematic nature of international comparative surveys based on school performance indicators. The question is whether they really make it possible to understand schooling in different countries, or whether they just contribute to processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’. The last two chapters open up the paradox of winning a global education race by going against the flow. Chapter 11 toys with the idea of combining path dependency, convergence and contingency in explaining Finnish distinctiveness in education policy and politics since the early 1990s.The focus is on governance in comprehensive schooling. The authors elaborate on and contextualize the Finnish way in an analysis of the particular and somewhat ambiguous ways in which global practices have – or have not – been received and mediated in Finland. Chapter 12 emphasizes three ‘truths’, or consensual taking-for-granted and self-evidence, all of which are rather rare in education, particularly if appearing in one country. These truths are: a belief in schooling as an essential source of welfare; a belief in teachers as rather solid and stable suppliers of this common good; and finally a belief in schools as institutions that deserve certain levels of autonomy, trust and industrial peace free from trendy quality-assurance and evaluation systems. Our aim is to show that all these beliefs have been constructed through historical processes in which both rational actors and coincidental factors always met, converged and intertwined. As a final reflection, the Aftermath is a combination of concluding remarks and recommendations for further studies.The theoretical approach I developed after writing these texts led me to the conclusion that the three constitutive discursive formations made it possible to understand the specific dynamics that drive the Finnish politics of basic schooling. Here the most ambitious pursuit of this anthology hangs in the balance: emphasizing opportunities for mutual understanding rather than evaluation and ranking, and thus seeing the Finnish case in a comparative light.There is a definite need to advance in this, although in very humble steps, towards what Patricia Broadfoot recently advocated under her editorial headline ‘Post-comparative education?’ in Comparative Education: (. . .) an engagement with the global currents of twenty-first century life; a rigorous blending of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in welljustified comparisons; a commitment to the quest for more general insights about how the key building blocks of education – culture, learning, power and technologies – work together in a context of constant change. Above all, however, they reflect a preparedness to draw on mainstream theory to

Introduction xix

situate comparative analyses within the fundamental quest to understand issues of social identity, of the structuring of social institutions and the relationships between people and the many different groups and societies to which they belong.

Note 1 Simola, H. (forthcoming 2015) Dynamics in Politics of Finnish Basic Schooling. London: Routledge.

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Part I

Education policy-making and governance Struggling between egalitarianism and market liberalism

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Chapter 1

Firmly bolted into the air Wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reforms? 1

Reforms in public education have veered towards ‘steady work’ in recent decades (Elmore & McLaughlin, 1988). One reform succeeds another at an increasingly hectic pace. A new, politically correct educational language may substitute an earlier one before field workers have learned the latter. Even the most eager reformers note the ‘considerable evidence that good teachers with a moral purpose become victims of either cynicism or burnout’ because of new demands, promises, and wishes (Fullan, 1993: 54). The situation of a classroom teacher often resembles the famous ‘double bind’ outlined by Gregory Bateson (1972) as a condition for schizophrenia: a person meets such contradictory and diffuse demands that he or she is no longer able to cope with them and becomes ill (cf. LeCompte & Dworkin, 1991). It is strange that so few scholars have analysed this compelling logic of educational reform (see, however, Greenman, 1994; Hunter, 1994; Popkewitz, 1988). Even fewer have questioned it (see, however, Meyer, 1986; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Two stances seem to predominate. First, some people hold the firm belief that we have finally found some theoretical foundations for real change in schools. A good example of these optimists is Michael Fullan, who states in his book Change Forces: ‘Development . . . has brought us to the beginning of a new phase which will represent a quantum leap – a paradigm breakthrough’ (Fullan, 1993: vii). Second, there are critics who refer to empirical evidence that optimism in school reform has been overestimated. Pedagogical ideas and theories seem to come and go, but teaching remains unchanged (e.g. Hoetker & Ahlbrandt, 1969; Leiwo et al., 1987; Sirotnik, 1983). This disappointment is crystallized in the title of a book written by the grand old man of school reforms, Seymour B. Sarason (1991), The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform. Critics even see recent reforms as deficient and insufficient: something has always been lacking, according to them. What is common to both optimists and critics, however, is that once again, a new and more comprehensive reform is considered necessary. The subject of this chapter is the paradox of educational reform: although it appears to be final and conclusive, at the same time it seems deficient and insufficient. I propose that one explanation for this vicious cycle can be traced

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to ‘discursive dynamics’, to the specific ways we speak about school reform rather than the reforms themselves. The chapter is based on empirical findings and theoretical constructions developed in a study of official Finnish school discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s (Simola, 1995). Although the case is limited to a peripheral and small country, I will argue for its more general relevance. In what follows, I will first describe my approach and material. In the main part of the chapter, I identify four discursive changes in official Finnish school discourse after the Second World War.These changes then form the basis for a tacit discursive principle of school improvement that may shed light on the paradox of educational reform.

The material and the approach One might ask why somebody in the so-called international academic community should pay attention to empirical findings from such a seemingly peripheral country as Finland. Although space restrictions prevent detailed argument, I would claim that the Finnish case could be seen as an accelerated, compressed version of the global process of mass schooling (e.g. Meyer et al., 1992b; Simola, 1993a). The Finnish comprehensive educational system was developed only recently, and at the same time very rapidly and systematically. Moreover, the Finnish political culture is even more statist than the cultures in the other Nordic countries. As one reflection of this, German ‘state ethics’ and étatiste philosophy dominated the academic field until the Second World War, after which Anglo-American influence took over, as it did in other Nordic countries. Given the evidence of new features of globalization in education discourse (see, for example, Lundgren, 1990), it is reasonable to treat the Finnish case not only as interesting and curious for an international audience, but also as an example of a more general phenomenon. This chapter concerns official school discourse in Finland during the decades after the Second World War. The focal period is the 1970s, sometimes characterized as the ‘Golden Era of Educational Reforms’.2 Three major reforms were carried out. First, the Comprehensive School Reform (1972–1977) replaced the dual-track school system of eight-year compulsory schooling and parallel grammar school with the single, mixed-ability comprehensive school in which all pupils are schooled for nine years. Second, the Teacher Education Reform, which was put into practice from 1973 to 1979, radically changed the training of primary school teachers (those who teach at the lower level, from grades 1 to 6, in comprehensive school).Their training was removed from teacher training colleges and small-town ‘teacher preparation seminaries’ to new university faculties of education, established as part of the reform, and was raised to the level of Master’s degree in 1979. This dramatically increased the role of educational studies in teacher training, and education as an academic discipline expanded rapidly.Third, the General Syllabus and Degree Reform in Higher Education (1977–1980) abolished the Bachelor’s degree (although it

Firmly bolted into the air 5

returned in 1994): since 1977, all those wishing to become teachers require a Master’s degree (Simola, 1993a, 1993b). The discursive changes accompanying these reforms, both as their product and their producer, were no less dramatic.The comprehensive school presented itself as the ‘New School’ and did its best to distinguish itself from the old elementary school. Similarly, new teachers and educational scientists distanced themselves from their predecessors. A new school discourse materialized in the national curricula, governmental committee reports, and in legislative and administrative texts. It is this discourse that is the subject of this chapter. Educational reforms do not merely come about – they are made. In the case of Finland, governmental committees have been the key instruments through which they are planned and justified. According to a Finnish study, education has traditionally been an area in which government committees have played a particularly central role in the planning and preparation of government action and in drafting government policy for the sector as a whole. It is through the institution of the committee that education has been brought under strict governmental control, and the committee has become a vital instrument of educational policy as practiced by the state. (Hovi et al., 1989: 243) The authority of the committees has been reflected in the fact that, in some cases, their proposals have become the official curriculum, for both compulsory education and teacher training. Some reports have also been scientifically legitimized through the important role that educational scientists have attained in the committees, particularly since the late 1960s. The material in this study includes the national curriculum documents for elementary and comprehensive schooling from 1925, 1952, 1970, 1985, and 1994, as well as the committee texts on schooling and teacher training. The former were written as models for the national curriculum with more precise documents to be formulated on the local level: in 1925 and 1952 by the school, in 1970 and 1985 by the municipal authorities, and in 1994 again by the school.3 The committee and curricular texts are serious, authoritative verbal acts of experts who speak as such and who thereby express the ‘official truth’ on schooling. They are, to quote Michel Foucault (1972: 49), discursive ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’. Although these verbal acts are the products of individuals, they have (especially when circulating as legal texts, administrative orders or state documents) the appearance of anonymity. This kind of text has the guarantee of the state as the ‘geometrical locus of all perspectives’, as ‘the holder of the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 137). As such, it also has coercive force in relation to the reality of schooling.4 My main focus, however, is not on the ideas, paradigms or premises presented in intentional or explicit forms, but rather on

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something from the ambiguous area between words and things that are often taken for granted or are self-evident. Thus the approach of my study could be characterized as an ‘archaeological stance’ or a ‘history of truth’ in the Foucauldian sense.5

The individualized pupil Finnish curricular and committee texts from before the Second World War rarely mention pupils as individuals. It was not the individual, but a group of children who were to be educated. When a child or a pupil is referred to in the singular, it is in the sense of the generalized individual. Although the benefits of mass schooling are mentioned, this type of education is principally legitimized by the needs of society, the nation and/or the fatherland. The Elementary School Committee in 1946 saw it as the task of the elementary school to train workers; the task of the lower secondary (middle) school to train foremen and forewomen; and the task of the secondary school (gymnasium) to train managers (Committee Report [CR], 1946: 17). The aim was to educate pupils in the established religious and peasant way of life in which – as a Finnish study phrased it – ‘work and faith are the central concepts of the curriculum, and home and fatherland, [its] solid ground’ (Rinne, 1987: 109). The modern individual did emerge as the legitimating basis for compulsory schooling after the Second World War, but was still clearly subordinated to the interests of society. The school was seen as a ‘miniature society’ and a ‘working place for children’ (Curriculum [CUR], 1952: 28). Life in school was to be moulded into a completely educative training ground for civic rights and duties. These features were to be utilized to make school life totally educative. The main task of the school was to train ‘individuals for society’ (CUR, 1952: 13–14, 28). Only since the late 1960s has the modern individual surpassed society as the primary authorized target of schooling. The main ethos was found in the new promise to respond to individual learning needs and the individual qualities of each pupil. The focus of pedagogical problematization in the 1970 curriculum (CUR, 1970) shifted from the number of pupils to the diversity of individual personalities: pedagogical expediency and flexibility thus assumed more importance than pupil numbers. This type of discourse might be crystallized as a ‘family tutor illusion’ (Simola, 1993b: 179), as if the basic social relation in school were one teacher to one pupil. The focus of the teacher’s work changed from moulding the school life of a group of pupils to become an individual-centred task. Before the late 1960s, the need for individual observation focused on pupils who were labelled ‘behaviourally problematic’, rather than on every pupil. Since the 1970s, however, teachers have been required to know every single pupil intimately: to ‘be aware of the study-related factors in the individual pupil’s home environment’, to know ‘the previous learning results, abilities, attitudes,

Firmly bolted into the air 7

expectations and the health of the pupil’. This same requirement applied to the primary school teacher with 20 pupils and the subject teacher with 200 pupils (CR, 1975: 32–3). The promise to respond to pupil diversity culminated in the texts since the 1990’s, which reinforce the individual-centred task of the teacher in emphasizing the ethical character of the teacher’s work. The 1994 curriculum depicts the teacher as a ‘counsellor of learning’ or a ‘designer of the learning environment’ for individual ‘learners’. The school now carries the rhetoric of offering ‘individual study plans’ or even ‘personal curricula’, in accordance with the needs and abilities of pupils (CUR, 1994: 10, 20). According to Anderson (1994), attempts to individualize instruction in modern pedagogy can be traced to the work of Frederic Burk in San Francisco at the beginning of the twentieth century. The yearbook of the prestigious National Society for the Study of Education, published in 1925, was devoted entirely to individualized instruction. This pursuit has been at the heart of various well-known reform programmes, such as Winnetka, Illinois, the Dalton and the Decroly, ever since. It is therefore an interesting question why progressive individualization, or the ‘family tutor illusion’, arrived in Finland so late. With regard to Sweden, for example, it has been said that in the 1940s the public school was already seen as being in the service of the individual rather than society (e.g. Broady, 1981). Key words, even in the Finnish progressive ‘New School’ movement after the 1930s, were Die Arbeitschule, workbooks and social education rather than ‘childcentred’ individualism (Lahdes, 1961).The principle of individualizing teaching was not part of the Finnish pedagogical vocabulary before the 1960s (Lahdes, 1966). I refer elsewhere to two intertwined reasons for this (Simola, 1995). First, the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society and subsequently to a post-industrial society began in Finland only after the Second World War, although its rapid growth among European countries was also exceptional. Second, the Finnish elementary school became the school for all children only in the late 1950s. Up until the 1940s, some 20 per cent of urban pupils went to private schools, and only the comprehensive school reform in the 1970s universalized and systematized nine-year compulsory schooling as a normal part of the life span of every citizen (Kivinen, 1988). It is fair to claim, therefore, that only the enrolment of children from the upper-social-strata public schools made it necessary to internalize progressive, child-centred rhetoric as part of the official Finnish school discourse.

The disciplined teacher The concept of the ideal teacher that is explicitly and implicitly embedded in official Finnish school discourse also changed fundamentally during the post-war decades. The basis of this shift was the professionalization of teaching. The required expertise became more and more precisely determined by

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virtue of what was considered essential and valid enough to be offered to students in the course of teacher training. I refer to this historical process here as ‘disciplinization’. Ever since ethics and psychology were differentiated from religion at the beginning of the twentieth century, the knowledge base of teaching (i.e. educational studies) has consisted of pedagogical, psychological, philosophical and societal studies, as well as practical work. Up until the Second World War, and in certain respects even until the 1960s, educational aims were based on ethics and the basics of psychology.The task was to combine these two premises into practical teaching methods. Educational studies in teacher training were ideological in the sense that they were aimed, first and foremost, at fostering the prospective teacher’s devotion and consciousness of mission. Educational knowledge, on the other hand, was also expected to be practical and to provide a repertoire of teaching methods to be applied in various teaching situations. One may conclude that, until the mid 1960s, educational studies in teacher training were multi-faceted, pragmatic and ideological, based on psychology and ethics and in all ways related to the needs of teaching practice as interpreted by the National Board of Education. The turning point towards an academic orientation was the 1967 Teacher Training Committee Report (CR, 1967). The model of the teacher as a science-legitimated expert replaced that of a well-educated practitioner. It was proposed in the 1969 report that full responsibility for teacher education be assigned to the universities, and the 1975 report suggested that the training be raised to the level of Master’s degree. The intention was to transform teaching from ‘a haphazard activity into a rational one’ through the scientification of teacher education (CR, 1975: 40). The new teacher was to become a ‘didactic thinker’6 and ‘researcher into his/her work’ (CR, 1967: 55; CR, 1975: 40, 50, 54; CR, 1989: 65). The students of the 1990s would have to grind their way through educational studies that lasted five times longer than those of their predecessors in the 1960s. The basis for the organization of studies for teacher trainees became the educational sciences, including references to the sociology and philosophy of education, although the emphasis was on didactics and educational psychology. This disciplinization of the teacher’s education base culminated in the 1989 committee report (CR, 1989), in which ‘didactically oriented educational science’ appeared as the only source of ‘true’ knowledge for teaching: the teacher’s knowledge thus became synonymous with didactic knowledge. The report mentioned the multiplicity of teachers’ work, but there was only one reference to educational psychology and none to sociology or the history of education. Philosophical elements were acknowledged as an emphasis on the ethical character of the teaching profession and as a request for a kind of educational ideology. This disciplinization could be characterized as ‘didacticization’, meaning that didactics replaced the pragmatic and ideological teacher’s knowledge as the true ‘science of teaching’.

Firmly bolted into the air 9

It is no wonder that the way of speaking about teachers in the field also changed dramatically in official school discourse after the late 1960s. According to the 1952 committee (CUR, 1952: 54, 60), Finnish primary school teachers were ‘lively and willing to develop themselves in their work’. The committee emphasized that the role of the classroom teacher was more consistent and, in a way, more important than the pedagogical upswings. There was even a proposal to establish an office at the National Board of Education with the objective of collecting and sharing the experiences of classroom teachers in terms of the experiments carried out on their own initiative. Since the 1970s, however, classroom teachers have been seen as obstacles and objects rather than as innovators and subjects of reform. They have been referred to in lukewarm if not openly critical terms. The direction of the innovations and improvements has been exclusively top-down, from academic educational science and centralized projects and experiments.7 I have so far concentrated on ruptures, but there also seems to be continuity on the disciplinizing dimension. It is a question of who is empowered to take the floor in the discursive field of teacher education. On the whole, only officials from the National Board of Education (later also from the Ministry of Education) and educational scientists (later didacticians) have been able to speak authoritatively. Being a classroom teacher has never been a sufficient qualification for being invited to serve on a committee. Of 134 members of governmental teacher training committees since the 1920s, only five could be categorized as field teachers (Simola, 1995: 208). Although a few professors of ‘subject disciplines’8 have been members of some committees, knowledge of the subject matter has had no articulating power in outlining the ‘true’ knowledge necessary for pre-service teachers. Nor has any educational philosopher, sociologist or historian been on a committee. How does the disciplinization of the teacher’s knowledge outlined above relate to the more general tendencies in education? One evident connection is with the studies and theorizing on the professionalization of teaching. A constant theme in that discussion is the constitution of a science-legitimated pedagogical knowledge base whereby teaching could be regarded more as classic professional work, like that of the physician, for example (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 1990). There are various critical voices questioning the self-evident blessing of professionalism (e.g. Avis, 1991; Burbules & Densmore, 1991; Noddings, 1990), but just a few focusing on the role of educational sciences and teacher educators themselves in this process (e.g. Popkewitz, 1994; Popkewitz & Simola, 1996). The Finnish solution to move all teacher education to the Master’s level may well be unique in the world (Simola et al., 1997).

The goal-rationalized curriculum The change in the Finnish conception of the curriculum was already taking root in the 1950s, but did not materialize until the 1970s. Referring to

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Education policy-making and governance

Max Weber’s (1947) well-known distinction between goal- and value-rational orientation,9 I have characterized this shift as ‘goal rationalization’.10 The mission of the school is clearly seen as value-rational in the first national curriculum of 1925 (CUR, 1925). The absolute values of home, community, work, religion and the fatherland directed all educational activity. References to goals, to the means of achieving them, and to the evaluation of the efficiency of such actions are very rare. The school completely embraced its mission to civilize the Finnish people. In fact, the intention was not to ‘develop’ the school in the modern sense of the word, but rather to return it to the ‘original idea and spirit’ outlined in 1861 by the ‘Founding Father’ of Finnish elementary education, Uno Cygnaeus. The 1952 curriculum was an intermediate solution that represented a clear step from value rationalism towards goal rationalism. The text emphasizes the importance of goal consciousness among teachers, but this was for the purpose of unification rather than efficacy. The goals were still essentially ethical, and one finds very few formulations of goals for learning. It is explicitly stated that setting general goals would contradict the compulsory character of the school: ‘The main task of the teacher is to direct the studies of the pupils rather than to check their outcomes’ (CUR, 1952: 32). This notion of educational action in the 1952 curriculum could be characterized as increasingly goal-rational, but far from complete. It was the 1970 curriculum that introduced a completely goal-rational discourse. The general values and purposes of the school were to be operationalized in parts of the hierarchical goal system. The goals were to form the basis for choosing teaching methods, materials, organization and equipment. It was also explicitly required to deduce measurable and exact objectives for pupils’ behaviour from the general aims (CUR, 1970: 20–3). In principle, it was considered possible to measure exactly whether or not the school had achieved its goals, in as much as the technical instruments for that purpose had been developed. However, this ideal of exact goal-setting was never realized in other parts of the 1970 curriculum. The goals were indeed formulated, but not uniformly or systematically. They rarely concerned learning, but rather focused on teaching. The 1985 curriculum does not formulate exact goals either, although it declares that ‘steering by the goals’ must be at the core of the national control of schooling (CUR, 1985: 7). The 1994 curriculum explicitly declares the abandonment of ‘goal-oriented learning ideology’ (CUR, 1994: 10). Ironically, it recognizes, formally at least, the 1970 ideal of a uniform ‘goal system’ set in terms of individual pupil learning. Whereas the 130-year history of the Finnish curriculum up to 1994 was a continuum of increasingly sophisticated and precise articulation of what was to be taught by the teacher, the 1994 curriculum dramatically ruptures the continuity. Teaching content is absorbed into abstract and general notions while goals take centre stage, stating uniformly and systematically what the individual pupil should learn. It is fair to say that the 1994 curriculum, or more

Firmly bolted into the air 11

precisely the national ‘framework curriculum’, virtually comprises goals and the assessment of their achievement.11 It is no wonder, then, that ‘goal consciousness’, or the internalization of the official goals, became the essence of the ideal teacher during the reform of the 1970s. The concept of the teacher as a ‘model citizen’ has been vital in official discourse. Given that the duty of the primary school teacher was to guarantee that every citizen achieve the proper level of decent manners, behaviour and habits, teachers were carefully recruited according to the same principles. This civilizing mission formed the core of the occupational ethos. Goal consciousness popped up in the 1970 curriculum as an essential quality of the teacher in the new comprehensive school, and in 1984 the obligation of teachers ‘to pursue the attainment of goals stated for the comprehensive school’ was written into the legislation (CUR, 1985: 59). Commitment to the goals thus represented the point at which the institutional belief in mass schooling intersected with the conviction that the power of the official curriculum was the main tool driving the development of school practice. How do these Finnish findings relate to international tendencies? In the Anglo-American discussion, goal rationalism in education may be crystallized in the well-known ‘Tyler Rationale’ for curriculum construction (Tyler, 1950). According to this linear model, there are ‘four fundamental questions which must be answered in developing any curriculum or plan of instruction’: 1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? 2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? 3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized? 4. How can we determine whether the purposes are being attained? (Tyler, 1950: 1–2) Although heavily criticized over the years (see, for example, Kliebard, 1975, 1995; Miettinen, 1990; Wise, 1976), the Tyler Rationale has maintained its position, especially outside the purely academic field, as a paradigmatic notion according to which curricular planning must start from the formulation of goals. Once determined, the goals will guide other curricular decisions on learning experience, organization and evaluation. This could be seen as a rule of thumb emanating from the Tyler Rationale, regardless of whether Tyler himself would have been pleased about it (see, for example, Doyle, 1992; Hlebowitsh, 1992; Madaus & Stufflebeam, 1989). Its endurance is understandable because of the formal rationality inherent in all modern Western thinking, and especially in societal practices known as ‘social engineering’ (see Toulmin, 1990). This kind of goal rationalism first appeared in Finnish educational discourse through the taxonomy of educational objectives and the Mastery Learning Strategies of Tyler’s famous student, Benjamin S. Bloom (Miettinen, 1990: 88–90). In its most lasting form, however, it comprises a diagram labelled the

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basic model of instruction, which has been used since the 1970s in both committee texts and teacher education textbooks (see, for example, CR, 1975: 44; Lahdes, 1986: 21; Lahdes, 1997: 14): goals Æ organization of instruction Æ learning Æ evaluation and feedback The shift to the rhetoric of accountability and management by results in the 1990s merely meant a more developed version of the management by objectives (MBO) of the 1970s, as a Finnish specialist in management theory put it (Temmes, 1990).

The contextualized school The fourth change in the official Finnish school discourse could be characterized as a certain kind of ‘decontextualization’ of teaching and learning. By that I mean a discursive break during the 1970s in which the socio-historical institutional context of teaching and learning in school vanished from official texts on education. This decontextualization, in a fundamental sense, made possible the individualization of the pupil, the disciplinization of the teacher, and the goal rationalization of the curriculum. It is fair to claim that it was only through forgetting the mass character and compulsion of schooling that the promise to respond to the individual learning needs and capacities of every pupil could be considered. It was only through the exclusion of the everyday reality of schooling that individual-centred didactics could become the core of the teacher’s professional knowledge. It was only through underestimating the institutional, historical and cultural frames of schooling that goal rationalism could be seen as the omnipotent basis of educational reform. Thus, the institutional context of teaching and learning in schools gradually disappeared from the official school discourse after the late 1960s. This was largely realized in the following three ways: first, the school became a natural environment for children; second, learning in school appeared as a universal model for learning; and finally, certain institutional characteristics of schooling disappeared from the official discourse. Let us start with the ‘naturalization’ of the school. It has been said, and with good reason, that it was only through the Finnish Comprehensive School Reform of the 1970s that a long-lasting system of basic education became institutionalized and was considered a natural part of the normal development of every citizen (Kivinen, 1988). No wonder, then, that before this it was common to refer to the arbitrary character of the school, even in official texts. In the 1920s, the curriculum committee cited a rural teacher’s lively narrative on the alienation of school from the rural, agricultural spirit (CUR, 1925). Later, in the 1950s, schooling was seen as a prerequisite for civilization, but also as ‘unnatural in its actual comprehensiveness starting as early as the age of seven’ (CUR, 1952: 27). It was claimed that schooling, at best, ‘imposes on children

Firmly bolted into the air 13

a lot of strange things that will be resisted by the nature of the child’ (ibid.). This confrontation between the ‘natural’ child and ‘unnatural’ schooling disappeared during the 1970s when the problem of unnaturalness changed into one of pedagogical expediency. The school became a natural environment for children. An example of this ‘naturalization’ was the changed attitude towards the predictive power of school marks and reports. Whereas school marks were seen as ‘lacking predictive power because of the one-sided character of school life’ in 1952, the only problem mentioned in the 1970 curriculum was ‘the insufficiently developed technical means of evaluation’ (cf. CUR, 1952: 83; CUR, 1970: 161). Second, there was an essential shift in the way learning was discussed. Before the 1970s, it was rare to mention learning in official school discourse, teaching being discussed instead. Moreover, most references to learning in the 1925 and 1952 curricula concern basic skills and values. ‘School learning’ is often explicitly mentioned, whereas the expression completely disappeared from curricular texts after 1970. Elementary learning is very rarely discussed in the 1970 curriculum, whereas high-level, advanced learning is a constant topic of discourse. The focus shifted to learning abstractions, learning based on internal motivation, creative learning, meaningful learning, and so on. Learning in school became a synonym for universal learning. Similarly, learning difficulties no longer referred only to difficulties in school, but also to learning difficulties in general, in any context. In summary, learning in school became the learning model, universalized as the only ‘real’ learning (cf. Illich, 1986). The third decontextualization mode was the concealment of certain peculiarities of schooling, especially its obligatory and mass nature. One fundamental argument for compulsory schooling was to save children from the disastrous idleness brought about by the labour laws of the late nineteenth century, which limited the opportunities for children to work. This protective ‘storehouse function’ remained an explicit and legitimate argument for lengthening compulsory schooling until the mid 1960s, when problems of discipline and behaviour among idle 14–15 year olds were cited (CR, 1966).The compulsory aspect of schooling was still a moral-reasoning issue in 1970, but there is no hint of it in official texts after 1975. Thus the mandatory nature of the comprehensive school seemed to become irrelevant in official school discourse. Mass schooling was also explicitly articulated before the late 1960s. In fact, it was then seen as a necessary precondition for social education: the school was to be a miniature society and work place for children. Such a function could be realized only in a social context in which there were many people, and thus a one-to-one relationship between the pupil and the teacher was the exception rather than the rule. The disappearance of the teaching and learning institutional context culminated in the major documents for teacher education in 1989 and for the comprehensive school in 1994. A distanced reader might imagine the main forms of studying to be individual or in small groups. The classroom would no

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longer seem to exist, and the basic social unit would not be a teaching group or a class, but the school, envisioned in the 1994 curriculum as ‘a versatile learning centre that provides flexible and high-quality educational services’ to the ‘learners’ (CUR, 1994: 10).The institutional context, determined by certain historical, societal and cultural processes has almost completely disappeared. As an example, the most important innovations affecting all teaching and learning in schools, in other words the marketization of the comprehensive school and the introduction of a centralized national evaluation system, are not even mentioned in the 1994 curriculum. I claim above that it was, indeed, decontextualization that paved the way for individualization, disciplinization and goal rationalization in the official Finnish school discourse. Let me illustrate this with a few examples. Consider, first, the historical shift in the teacher’s work from the group to the individual pupil.The strong Herbartian tradition in Finnish teacher training was phased out in 1944 through the introduction of a new textbook of didactics for elementary school teacher training written by Matti Koskenniemi (1944), a leading academic figure in Finnish education throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Koskenniemi based his textbook on the social psychology of the classroom, permeated by the ethos of social education.The school context with its historically formed, compulsory and mass character is explicitly present and is tuned to moulding the institutional life of a group of future citizens. This is clearly written in the 1952 curriculum, for which Koskenniemi was the general secretary. Social psychology as a discipline completely disappeared from teacher education curricula after 1970. Classroom management as a topic was moved from theoretical studies to teaching practice, and there has been no sign of any contradiction between the pursuit of the individual treatment of pupils and the evident mass character of the school. Much attention has been given to learning difficulties but teachers’ inevitable incapacity to attend to the problems of individual pupils in a full classroom is never mentioned as one of the underlying reasons. Although the vast majority of primary schools in Finland were still small and rural in the 1990s, with fewer than three teachers, their specific pedagogical problems were almost completely neglected in teacher education documents. My second example concerns an explicit conceptual model crystallizing decontextualization in curricular thinking. This ‘determinant model of education and the curriculum’ appeared in official texts for the first time in 1968 (CR, 1968: 8), and has been implicitly present without criticism ever since. It is presented in a didactics textbook (Lahdes, 1977: 21–8; Lahdes, 1986: 37–41; Lahdes, 1997: 21–3) that has had a monopoly position in teacher education since the 1970s until the late 1990s.12 The model seeks explicitly ‘to cover the whole of the teacher’s duties’, emphasizing that the task of the teacher ‘must be realised within the general framework’, described in relation to the following three determinants. First, ‘the pupil’ determinant consists of ‘singular, unique, and individual pupils’ who are the objects of education, but at the same time

Firmly bolted into the air 15

interact with their teacher and classmates. Second, ‘the branches of knowledge’ determinant refers to ‘that knowledge and skill to be transmitted through education to the next generation’. Finally, ‘society’ is, on the one hand, the macrolevel context of the teaching/learning process because ‘the instruction always happens at a certain moment in a certain society within certain historical, social, and economic circumstances’, but, on the other hand, it is a personified actor who ‘pays the costs of education, answers for the administration of the schools and proposes general goals for the comprehensive school in particular’ (CR, 1975: 43–4). Although framing and focusing Finnish school discourse, the determinant model effectively excludes alternative ways of thinking, speaking and acting. To capitalize on Bourdieu’s (1977: 167–9) concept of doxa, one could say that the model draws the line between the ‘universe of discourse or argument’ and the ‘universe of [the] undiscussed [or] undisputed’ between a field of doxa and a field of opinion. At the same time, it constitutes this way of speaking as authoritative expert discourse. As far as decontextualization is concerned, neither the school nor the classroom as a micro-level environment of teaching and learning is of interest here. Neither is considered essential or meaningful in serious discussion of schooling and teacher training. Furthermore, it is not only the micro- but also the macro-level schooling context that becomes irrelevant given the naïve social functionalism of the model. Society is reduced to a benevolent and well-intentioned actor on the one hand, and to the backdrop in front of which football or Shakespeare might be played on the other. As my last example I would like to mention the curious pedagogical construction I have characterized elsewhere (Simola, 1998) as ‘school-free pedagogy’. I have shown that it is possible in official Finnish school discourse to reconstruct a kind of abstract and universalistic, non-historical and decontextualized academic discipline of how the teacher should teach and how the pupil should learn in school as if it were not school. There has been a tendency to dismiss schooling as an institution for historically formed, obligatory mass education as uninteresting. The everyday activities of teaching and learning in school, the sociocultural system of time, space and rituals, or ‘the grammar of schooling’ (Tyack & Cuban, 1995), appear to be out of focus or even absent when improvements in teaching and learning are planned and propagated. Perhaps this is why an extensive national evaluation report of educational sciences published by the Academy of Finland characterized an essential part of Finnish didactic research as studies that tend to be ‘for school teaching’ but not, however, concerned ‘with teaching and learning in school’ (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 56).

Discursive dynamics of educational reform Swedish scholar Gunilla Svingby (1979) characterizes the particular literature developed in Swedish school reforms after the Second World War as ‘curricular

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poetry’. She proposes that this way of speaking often loses its connection with classroom reality, and for that reason fails to promote challenges to existing educational practices. The ‘tacit discursive principle’ of official Finnish school discourse outlined in this article has much in common with Svingby’s idea. Emphasizing its anonymous, rationalist, systematized and science-legitimised character, however, I have called it ‘wishful rationalism’, a kind of rationalism of hopes, basically because it has a ‘rational’ as well as a ‘poetic’ dimension. Concentration on the individual and the disregard for institutional frames identified earlier as tendencies in official Finnish school discourse could be seen as curricular poetry. Surely this way of speaking is not peculiar to education, but belongs to ‘a bizarre human tendency that assumes it is necessary to imagine an idealized state as an impetus for taking action’, as Herbert Kliebard (1995: 87) wrote. He also refers to John Dewey (1922: 282), who noted more than 90 years ago: Men have constructed a strange dream-world when they have supposed that without a fixed ideal of a remote good to inspire them, they have no inducement to get relief from present troubles, no desire for liberation from what oppresses and for clearing up what confuses present action. Modern reform discourse, however, is not only poetic but also rational in the Weberian sense that understanding, motivation and justification of action are based on its consequences. The particular processes of goal rationalization and disciplinization in official Finnish school discourse could be seen as such rationalism.What is ironic here is that this particular combination of utopianism and rationalism makes this discourse so ‘efficient’. Dewey (1922: 236) refers to ‘impotent wishes’ and ‘compensatory dreams’, criticizing what he calls ‘the doctrine of fixed ends’: The doctrine of fixed ends not only diverts attention from the examination of consequences and the intelligent creation of purpose, but, since means and ends are two ways of regarding the same actuality, it also renders men careless in their inspection of existing conditions. An aim not framed on the basis of a survey of the current conditions that are to be employed as the means of its realisation simply throws us back upon past habits. Consequently, we do not do what we intended to do but what we have become used to doing, or then we thrash about in a blind ineffectual way. The result is failure. (Dewey, 1922: 232) One could now read the Finnish version of the Tyler Rationale through the rationalism of hopes, a kind of wishful rationalism of authoritative expert discourse on educational reform (see Figure 1.1). According to this interpretation, the Finnish version of the Tyler Rationale appears to be a vicious circle of failure and a reform generator, regardless of what happens in classroom reality. By focusing on goals and means but

Firmly bolted into the air 17

GOALS based on wishes

ORGANIZATION OF INSTRUCTION based on school-free pedagogy

FEEDBACK need for new reform

LEARNING in the school context

EVALUATION based on pre-determined goals

Figure 1.1 The vicious circle of educational reform discourse

neglecting the context of activity, this discursive formation leans on wishes as goals, and on school-free pedagogy as means, thereby creating a kind of double bind. I am not claiming that goal rationalism per se excludes the context. Weber (1947: 115) wrote about calculating the ‘behaviour’ of objects in the external situation and of other human individuals as ‘conditions’ or ‘means for successful attainment’ in goal rationalism. One could assume, however, that the intellectual focus is very strongly on goals and means. According to Weber, one condition for goal-rational action is that ‘the end, the means, and the secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed’ (Weber, 1947: 117). The context of action is seen as secondary to the scrutiny of goals and means. It appears as given, taken for granted and self-evident, as something natural and durable, something out of the sphere of influence of the actor. In concentrating on fixed but decontextualized goals in planning, schoolfree pedagogy in realization, and measured learning in results, a Tylerian will very obviously confront the need for new reform. The mission has apparently failed. On the other hand, concentration on predetermined goals also means a tendency to ignore the outcome of reforms not directly linked to those goals. What might be lost is sensitivity to seizing on the unintended and unexpected consequences of carrying out reform on the classroom level, which could have positive as well as negative results. Ironically, reform may be doomed to failure even though there might be considerable success at the grass-roots level; and vice versa, the official results may seem positive even though unfavourable side effects could result from the innovation. This specific discursive formation is a curious intertwinement of utopianism and rationalism, of credo and ratio. It appears as a locus of symbolic struggle between the agents in the social field of education where reform discourse per se has become symbolic capital in the Bourdieuan sense (cf. Jóhannesson, 1993).

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It also constitutes the core of the professionalist construction of ‘self-created’ problems that Randall Collins (1990: 20–1) suggests constitute ‘the most important component for a theory of idealized occupational status groups’. Thus it is not difficult to see how functional this wishful rationalism is for various interest groups in the field of education. By sweeping the institutional limitations of obligatory mass schooling under the carpet, it was possible to make the school seem omnipotent or advanced, fulfilling its tasks, and thus deserving continuous public faith (Popkewitz, 1991: 216; Weick, 1976). Wishful rationalism has thus prevailed in making mass education, to borrow from John W. Meyer (1986: 358), ‘a religious base of modern society’. The above is an extremely simplistic way of describing the complex and manifold social phenomenon of educational reform discourse. One might say that the goals are never fully decontextualized because everyone setting them has been in school and therefore knows, at least subjectively, what is possible there and what is not. Moreover, the pedagogical means will never be completely ‘school-free’ because many educational experts have personal classroom experience as teachers. Critics may also use arguments put forward by those defending the Tyler Rationale: it does not determine a rigid framework but rather suggests a general direction, motive and justification for action where the people will act creatively, using their practical knowledge (cf. Kliebard, 1995: 82–3). This might indeed be the way it works. Authoritative expert discourse in modern societies mainly functions not through censorship, limitation and repression, but rather through positivity and productivity, invitation and induction (see Bourdieu, 1990: 133–7; Foucault, 1980; Popkewitz, 1991). It is a calling rather than an order. Although the real effects of this calling on policy-making and schooling are empirical and therefore not within the scope of this article, I venture to assume that wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reform seems to have been supporting visionary, utopian and religious-like thinking on schooling rather than encouraging realistic, analytical and reflective contemplation. To put it simply and briefly, historical and sociological amnesia in terms of schooling seems to have fostered formal credibility and consistency in educational reforms, and at the same time remoteness from the classroom reality.

Co nclusions I have attempted to outline the change in official Finnish school discourse since the late 1960s, and have identified four new features. First, the mission of the school turned away from moulding the school life of a group of pupils as it became committed to responding to the individual learning needs and abilities of every pupil. This process is called individualization here. Second, the knowledge base of teaching has changed.The multiple, pragmatic and ideological combination of ethical, psychological, pedagogical, historical and content knowledge determined by the Finnish National Board of Education has been

Firmly bolted into the air 19

replaced with a new conception wherein didactically oriented educational science forms the knowledge base for the teacher’s work. I call this the disciplinization of teaching knowledge. The third shift concerns the rational orientation of discourse: the former value-rational orientation has changed to goal rationalization, whereby predetermined goals have become the basis of all educational procedures. Finally, one more change was needed to make individualization, disciplinization and goal rationalization possible and credible. I call this the decontextualization process, during which the socio-historically formed institutional context of teaching and learning in school vanished from official Finnish texts on education during the 1970s. The first two dimensions of individualization and disciplinization could be seen as forming the utopian part of the discourse, whereas goal rationalization and decontextualization comprise the rational part. It could be said that these four dimensions describe what one must say in order to be taken as a serious speaker in the state-guaranteed discursive field of education. As a tacit principle of discourse, wishful rationalism represents an attempt to determine how one has to speak to be considered an authoritative expert in the field. As such, it constitutes a genuine ‘truth discourse’ that appears self-evident, is taken for granted, and has its effects on what is seen as interesting, important and essential in thinking and discussing, as well as in planning and implementing educational reforms. Reading reform discourse with this wishful rationalism in mind seems to reveal something about the inner dynamics of science-legitimated and stateguaranteed expert discourse in which the educational reforms appear to be final and decisive, but at the same time deficient and insufficient. Distaste for the serious analysis of educational reality and the urge to create ambitious aims tend to convert visions into impotent wishes, and rationality into narrowminded technicism. What could otherwise constitute a fruitful dialectic cycle between credo and ratio turns out to be a vicious circle in which the failure of one innovation is followed by a different innovation rather than reflection on the reasons for the failure of the first one and efforts to make it work (see Wilson & Davis, 1994). To add to its manifold potential effects, the rationalism of hopes may seduce us into forgetting that our historical experience reveals that the focus should be on how schools change reforms rather than on the converse (Tyack & Cuban, 1995: 60–84). Generalizing the above conclusions beyond the Finnish case would indeed be a grave mistake, even decontextualizing the wishful rationalism.The question is empirical, as is the answer. I am reminded of C. Wright Mills’ (1959) classic proposal: scrutinizing an extreme case may make certain general features more transparent. There is also every reason to assume that one could speak about a ‘world culture of mass education’, with striking similarities in terms of institutional, organizational, legitimating and ontological features (e.g. Meyer et al., 1992b). It is therefore hard to believe that bolting educational reforms firmly into the air is just a Finnish disease.

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Notes 1 Simola, H. (1998) Firmly bolted into the air: wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reforms? Teachers College Record, 99(4): 731–57 [lightly edited]. 2 The 1970s was a period when belief in the omnipotence of central planning was at its height in Finland, not only in education policy but also in public policy in general (cf. Antikainen, 1990; Torstendahl, 1991). 3 In accordance with the Finnish state-centred and centralized administrative tradition, national curricula are comprehensively documented in volumes ranging from 300 to 700 pages. The era of decentralization began in the 1994 curriculum, which has only 111 pages. The 1952 curriculum is ambitiously defined as ‘a series of those experiences that the pupil meets in his or her school work’ (CUR, 1952: 40). The definition of the 1970 curriculum is even more comprehensive: it must comprise ‘explanations of all the most important measures and procedures by which the school pursues the aims that are imposed for education . . . the curriculum includes all those learning experiences that the pupils have under the guidance of the school, also outside the classrooms’ (CUR, 1970: 56). The same conceptions also applied to teacher training curricular documents. The committee reports of 1922, 1945, 1947, 1952, 1960, 1965, 1968 and 1975, in fact, veered towards the model curricula for teacher training. 4 Further citing Bourdieu (1990: 136), the official discourse accomplishes three important functions: ‘First, it performs a diagnostic; that is, an act of cognition which enforces recognition and which, quite often, tends to affirm what a person or a thing is and what it is universally for every possible person . . . In the second place, the administrative discourse, via directives, orders, prescriptions, and so forth, says what people have to do, given what they are. Third, it says what people really have done, as in authorized accounts, such as police reports. In each case, it imposes a point of view, that of the institution, by way, especially, of questionnaires, official forms and the like. This point of view is set up as a legitimate point of view, as a point of view which everyone has to recognize at least within the limits of a given society.’ 5 For a more detailed methodological discussion, see Simola (1995), Simola et al. (1998) and Heikkinen et al. (1999). 6 The term ‘didactics’ is a very problematic one in English. It is used here in the meaning recognized in the educational literature of Germany and the Nordic countries, where it closely approaches the general concept of pedagogy. Kansanen (1995: 359) states that ‘in UK as well as in US frameworks for education, the subarea of didactics seems to be lacking . . . Much of its content belongs to educational psychology.’ Didactic problems define an independent sub-discipline of education in Germany and the Nordic countries. The scope of didactics covers that of AngloAmerican curriculum theory and educational psychology, also including much philosophical and theoretical thinking (ibid.). Anglo-American literature contains just a few texts concerning the relation between didactics and curriculum theory (see the articles on the German Didaktik tradition in the Journal of Curriculum Studies, Vol. 27, issues 1 and 4, 1995). 7 For negative connotations or direct criticism, see CR (1968: 50), CR (1969: 43), CUR (1970: 52, 57, 120, 160–1, 165), CR (1975: 23, 32, 39, 82–3), CR (1989: 38, 46–7), CUR (1994: 3–4). The only exception is the Practising School Committee Report (CR, 1972: 23), which was also exceptional in another respect: two of its contributors were classroom teachers. 8 ‘Subject discipline’ here means the subjects taught at comprehensive school, i.e. mathematics, history and the mother tongue, for example.

Firmly bolted into the air 21

9 One could fruitfully analyse this change by capitalizing on Max Weber’s (1947: 115–18) classic formulation of two different rational orientations in social action. He made a distinction between Zweckrationalität and Wertrationalität. The first, often referred to as ‘instrumental rationality’, is characterized by conscious reasoning in which action is viewed as a means to achieve particular ends, and is oriented to anticipated and calculable consequences (Murphy, 1988: 199). The second orientation mode, usually translated as ‘value-rationality’, is characterized by a belief in the intrinsic value of the action regardless of its consequences, and is oriented to a conscious set of values. In Weber’s (1947: 117) own words, an action is zweckrational when it is ‘rationally oriented to a system of discrete individual ends . . . [and] when the end, the means, and the secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed. This involves rational consideration of alternative means to the [particular] end, of the relations of [that] end to other prospective results of employment of any given means, and finally of the relative importance of different possible ends.’ Further, wertrational action is based on ‘a conscious belief in the absolute value of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behaviour, entirely for its own sake and independently of any prospects of external success’. Using this Weberian distinction I call the zweckrational orientation goal-rational and the wertrational orientation value-rational, thus emphasizing the distinctions between the conceptions of the ends-in-view of both: in the former the ends are the goals to be reached. The goals not only give a direction for action – as do values in the value-rational orientation – their realization must also be evaluated. This implies the need to operationalize the ends, and also to change them into the means for further goals. 10 Choosing an English term here is very difficult.The terms purpose, end (or end-inview), aim, goal and objective are conventionally used in the educational literature, often synonymously with the exception of purpose, the most abstract term (e.g. Saylor & Alexander, 1966: 123). According to Robert I. Wise (1976: 280–1), ‘Educationalists have seen fit, however, to maintain a technical distinction between aims and goals on the one hand and objectives on the other.’ The distinction has been maintained with respect to the differences in level of specificity and time span to which the terms refer. I finally decided to use the term goal here for several reasons. First, it refers to a desirable consequence that is, in some reasonable sense, attainable and realistic, whereas the terms end and aim have the nuance of being something so general and long-term that they might give only a direction for action. Second, a goal refers to a more general and long-term consequence than an objective.Third, an objective does not fit here because it refers to a specific case in the behaviourist paradigm, Benjamin S. Bloom’s taxonomy of objectives, and management by objectives (MBO), both of which are only parts, albeit important parts, of something characterized here as goal rationalization. Finally, ‘goal’ is a useful term here because of its ‘middle range’, or intermediate character, on the levels of both specificity and time span. The Finnish language poses no problem, and the research material is naturally in Finnish: tavoite is a general term that may refer equally well to an end, an aim or a goal, as well as to an objective (see Kansanen & Uusikylä, 1982: 33–8). 11 The centralized goal system has been replaced by a centralized assessment system, as Lundgren (1991: 62) notes ironically: ‘What begins as a change in steering systems directed towards a distribution of policy making from the centre to the periphery turns out to be a strengthening of a central steering system.’ 12 The author of the book, Professor Erkki Lahdes, was one of the main architects of the reforms in both the comprehensive school and teacher education. The influential head of the Ministry of Education described him as ‘the leading representative

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of educational scientists’ in Finland (Numminen, 1987: 257). When he introduced this model, Lahdes referred to the determinants of curriculum planning presented by J. Galen Saylor and William M. Alexander (1966). However, this did not coincide very well with the model of Saylor and Alexander because they refer to ‘the learners that attend the school and the social group that establishes the school for educative purposes’ as ‘the two fundamental determinants of the educative process’ (Saylor & Alexander, 1966: 123) on the one hand, and to five ‘curriculum determinants . . . that constitute the basic considerations which guide curriculum planners’ on the other: pupils, social values, structures and demands, the functions and aims of the school, the nature of knowledge and the process of learning (ibid.: 7).

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Hirvi, V. (1991) Koulutuspolitiikan suuntaa täsmennettävä [On the Direction of Educational Policy]. A statement for the media, 12 August 1991. Hlebowitsh, S. (1992) Amid behavioural and behaviouristic objectives: reappraising appraisals of the Tyler Rationale. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 24(6): 533–47. Hoetker, J. & Ahlbrandt, W.J. (1969) The persistence of recitation. American Educational Research Journal, 6(2): 145–67. Hovi, R., Kivinen, O., & Rinne, R. (1989) Komitealaitos, koulutusmietinnöt ja koulutuspolitiikan oikeutus [The Institution of the Government Committee and the Justification of Educational Policy in Committee Reports]. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, C73. Turku: University of Turku. Hunter, I. (1994) Rethinking the School: Subjectivity, Bureaucracy, Criticism. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Illich, I.D. (1986 [1973]) Deschooling Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Jóhannesson, I.A. (1993) Principles of legitimation in educational discourse in Iceland and the production of progress. Journal of Education Policy, 8(4): 339–51. Kansanen, P. (1995) The Deutsche Didaktik. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 27(4): 347–52. Kansanen, P. & Uusikylä, K. (1982) Opetussuunnitelman toteutuminen: tulokset ja johtopäätökset. [The Realization of the Curriculum: The Results and the Conclusions]. Helsinki: Kouluhallitus. Kokeilu- ja tutkimustoimisto. Tutkimusselosteita 41. Kivinen, O. (1988) Koulutuksen järjestelmäkehitys. Peruskoulutus ja valtiollinen kouludoktriini Suomessa 1800- ja 1900-luvuilla [The Systematization of Education: Basic Education and the State School Doctrine in Finland in the 19th and 20th Centuries]. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Scripta Lingua Fennica Edita C67. Turku: University of Turku. Kliebard, H. (1975) The Tyler Rationale, in W.F. Pinar (ed.) Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan. Kliebard, H.M. (1995) The Tyler Rationale revisited. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 27(1): 81–8. Koskenniemi, M. (1944). Kansakoulun opetusoppi [Didactics for the Primary School]. Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1961) Uuden kansakoulun vaikutus Suomen kansakouluun [The Influence of the ‘New School’ on Finnish Elementary School]. Keuruu: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1966) Didaktiikan kehityslinjoja [Developmental lines of didactics], in A. Valtasaari, A. Henttonen, L. Järvi, & V. Nurmi (eds.) Kansakoulu 1866–1966 (pp. 151–72). Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1977) Peruskoulun uusi opetusoppi [The New Didactics for the Comprehensive School]. Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1986) Peruskoulun didaktiikka [Didactics for the Comprehensive School]. Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1997) Peruskoulun uusi didaktiikka [New Didactics for the Comprehensive School]. Helsinki: Otava. LeCompte, M.D. & Dworkin, A.G. (1991) Giving Up on School: Student Dropouts and Teacher Burnouts. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Leiwo, M., Kuusinen, J., Nykänen, P., & Pöyhönen, M.-R. (1987) Kielellinen vuorovaikutus opetuksessa ja oppimisessa II. Peruskoulun luokkakeskustelun määrällisiä ja laadullisia piirteitä. [Linguistic Interaction in Teaching and Learning II. Classroom Discourse and its Quantitative and Qualitative Characteristics]. Publication Series

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A, Research Report 3. Jyväskylä: Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä. Lundgren, U. (1990) Education policymaking, decentralisation and evaluation, in M. Granheim, M. Kogan, & U. Lundgren (eds.) Evaluation as Policymaking: Introducing Evaluation into a National Decentralised Educational System (pp. 23–41). London: Jessica Kingsley. Lundgren, U. (1991) Between Education and Schooling: Outlines of a Diachronic Curriculum Theory. Geelong,VIC: Deakin University Press. Madaus, G.F. & Stufflebeam, D. (eds.) (1989) Educational Evaluation: Classic Works of Ralph W.Tyler. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic. Meyer, J.W. (1986) Types of explanation in the sociology of education, in J.G. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 341–59). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Meyer, J.W., Kamens, D.H., & Benavot, A. (1992a) School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Primary Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century. Washington, DC: Falmer Press. Meyer, J.W., Ramirez, F.O., & Soysal,Y.N. (1992b) World expansion of mass education, 1870–1980. Sociology of Education, 65(2): 128–49. Miettinen, R. (1990) Koulun muuttamisen mahdollisuudesta [On the Possibility for Change in Schooling]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Mills, C.W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Murphy, R. (1988) Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Noddings, N. (1990) Feminist critiques in the professions, in C.B. Cazden (ed.) Review of Research in Education,Vol. 16 (pp. 393–424).Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Numminen, J. (1987) Yliopistokysymys [The University Question]. Helsinki: Otava. Popkewitz,T.S. (1988) Educational reform: rhetoric, ritual and social interest. Educational Theory, 38(1): 77–93. Popkewitz, T.S. (1991) A Political Sociology of Educational Reform: Power/Knowledge in Teaching,Teacher Education, and Research. New York: Teachers College Press. Popkewitz, T.S. (1994) Professionalization in teaching and teacher education: some notes on its history, ideology, and potential. Teaching and Teacher Education, 10(1): 1–14. Popkewitz, T.S. & Simola, H. (1996) Professionalization, academic discourses and changing patterns of power, in H. Simola & T.S. Popkewitz (eds.) Professionalization and Education (pp. 6–27). Research Report 169. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Rinne, R. (1987) Has somebody hidden the curriculum? The curriculum as a point of intersection between the utopia of civic society and the state control, in P. Malinen & P. Kansanen (eds.) Research Frames of the Finnish Curriculum. Research Report 53. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Sarason, S.B. (1991) The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before it’s Too Late? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Saylor, J.G. & Alexander, W.M. (1966) Curriculum Planning for Modern Schools. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Simola, H. (1993a) Educational science, the state and teachers: forming the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland, in T.S. Popkewitz (ed.) Changing Patterns

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of Power: Social Regulation and Teacher Education Reform in Eight Countries (pp. 161–210). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Simola, H. (1993b) Professionalism and rationalism of hopes: outlining a theoretical approach for a study on educational discourse. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 3(2): 173–92. Simola, H. (1995) Paljon vartijat. Suomalainen kansanopettaja valtiollisessa kouludiskurssissa 1860-luvulta 1990-luvulle [The Guards of Plenty: The Finnish Schoolteacher in Educational State Discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s]. Research Report 137. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Simola, H. (1998) Constructing a school-free pedagogy: decontextualization of Finnish state educational discourse. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 30(3): 339–56. Simola, H., Heikkinen, S., & Silvonen, J. (1998) Catalog of possibilities: Foucaultian history of truth and education research, in T.S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (eds.) Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education (pp. 64–90). New York: Teachers College Press. Simola, H., Kivinen, O., & Rinne, R. (1997) Didactic closure: professionalization and pedagogic knowledge in Finnish teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(8): 877–891. Sirotnik, K.A. (1983) What you see is what you get – consistency, persistency, and mediocrity in classrooms. Harvard Educational Review, 53(1): 16–31. Svingby, G. (1979) Från läroplanspoesi till klassrumverklighet [From Curricular Poetry to the Classroom Reality]. Malmö: Liber. Temmes, A. (1990) Tavoitejohtamisesta tulosajatteluun, byrokratiasta tuloskulttuuriin: johtamisen ja kulttuurin muutoksista valtionhallinnossa [From Management by Objectives to Accountability, from Bureaucracy to a Culture of Results]. Helsinki:VAPK-kustannus. Torstendahl, R. (1991) Bureaucratisation in Northwestern Europe, 1880–1985: Domination and Governance. London: Routledge. Toulmin, S. (1990) Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. New York: The Free Press. Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995) Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tyler, R.W. (1950) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Weber, M. (1947) The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Glencoe, IL: Free Press/ Falcon’s Wing Press. Weick, K. (1976) Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1): 1–19. Wilson, K. & Daviss, B. (1994) Redesigning Education. New York: Henry Holt. Wise, R.I. (1976) The use of objectives in curriculum planning: a critique of planning by objectives. Curriculum Theory Network, 5(4): 280–9.

Chapter 2

Abdication of the education state? Constructing a new system of reason in Finnish schooling 1 with R. Rinne & J. Kivirauma

This chapter examines the connections between two phenomena in education related to each other: new governance and new mechanisms of social exclusion and inclusion. Here, new governance means managerialist tendencies in education policy, which have been conceptualized in social theory as ‘governance without government’, ‘governance at a distance’ and ‘a new way of making education policies from behind’ (see, for example, Dale, 1999; Lindblad & Popkewitz, 1999, 2000; Rose, 1999). New mechanisms of social inclusion/exclusion refer to practices of introducing market mechanisms into the field of public education (see, for example, Guthrie, 1997; Popkewitz et al., 1999; Taylor et al., 1997). This is a concluding paper of the EGSIE Project.2 The Finnish material we use in the analysis is extensive. Apart from national statistical data, we include education policy texts, interviews with educational actors on the national, municipal and school levels, and a survey of pupils. The theoretical approach emphasizes the notions of narrative, myth and discourse, our aim being to underline the fact that the social world is, in an important sense, also constructed by and through the way we speak about it. The stories created by the social actors construct ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1991) and shape people into knowing, understanding and experiencing themselves as members of a community or citizens of a nation. It is in these discourses, especially those that are authoritative, that the subjects of the field are constituted: Who is the successful pupil and who is at risk of being excluded? Who is a model teacher and who is thought to have problems in his/her teaching work? Our objective here is to reconstruct the discursive elements and their relations that constitute something that has been characterized as a ‘system of reason’ (Popkewitz, 1998, 2000), by which we mean a peculiar combination of overlapping, scaffolding and amalgamating of ideas. This system of reason is nevertheless whole in its dispersion, and could be seen as constituting national discursive practices that are essential not only for speaking and thinking but also acting in the educational field in terms of social inclusion/exclusion.

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Context: restructuring through the economic crisis It is impossible to speak about recent societal changes in Finland without referring to the economic crisis of the 1990s. A number of coincident problems beset the country.The international economic recession, an overheated national economy, the collapse of trade with the Soviet Union, the unsuccessful and badly timed inauguration of monetary policy and, finally, a grave bank crisis, all coincided to bring about an economic crash comparable only with the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to many indicators, the Finnish crisis was the sharpest and deepest among the advanced liberal countries facing economic problems during the 1990s. In the period 1990–93, gross national product (GNP) fell 7 per cent, overall unemployment increased from 3 to 16 per cent, and unemployment among 15–24 year olds increased from zero to 34 per cent (Statistics Finland, 2000). To understand societal developments in Finland, however, it is important to acknowledge the astonishing emergence of the country from deep economic recession during the second half of the decade. According to the statistics, GNP rose by as much as 8 per cent a year. Annual productivity in enterprises grew by 4 per cent, and total productivity by 5 per cent in the years 1993–97 (Tilastokeskus, 1998). Since the turn of the century, the Finnish export industry, especially the vital ICT sector, seems to be running better than ever, and the economy is well balanced.The country has gained EU membership (1995) and has entered the first stage of European monetary union (2002). According to various authorities, Finland seems to have effected a successful change of pace as part of the new globalized economy. One could and should, of course, ask about the price of this economic success story. It is worth noting that the political initiative shifted clearly to the right as early as 1987 when the conservative National Coalition Party achieved leading governmental responsibility after a long period on the sidelines. What is peculiar, however, is that the governments had been very broadly based up to the early 2000s. Both ‘rainbow governments’ (Lipponen I, 1995–1999 and Lipponen II, 1999–2003), headed by a Social Democrat, included all the main parties from the Right to the Left except the former agrarian Centre Party. Thus, ironically enough, one could conclude without any exaggeration that the political shift to the right in Finland was in accord with a wide societal consensus, at least among the political elite (see Kantola & Kananen, 2013). The creditors and the payers in this political and economic shift appear classically clear. Groups of the very rich and the very poor have made their appearance felt in the country. Differences in income between them are on the increase, the gap being wider than in the 1970s (see Blom et al., 1996; Jakku-Sihvonen & Lindström, 1996; Karvonen et al., 2000; Ruotsalainen, 2000). According to one review (Lehtonen & Aho, 2000), every year between 1991 and 1999, cuts in the state economy repeatedly and without exception were directed at the least privileged and politically powerless sectors of

Abdication of the education state? 29

the population: the poor, the sick and the unemployed. Education as a whole coped better, but this hides the fact that creditors are to be found among the ‘elite’ sectors in the field. In particular, some parts of university and polytechnic education and training benefited whereas resources for comprehensive schooling decreased by 13 per cent, and for vocational training by 20 per cent between 1990 and 1994 (OPH, 1996). These figures are exceptional and extreme among the OECD countries, even among those facing high educational cuts (cf. OECD, 1996, 2000). Immediately after the crisis, many social policy researchers (e.g. Haataja, 1998; Heikkilä & Uusitalo, 1997; Hjerppe et al., 1999) hurried to celebrate the fact that the Finnish social security system had stood up well in hard times. It was nevertheless noted (e.g. Kosunen, 1997) that the depression seemed to continue to affect social security and health, although it was over as far as the economy was concerned. Only in the 2000s has it been admitted that the Finnish welfare state seems essentially to have changed – that it is no longer what it was before the crisis (Lehtonen & Aho, 2000). It increasingly seems that the restructuring of the Finnish welfare state was already on the agenda during the late 1980s. The depression created a general ‘consciousness of crisis’ that made even the most radical cuts and savings understandable and easier to accept without any political resistance. In other words, the crisis could well be seen as heaven’s gift to those aiming to reconstruct the Finnish welfare state and to make it a model for the new globalized market economy outlined by international actors such as the OECD, the EU and the World Bank. The essential political shift to the right was also realized in Finnish educational policy-making during the late 1980s and the 1990s. Most of the non-right politicians we interviewed (Rinne et al., 2002) considered this invasion of the Right as one of the most influential factors behind the prevailing educational policy. The same interviewees were ready to admit, however, that the reform had been carried out with surprisingly extensive political consensus and a feeling that there was no real alternative. The Social Democratic ex-chair of the National Board of Education characterized the realized policy pertinently as a ‘hidden education policy’, which brought a big change through small and gradual steps and shifts concerning funding, the basis of curriculum planning and how school districts were defined, none of which was never considered explicitly. It is also curious that none of the politicians we interviewed who supported the new education policy of the 1990s was willing to characterize it as ‘neoliberal’. Rather, they used paraphrases such as ‘the renaissance of individualism’, ‘the ethos of freedom and free choice’, ‘market-based thinking’, ‘liberal optimism’, ‘dynamism’ and ‘educational policy that emphasizes the student’s responsibility’ (ibid.). It is important to articulate the Finnish change in educational politics through all of these elements: a shift in small steps to the right, although with consensus and without using open neoliberalist vocabulary. A list of the most essential changes in Finnish education politics at the primary and secondary

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levels during the 1990s include, at minimum, the following four: free school choice, building up the extensive evaluation system, budget cuts and moving the decision-making power to the organizer of schooling, that is to the municipalities.

Competition: a globalized world without alternatives There is a general belief that state- and school-level actors, in both spoken and written statements, embraced the view of a world without alternatives. The changes in the world appear as the commanding source for transformation that will lead to change in schools, too. Hence, the changes in the Finnish educational system are seen as ‘just part of global social change’. ‘The economic competitiveness’ of Finland is considered the most important thing: ‘the connection between economic growth and employment is clearer than before’, and the Nokia example will pave the way for education, too. It is global competition and demands for economic success that require education to produce a better quality of learning and top skills.There is a strong emphasis on the connection between education and success at work, and thus on its connection with the success of the whole nation. As the former head of the National Board of Education stated, ‘tightened global competition in economics demands this’ (Rinne et al., 2002). It is more than curious that most of the political actors interviewed did not regard the changes in education politics as conscious decisions, but rather as reactions to changing conditions in society and in the world. This was nicely stated by the Chairman of the Union of Principals thus: ‘I feel that this trend has been quite, quite a lot automatic.’ Even those most critical of the developments stated: ‘We cannot stop the increase in competition as such.’ Following this logic of unavoidable and inevitable change, it was typical that some interviewees saw it as a clear consequence of the prevailing system: a logical development, a next step forward in the comprehensive school system rather than its dismantlement (ibid). At the school level, a similar consensus is to be found in the general articulation of the 1990s as a story of progress with just a few sceptical, even cynical comments (Simola & Hakala, 2001; Simola, 2002). Part of this fatalistic story of a world without alternatives is the perception of a general acceptance of the risk to the equality that was formerly at the very heart of Finnish education policy. The possibilty of increasing inequality and segregation was seen as real by most of the policy actors interviewed. However, Finnish public education that is free of charge was not considered to be in danger. In a way, it was unanimously considered a civil right that could not be abandoned. Nevertheless, the higher one goes in the educational system, the higher the proportion of the costs parents are expected to bear. It was also claimed that business life was taking a more active part in the educational

Abdication of the education state? 31

market, and that with the increasing emphasis on individual choice and local colour, the importance of evaluation would grow significantly. It is fair to conclude that none of the actors interviewed articulated any clear alternative to the education policy of the 1990s.There seems to be nothing rare in this kind of fatalistic view of diminishing elbow room for the nation-state in the era of globalization. Let us cite our Australian colleagues here at length: The globalisation of the economy has, to some extent, reduced the capacity of individual states to consider their own distinctive policy options . . . Market activities are now considered the core building blocks of the very formation of the state itself.The state is thus no longer expected to mediate the excesses of the market, but rather provide conditions that support its operations. In recent years this mode of thinking has become the dominant way of conceptualising the state. Some politicians have gone so far as to suggest that we have no option but to accept the imperatives of globalisation in thinking about state activities. In this sense, globalisation has become an ideology, proselytised by international organisations such as the OECD and the World Bank in assertions of the need for less interventionist and leaner government and for freer forms of economic competition between nations. (Taylor et al., 1997: 78–9) This seems to be precisely what Cerny meant in 1990 when he introduced the concept of the ‘competition state’: this highlighted the dominance of market ideologies that imply the need for smaller and more efficient government and a market economy that is less directed by the state (Cerny, 1990; cf. Taylor et al., 1997: 82).

Educational clientele: free and rational choices One expression of the political change, according to many of the state-level interviewees, was the emphasis on the value of the individual, as opposed to the former idea of collective equality. The value of the individual as a social actor has increased, which is also evident in educational policy. The informants felt that highly educated citizens would no longer stand for governance from above, but would insist on making educational decisions themselves. Furthermore, global competition and the demand for economic success require education to produce better quality learning and top skills. If it is to be successful among global economic competition, a nation has to gather its best forces, even though this may violate the old policy of equality. The changes in educational policy that occurred in the 1990s were thus connected quite strongly with changes in the international environment. Many of the actors thought that increasing international competition called for increased investment in the education of the gifted. A ‘free-the-spearheads’ mode of speech has become established in Finnish school administration, according to which comprehensive schooling

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has done its job, in other words raised the educational level of the nation, and now it is time to ‘invest in the best’. The role of parents is rarely mentioned in the official school discourse of the 1980s, and when it is, it is mostly only as supporting the work to be done at school. In contrast, pupils and parents came to be seen as active and rational subjects in the 1990s, characterized as ‘users of services’, and organizing education was seen as ‘the production of services that take into account citizens’ needs’ (Rinne et al., 2002). It is suggested that one of the main purposes of evaluation is to ‘increase parents’ and pupils’ knowledge of the quality of education and to improve the conditions for making different kinds of choices’ (Koivukoski, 1997; Seppänen, 2006). This concerns the way marketization discourse has changed how we speak about schooling. Therefore, we think that one of the most significant innovations of the 1990s was the kind of market individualism that was brought into educational discourse. In Finland, this seems to be crystallized in the extensive and fluent use of the concept of the client. What, then, are the most essential qualities of this client? From the above analysis, it seems that they include free and rational choice-making in an educational marketplace. Australian researchers refer here to the ‘new market version of human capital theory, which regarded higher levels of education as necessary for the workforce to cope with rapid technological change’ (Taylor et al., 1997: 95). It seems clear that in Finland, too, the former pivotal ideas of educational equality have been replaced with a kind of ‘market magic’. Education is marketized, at least in the discourse, and made into a product for which the demand may direct the supply in liberated markets. The competitive choices of clients and sponsors influence the activities of educational markets with no strong intervention from the paternalistic state (Lauder & Hughes, 1999: 4–20). The key to understanding this trend in educational policy, which still emphasizes the meaning of rearing new, human capital, is to be found in the breakthrough of the so-called theory of rational choice. This kind of thinking can easily be criticized because it looks at children and families as if they were free selectors in free markets, and thus totally neglects the social determination of educational choice. The most probable winners of the educational policy game played on the ground of rational choice will be business life as well as descendants of the middle classes and educated professionals. The losers will be the segments of the population who have socially, economically and culturally weaker starting points (cf. Aho & Vehviläinen, 1997; Chubb & Moe, 1990; Karvonen et al., 2000; Lauder & Hughes, 1999; Whitty et al., 1998).

Corporate managerialism: ‘the death of centralized planning’ Belief in central governance came to an end during the 1980s in Finland. The heavily centralized planning and steering system in education, which had been

Abdication of the education state? 33

under construction in Finland for decades and reached its peak during the comprehensive school reforms, was abandoned in 1988 through a government resolution to reform the entire management of the state. The former sector-based planning systems, with their highly detailed and focused steering regulations, were all cast aside. Among the many defects of the former system that were listed were its diversity, its unsuitable timetables, the poor implementation of state planning, the bureaucracy, the waste of time, and the futility of detailed and inflexible regulations (Kivinen et al., 1995; Simola et al., 1999). The changes in educational policy were part of the more extensive changes in Finnish state policy, according to our interviewees (Rinne et al., 2002). Measures to increase local decision-making power had been enacted in other sectors of social policy as well. The reorganization of the relationship between central government and municipal financing, the so-called state subsidy system, was a primary factor in initiating these changes in 1993. In addition to changing the basis for calculating government contributions, it gave local authorities great freedom to decide how to use funds. Whereas the funds local treasuries used to receive from the state were clearly earmarked for each administrative sector, municipalities were now allowed to divide the money within their area of jurisdiction as they saw fit. The city or municipality might decide, for example, to lay off teachers in order to save on education expenses. Behind this massive decentralization and deregulation seemed to be the collapse of the previously almost unshakeable belief in centralized planning and untenable centralized governance. Among our interviewees there was a sense of unanimity and a strong belief in the superiority of local decision-making versus the older, highly centralized Finnish model. Expertise, it was stated, rests in the municipalities and in the schools, and it can only be brought out if decision-making power remains on the local level.The interviewees connected the dissolution of norms and realization of the proximity principle to the economic depression. Without shifting decision-making to the local level, it would not have been possible to require the municipalities to cut down spending as much as they have done.At the same time, the central administration was able to transfer difficult decisions to the municipal level. On the local level this change meant an almost complete break with the earlier government guidance and inspection system, or as one administrator responsible for the educational functions of a large municipality stated in unequivocal terms: ‘To put it bluntly, the government officials no longer bother us.’ (ibid.) The remarks of the state-level interviewees indicated a strong belief in the superiority of local decision-making. In this new education governance discourse, evaluation is seen as an essential tool for quality development. Whereas it was previously believed that educational goals could be achieved by sticking to strict norms, the conviction arose in the 1990s that the only way forward was to set national core goals, to evaluate achievements in the form of subsequent results, and to direct educational institutions to compete with one another. In this rhetoric, the

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Finnish ‘Planning State’ had become the ‘Evaluative State’, attempting to practise educational policy through governing by results. According to the Secretary General of the Ministry of Education, evaluation is seen as a pivotal element in the new steering system because it ‘replaces the tasks of the old normative steering, control and inspection system’ (Hirvi, 1996: 93). Corporate managerialism has been defined as a ‘rational output-oriented, plan-based and management-led view of organisational reform’ (Sinclair, 1989: 389). Weller and Lewis (1989: 1) claim that ‘managing for results’ best encapsulates the essence of it. According to Yateman (1987: 341), corporate managerialism is about ‘doing more with less’ (efficiency), ‘focusing on outcomes and results’ (effectiveness) and ‘managing change better’. In the very same spirit, the OECD (1995: 8) mentions the creation of a ‘performanceoriented’ and ‘less centralized’ public sector with the following characteristics: first, a focus on results, efficiency and effectiveness; second, decentralized management environments; third, flexibility to explore alternatives to the public provision of services; fourth, the establishment of productivity targets and a competitive environment within public-sector organizations; and finally, the strengthening of strategic capacities at the centre of the organization (Taylor et al., 1997: 84). It is not an overstatement to suggest that the idea of managerialism meant a revolutionary change in Finnish state educational discourse. An office holder in EU relations in the National Board of Education characterized the Finnish interpretation of managerialism as ‘a distinction made between policy making and implementation, greater latitude allowed to local-level agents and an emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness’ (Laukkanen, 1997: 406–7). According to this statement, the local-level actors, basically the municipality but also the school if allowed by the municipal decision-makers, seem to be free not only to make their decisions but also to come up with ideas of what issues are at stake in education. By definition, the local level is definitely an autonomous actor in the educational field. This might be one dimension of the new governance, but it also means so-called ‘steering at a distance’ in that the usual hierarchical forms of control are rejected in favour of some institutional autonomy and self-steering, and replaced, for example, with ‘ex-post corrections’ made on the basis of the ‘quality of outcomes’. In an extreme case, however, this kind of ‘autonomy’ has more to do with managing reduced funding at the school site than anything else: ‘asking those being cut to cut themselves’ (Ball, 1993: 77; see Taylor et al., 1997: 84).

Market-liberalist egalitarianism: transmutation of the social-democratic discourse Many politicians described the policy as liberalist or used other terms that fit this description, including ‘liberal optimism’, ‘market-based thinking’, ‘dynamism’ or ‘the renaissance of individuality’. On the other hand,

Abdication of the education state? 35

neoliberalism does not appeal to the ears of modern educational policy-makers, as one interviewee pointed out, nor do those in the central administration use the term. The respondents characterized the Finnish education policy of the 1990s as ‘liberal’, ‘market-orientated’ and ‘emphasizing individuality’, in which ‘freedom of choice’ and ‘quality’ are the central features. Despite all the changes of the 1990s, social-democratic egalitarian discourse has not entirely lost its status in Finnish political rhetoric. When asked, all the state-level actors we interviewed affirmed that they had been alerted to the increasing inequality, segregation and exclusion that loomed on the horizon due to the recent educational-policy and societal developments.The basic view, however, was that the risk was worth taking, that the pros clearly outweighed the cons. Besides, during the 1990s there were still some practical extensions of educational coverage in the spirit of social-democratic egalitarianism. For example, the right to free pre-school education was finally confirmed by law, and all handicapped and immigrant children were integrated into compulsory education more inclusively than earlier. Several of the state-level actors wondered whether the dismantling of norms and the increase in local decision-making power had occurred too quickly. Some feared a need, in the future, to return to the old system in which central government would at least partially allocate funds for specific purposes and thus ensure the equal availability of services to its citizens throughout the country. One problem that was frequently brought up was regional inequality. The relaxation of government restrictions on the use of funds produces marked deficits for some municipalities.The increase in local decision-making power in matters concerning the curriculum, on the other hand, has meant that some can offer a greater variety of courses whereas others cannot. Some interviewees concluded that the result is a return to the situation the comprehensive school system was designed to eliminate: a person’s place of birth is starting to have a strong influence on his or her future educational career. In the view of some state-level respondents, if, as a consequence of the new educational policy, there appeared to be too much diversification of schools and education, there would have to be powerful intervention from above. The means referred to for doing this included a return to ‘earmarked funding’, giving more resources to schools on the local level, and developing the monitoring and evaluation system on the district level. It has been said that belief in schooling is unusually strong in Finland (see, for example, Antikainen, 1990). We found evidence of this in our interviews with school-level actors (Simola & Hakala, 2001; Simola, 2002). In connection to this there was quite a clear indication of an ethos of caring and social responsibility on the school level. Many Finnish school-level actors spoke in favour of strong safety nets, systematic and comprehensive support and early diagnosis. It could be claimed that this voice was slightly stronger on this level than on the state level, where the lack of an alternative was so evident. By way of contrast, the story from the schools was one of confidence in the modern

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and rational welfare state discourse, declaring a belief in solving problems by well-known means, systematically and more effectively. The same narrative continued as the school-level professionals illustrated their new expertise: innovations involving collective, cooperative and teamwork in multi-professional networking settings were among the things they mentioned. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that social-democratic egalitarian discourse still lives in the field of education. What is equally important is that this voice seems to be connected to professionals who are mostly cemented in their tenured posts that are very difficult to get rid of, regardless of the prevailing policy on the national or municipal level. The professional interests of these groups are, of course, well served by the narratives of seriously ill children and degenerated families (Simola & Hakala, 2001; Simola, 2002). Because of their strong position, special teachers, for example, may stand behind integration and inclusion ideology on the school level. They might also tend to defend traditional and separate school and classroom forms of special education, referring here to the strong introduction of special teaching in comprehensive schools that is very flexible in its application (cf. Blom et al., 1996; Simola et al., 1997).

The pupil: rational choice-makers and insolvent clients in the marketplace In the spirit of dominant constructivism, the curricular texts since 1994 view each pupil as an active individual whose world of experience provides different starting points for learning new things. Therefore, the extent to which the teacher is able to direct learning depends on this individual history of pupil experience. It is emphasized that pupils may also proceed individually according to their own study programme. The aim should be towards giving them better and better opportunities to study the things in which they are actively interested. It is also clearly stated that each teacher is responsible for developing the pupil’s ability to make independent decisions in a world with more freedom of choice and in a school system that is increasingly flexible. These provisions should promote the ability to survive in a world in which there is more and more uncertainty and in which the individual is subjected to all kinds of choices and sudden changes. In sum, the pupil as constructed in the Finnish state educational discourse of the 1990s is a lone rider looking for a suitable niche in an uncertain world. This individual sits alone, separated from his/her school friends and compared with other pupils through constant assessment and competition rather than through equality, fraternity and cooperation (Rinne et al., 2000; Simola, 2000; see also Koski & Nummenmaa, 1995). Various interviewees at the state level emphasized the fact that the essential division between those who will succeed in the future and those who will fail will depend on the choices made by those involved. Pupils and their families will need to have a clear vision to be future-conscious and to persevere.

Abdication of the education state? 37

Successful students, or those who make the correct choices, have an active family to guide them. Those families who have the skills, capital and resources needed to play the school game, and a vision of what they want, will succeed in terms of schooling. Since the choice now rests with the family, and later with the students themselves, one informant ironically said that the career plans of a child could now be made starting from day care.The same informant pointed out that families from the upper social strata were the most active users of this right to choose. All the material available for this study refers to the tougher competition and the strengthening divisions in Finnish society during the 1990s. A strong discourse of ‘vanishing parenthood’ and ‘family degeneration’, strengthened by the deep economic depression, outlines the context in which the young are to find their routes towards adulthood. The gap between those dedicated to success and those doomed to failure appears to be wider than before. On the one hand there are the ‘haves’ – pupils and their families who are willing and able to calculate, invest and choose – and on the other are the ‘have-nots’ – pupils and their families with more pressing immediate concerns than being a consumer of education (cf. Gewirtz et al., 1995). At one end of this continuum are immigrant pupils, divided into categories according to the ease with which they integrate into Finnish society. These pupils could be characterized as invisible (Simola & Hakala, 2001; Simola, 2002): no one speaks about them with ease, no one seems to know what to do with them, and no one makes any positive references to their existence in the Finnish school system. All this is well known in the international literature on educational choice and devolution. Another side of the parent-choice coin is, of course, the opportunity given to some schools to choose their pupils.There is very little evidence to suggest that parental choice does not lead towards some kind of ‘creamskimming’: ‘schools seeking students who are “able”, “gifted”, “motivated and committed” and middle class (. . .) [t]he growth of the “girl-friendliness” of coeducational schools (. . .) favouring those clients who will bring the greatest return for the least investment’ (Whitty et al., 1998: 116–17). On the other hand, no school is eager to see in its intake those ‘“less able” or having special education needs, especially emotional and behavioural difficulties, as well as children from working-class backgrounds and boys, unless they also have some of the more desirable attributes’ (ibid.). Proponents of the metaphor of the educational marketplace maintain silence on the fact that marketplaces are created purely for those possessing the valid currency: people who are not able and willing to pay do not feature.This means that, by definition, people who do not fit into the classification of the life-long learner are excluded from this educational consumption. An ‘insolvent client’ is no longer a client. In such a marketplace, individuals who do not meet the criterion of a constant thirst for ‘education’ and ‘development’, outlined first of all in the lifelong learning discourse, are not consumers or clients, but rather thieves and

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beggars. They undoubtedly belong in the marketplace, but do not count among those by and for whom it was created.This leads on to the dominant narrative of family degeneration: in the end, it is down to the numerous families that are no longer able to create a good enough ‘learning history’, a motivational basis or the right attitude for life-long learning. Thus, the school concentrating on the individual may also find itself in the trap of individualism: it lacks the resources to go beyond the limits of personal experiences and histories.

The teacher: an individual-centred learning professional in a mass institution The Finnish teacher constructed in the state educational discourse of the 1990s ought to be an omnipotent professional combining four dimensions in one and the same person: he or she should be a personal mentor, a truthseeking pastor, a visible score-keeper and a science-legitimated learning professional (Simola, 2000). Policy-maker interviewees describe the tasks of the teacher as very demanding. They make it clear that the responsibility for educating the child, as opposed to merely teaching, in Finland has shifted partly from the family to the school system. This was seen as a result of the many social problems that weaken the family’s capability and possibility to give fulltime attention to child education. It was seen as necessary that the teacher was able to take on some of the parents’ role, too. With this shift in responsibility there is a need for teachers who can command authority, and a yearning for those who consider their profession a calling. Although the teachers were amazingly able and willing to use ‘politically correct’ expressions in the interviews, (Simola & Hakala, 2001; Simola, 2002) one cannot ignore the signs of exhaustion, frustration and pessimism. Notwithstanding the predominant consensus of progress, many interviewees continued their talk of change with a series of ambivalent thoughts: there had indeed been positive developments, but these had their price and a reverse side. One of the strongest narratives here is the story of increasing pressure and a more hectic pace in the teacher’s work. Many interviewees saw this as the basic change of the 1990s. One reason for this was the moving of the planning workload from national and local bureaucrats to schools and teachers. There was an inherent criticism of the move in focus of the teacher’s job from the ‘real’ work in the classroom, benefiting the pupils, to a kind of public performance. Another clear criticism concerned the constant flow of topdown reforms and demands to develop projects while everyday work and grassroots action have not been valued or emphasized. Many interviewees considered that the main innovations of the 1990s, related to the new school-based curriculum, were mainly lip service, quasi-innovations that had little effect on the everyday level of schooling. There was also strong criticism of and scepticism about the realization and conception of teamwork and the call for ‘real cooperation’.

Abdication of the education state? 39

In our material, both written and spoken (Simola, 2002) the teacher as constructed comprises two deeply contradictory elements. On the one hand, there is the omnipotent model facilitator in the individualistic ‘learning centre’, and on the other, the exhausted and burnt-out real teacher in the obligatory, examination-bound mass schooling system. On the sunny side, they seem to be committed to the individualistic but egalitarian aims of the education policy. Here are also the most promising sources of professional self-identity and image, not to mention career advancement opportunities through embracing innovation and upgrading academic qualifications. On the darker side, however, the teachers are bound to everyday reality where masses of pupils are running through their obligatory schooling to be examined and given a pass to the gates of fully authorized adulthood and citizenship. The silent wisdoms of survival and power are much more vital here than the wishful and well-intentioned humanist vision of what the school ought to be. It is evident that a clearly unrealistic and over-ambitious load was placed on teachers’ shoulders in the state educational discourse of the 1990s. What is essential here is that the teachers seem collectively to accept this task.When we asked them if some of the tasks given to the school were impossible to fulfil, we received just a few clearly affirmative answers. This might be partly due to professional pride and self-image. There is some empirical evidence that teachers tend to accept the idea of reform as part of their professional self-identity even if they are, at the same time, sceptical about the aims and principles of the innovations (Popkewitz, 1991). This acceptance may, at least in Finland, reflect the academic training they (especially primary school teachers) received as the price of their allegiance to the state in the political battle for comprehensive schooling during the 1960s and 1970s (Rinne, 1988; Simola, 1995). I have claimed elsewhere (Simola, 1995, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c) that since the 1970s, school as a socio-historical, cultural and institutional context of education has disappeared from state educational discourse in Finland. It is this ‘decontextualization’ in particular that has made it so easy for the powers that be to make promises and plans for individual-centred treatment, and to speak about the school as an individualized ‘learning centre’. This ‘wishful rationalism’ has led one reformer after another to overestimate the power of psychology-pedagogy-based innovations and to underestimate the power of continuity cemented in systems of time, space and rituals, in a kind of ‘grammar of schooling’ (cf. Rinne et al., 1984; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). The material used in this study provides evidence of persistency in this silence on the socio-historical context of schooling. None of the education policy texts or interviews with politicians refers explicitly to the fact that all the pedagogical and other tasks and obligations are to be realized in an institutional context that includes an obligation to the ‘clientele’, the mass nature of the teaching, and the teachers’ responsibility for examination. As far as the issue at stake here is concerned, i.e. under this heading individualization and in this chapter social exclusion and inclusion, these dimensions are not at all trivial.

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Thus it is fair to ask what might be the consequences and effects of this decontextualizing silence on the individualization of educational discourse and, further, on the discourse of social exclusion and inclusion. There is also international evidence that educational restructuring following which the steering body and the implementation body are clearly separate has tended to create situations in which ‘the teacher is increasingly an absent presence in the discourses of education policy, an object rather than a subject of discourse’, as has been reported from Australia (Taylor et al., 1997: 98) and the UK (Ball, 1994: 50). Some policy-maker interviewees noted the role of the teachers’ trade union seems to have changed radically during the period under discussion. While it has been considered to have had a central role in educational policy at the national level in the past, its activities and significance have recently focused more and more on protecting teachers’ interests on the local level.

Towards a new system of reason: abdication of the education state or just shifting responsibilities? This final section concerns what happens when the discursive elements outlined above come together. The questioning goes like this: What is the specific discursive formation like when the Finnish myths of competition, corporate managerialism, an educational clientele and social democracy meet rational choice-makers and invisible clients (pupils), and individual-centred learning professionals in a mass institution (teachers)? Some of the essential silences mentioned above are also part of the game. There are, of course, many other contextual factors to be taken into account in tracing the effects of this discursive formation characterized in the heading of this chapter as a new system of reason in educational discourse. We venture to conclude that a historical shift of responsibilities in the national education system is taking place. According to the international literature, the hard core of corporate managerialism is separation between those who conceptualize the policy (elite policy-makers and interest groups) and those who execute or implement it (operatives – in other words, teachers). The head offices tend to develop a tighter and narrower policy focus and an emphasis on strategic planning. What has been devolved to schools is the capacity to manage reduced budgets and to ‘self-manage’ within the frameworks set by head offices (see, for example, Smyth, 1993: 3; Taylor et al., 1997: 83–4, 98). The late Finnish Secretary General of the Ministry of Education provides clear evidence for this in his platform booklet on education policy of the 1990s (Hirvi, 1996: 92, 108). He crystallizes the new results-oriented system as divided into two tiers: first, there is a ‘steering unit’ that states the goals and addresses the resources, and then there is a ‘results unit’ that ‘produces the services and products’. In the ‘results negotiations’ between these two parties, ‘resources will be distributed, action lines and evaluation will be agreed’. Hirvi then goes on

Abdication of the education state? 41

to claim that ‘(d)etailed norms have been replaced by agreement (. . .), the command structure and, finally, the old control and inspection have been replaced by discussions of goals and results’ (Hirvi, 1996: 92). It sounds simple and clear, but what is not problematized at all is the character of the negotiations: the steering unit seems to have all the power, whereas the results unit must finally yield to the agreement. This is so because, as Hirvi states later (1996: 108), ‘the (results) goals for education and the principles of resource distribution [are] set out at the national level’. Thus the steering unit speaks in the name of nationally stated goals and principles of resource distribution, whereas the role of the results unit tends to be limited to exposition of how to realize the goals with the given resources. As reported in Australia, for example, this separation or dualism may lead to a situation in which [t]he reforms have been accompanied by talk of self-governing, selfmanaging or self-determining schools, but all within centrally determined policy frameworks and accountability requirements, as well as reduced resources. Such a situation possibly leaves central bureaucrats with power without responsibility and school ‘managers’ with responsibility without power. (Taylor et al., 1997: 84) It is exactly this kind of problem that arose (e.g. Heikkinen & Lumijärvi, 1997; Möttönen, 1998; Summa, 1995) between the Finnish central state administration and local units.The nature of the negotiations was the target of much criticism, as were the setting of objectives and the assessment of whether these objectives had been achieved. On the local level, the vast majority saw the negotiations not as genuine, but rather as imposed, in a sense (Heikkinen & Lumijärvi, 1997: 259, 261). One could then ask, and with good reason, if there is any essential difference between the old top-down ordering and commanding à la ‘management by norms’ and the new, again, top-down ordering and commanding à la ‘management by results’? Indeed there is, according to the international literature. One essential difference lies in conceptualizations such as ‘shifting the blame down the line’ and ‘moving the responsibility’ (see, for example, Dale, 1999; Smyth, 1993; Whitty et al., 1998). There are various good reasons why governments seem to be so willing to shift responsibilities down to the grassroots level, to the ‘managers’.The most obvious one is the pressure from the ‘competition state’ to reduce the cost of the public sector.Without exception the interviewees in this research, whether at the state, the municipal or the school level, seemed to believe in decreasing, or at best, maintaining the budget for public education. It is no wonder, then, that one conclusion of Finnish researchers on management by results in the public sector was that the nearer the central administration, the more easily and favourably the results-agreement system has been received, and,

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in contrast, the nearer the organizer of the services, the bigger the problems (Heikkinen & Lumijärvi, 1997: 259). Geoff Whitty and his colleagues (1998: 44) argue that the market-driven and managerialist arrangements in public education and other public services that have been introduced in one form or another in various countries since the 1980s can be seen as new ways of tackling the problems of accumulation and legitimation facing the state in situations in which the traditional Keynesian welfare state is no longer deemed viable. According to Dale (1999), the state has a permanent set of problems that derive from the needs of capital. The restructuring of education could be seen as a state response to these shifting politico-economic demands in supporting capital accumulation, guaranteeing its continued expansion and legitimating the capitalist mode of production. In a context of rising unemployment, increasing gaps between the rich and the poor, and growing difficulties in maintaining social cohesion and solidarity, it is not inconceivable for a market-driven education policy to be seen as the dismantling of state responsibility. It could also be seen as selective withdrawal from areas in which the state has difficulty succeeding, such as equality of opportunities (see, for example, Green, 1997: 184; Smyth, 1993: 2; Whitty et al., 1998: 45). We are not claiming that the Finnish Government has abdicated responsibility for education in general. On the contrary, the well-functioning and high-quality educational system is described in the political rhetoric as one of the main sources of national prosperity, success and welfare. There is no reason to be suspicious of the sincerity of the statement made by a National Board of Education official when he assured the nation that the division between policy-making and implementation has not meant that the central government would have ceased to concern itself with the implementation of education, for the authorities still gather evaluative data on how the targets set to the educational system are being achieved. The system is run by revising national education policies when necessary, but also by various means that directly affect local-level operations. Such means of directly influencing local agents vary from one country to another; in Finland they are mainly based on steering by information. (Laukkanen, 1997: 406–7) What we are saying, however, is that some parts of education seem to be in danger in a similar way as remote post offices, small schools and unprofitable sleeping cars on Finnish railways.They are not viable when evaluated by simple economic indicators such as effectiveness, efficiency and profitability, and they must go. By this we mean that there seems to be a new kind of rationality that is becoming more and more authoritative and extensive, more and more acceptable and taken for granted, a new system of reason, indeed. In this discourse, the consumerist notion of the right of individuals to choose in an

Abdication of the education state? 43

unconstrained market seems reasonable, whereas demands for citizens’ rights in education are inconceivable. The key to understanding the trend in an educational policy that still emphasizes the meaning of raising new, human capital lies in the breakthrough of the theory of rational choice. Individual actors, and individual and parental choice in education, are seen as elements of the natural rationality of human activity. People make the educational choices that are most reasonable for them in the framework in which they must be made (Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997: 275). The prizes in this new educational policy in a ‘Winner-Take-All-Society’, which encourages competitiveness between individuals, will apparently accumulate more than ever at the top.The playing of the educational game may start to resemble the sports and entertainment industries in which the most important goal is the success of the top stars and key players. Huge numbers of individuals stepping out onto this kind of educational field are fighting for these glittering prizes, but only a few will win them. The majority will be out of the running. This could easily result in an enormous waste of money, resources and time as masses of people go through longer educational tubes and tougher competition on labour markets and in life. There is no rainbow’s end, only risk-prone, insecure labour markets and never-ending competition (Lauder & Hughes, 1999: 24–5; cf. Frank & Cook, 1995).

Notes 1 Simola, H., Rinne, R. & Kivirauma, J. (2002) Abdication of the education state or just shifting responsibilities? The appearance of a new system of reason in constructing educational governance and social exclusion/inclusion in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 46(3): 237–46. 2 An eight-country research project Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion in Europe (EGSIE) was conducted with the financial support of the European Commission, Directorate-General Research, the Targeted Socio-Economic Programme (1998–2000).

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Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J. & Simola, H. (2002) Shoots of revisionist education policy or just slow readjustment? The Finnish case of educational reconstruction. Journal of Education Policy, 17(6): 643–58. Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruotsalainen, P. (2000) Kotitalouksien toimeentulo ja tuloerot 1990-luvulla. Hyvinvointikatsaus Special Issue, 2000: 2–9. Seppänen, P. (2006) Kouluvalintapolitiikka perusopetuksessa – Suomalaiskaupunkien koulumarkkinat kansainvälisessä valossa [School-Choice Policy in Comprehensive Schooling – School Markets of Finnish Cities in the International Perspective]. Research in Educational Sciences 26. Turku: Finnish Educational Research Association. Simola, H. (1995) Paljon vartijat. Suomalainen kansanopettaja valtiollisessa kouludiskurssissa 1860-luvulta 1990-luvulle [The Guards of Plenty: The Finnish Schoolteacher in State Educational Discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s]. Opettajankoulutuslaitos. Tutkimuksia 137. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Simola, H. (1998a) Constructing a school-free pedagogy: decontextualization of Finnish state educational discourse. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 30(3): 339–56. Simola, H. (1998b) Firmly bolted into the air: wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reforms? Teachers College Record, 99(4): 731–57. [Reprinted in Ball, S.J. (ed.) (2000) The Sociology of Education. London: Routledge.] Simola, H. (1998c) Decontextualizing teachers’ knowledge: Finnish didactics and teacher education curricula during the 1980s and the 1990s. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 42(4): 325–38. Simola, H. (2000) Construction of the Finnish teacher in the National Steering Documents of the 1990s: tasks and qualifications, in K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen & H. Simola, Restructuring Nordic Teacher: An Analysis of Policy Texts from Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway (pp. 108–86). Report No. 10. Oslo: Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo. Simola, H. (2002) ‘It’s progress but . . .’: Finnish teachers talking about their changing work, in K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen & H. Simola (eds.) Restructuring Nordic Teachers: Analyses of Interviews with Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Teachers (pp. 49–70). Report No. 3. Oslo: Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo. Simola, H. & Hakala, K. (2001) School professionals talk about educational change – interviews with Finnish school level actors on educational governance and social inclusion/exclusion, in S. Lindblad & T.S. Popkewitz (eds.) Listening to Education Actors on Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion (pp. 103–32). Uppsala Reports on Education 37. Uppsala: Department of Education, University of Uppsala. Simola, H., Kivinen, O. & Rinne, R. (1997) Didactic closure: professionalization and pedagogic knowledge in Finnish teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(8): 877–91. Simola, H., Rinne, R. & Kivirauma, J. (1999) Educational systems and recent reforms in Finland, in S. Lindblad & T.S. Popkewitz (eds.) Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion: National Cases of Educational Systems and Recent Reforms. Uppsala Reports on Education 34. Uppsala: Department of Education, Uppsala University. Sinclair, A. (1989) Public sector culture managerialism or multiculturalism? Australian Journal of Public Administration, 48(4): 382–97.

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Smyth, J. (1993) Introduction, in J. Smyth, A Socially Critical View of the Self-managed School. London: Falmer Press. Statistics Finland (2000) Oppilaitostilastot 1997–1999 [Statistics of Education 1997–1999]. Helsinki: Statistics Finland. Summa, H. (1995) Tulosohjaus hallinnan rationaliteettina ja tekniikkoina. Arvioita tulosohjauksen valtionhallintoon jättämistä jäljistä [Steering by results as rationality and techniques of governance] Hallintotutkimus, 14(2): 143–51. Taylor, S., Rizvi, F., Lingard, B. & Henry, M. (1997) Educational Policy and the Politics of Change. London: Routledge. Tilastokeskus (1998) Tuottavuuskatsaus [Review of Productivity 1998]. Helsinki: Tilastokeskus. Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995) Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weller, P. & Lewis, C. (1989) Corporate management: background and dilemmas, in G. Davis, P. Weller & C. Lewis (eds.) Corporate Management in Australian Government (pp. 1–16). Melbourne,VIC: Macmillan. Whitty, G., Power, S. & Halpin, D. (1998) Devolution and Choice in Education: The School, the State and the Market. Buckingham: Open University Press. Yateman, A. (1987) Concept of public management and the Australian state in the 1980’s. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 46(4): 339–53.

Chapter 3

Quality assurance and evaluation in Finnish compulsory schooling A national model or just unintended effects of radical decentralization? 1 with R. Rinne, J.Varjo, J. Kauko & H. Pitkänen

Quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) has been a vital element in the educational discourse of the Finnish state since the early 1990s. Changes in education were linked to a general wave of administrative reform in which decentralization and deregulation restructured the Finnish public sector. The breakthrough coincided with the deep economic recession of 1991–1993. Two interconnected ‘big ideas’ behind the reform were management by results and evaluation. The introduction of management by results has been recognized as one of the most significant administrative reforms in the Finnish (Temmes & Kiviniemi, 1997: 38) and European public sectors (Neave & van Vught, 1991: 245). Evaluation as a social practice and a form of knowledge is not new in education. What is new, however, is its central position and strong interrelationship with quality issues in the new mode of governance, often characterized as New Public Management. It has been described in terms of ‘major global turmoil’, involving the re-organization of education globally, nationally, locally and institutionally (Brennan & Shah, 2000: 13; Morley, 2003: 170). Quality assurance and evaluation is hard to define precisely. At the time of the audit explosion, evaluation as a concept incorporated many related concepts such as planning, quality development and assurance, inspection and auditing. We advance two arguments here: first, some concepts may be more important in terms of what they do rather than what they mean (Rose, 1999), and second, the fuzzy, amoebic and scrappy character of evaluation may reflect its presence rather than its problem (Power, 1997). This chapter traces recent QAE developments in Finnish comprehensive schooling, and addresses the question of whether it is possible to discern a Finnish model.We thereby link the Finnish case to more general and theoretical issues concerning how best to understand relations between the trans-national, the national and the local. Is it still appropriate to speak about national models in the era of the ‘Global Educational Reform Movement’ (GERM)?2 It is clear that strong convergence cannot easily be defended. It is more reasonable to emphasize, as Green (1997: 23) does, that the ‘deep-seated

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historical traditions institutionalised in the structures, practices and institutional cultures are specific to each nation’, and therefore that the ‘new’ is always entangled with and re-articulated through the ‘old’ (Simola, 2009). In this sense, it is useful to conceptualize relations between the trans-national, the national and the local in terms of distinctions between travelling and embedded policies (Ozga & Jones, 2006), or even through vernacular or indigenous globalization (Ozga & Lingard, 2007). At the same time, however, we should also articulate these relations in terms such as commonality within difference (Marques Cardoso, 1998; cited by Ball, 2001), exogenous trends (Sweeting & Morris, 1993) and paradigm convergence (Ball, 1998). Indeed, we could see policy technologies, techniques and mechanisms as productive of a Foucauldian dispositif, machinery that is characterized as inviting, tempting and persuasive but also coercive, hegemonic and dominant (Simola, 2009). Therefore, it is a question of understanding trans-national, national and local as complex relationality rather than in relationships of domination or submission. Moreover, as Ball (2001: xxxi) notes, even if commonalities are identified, ‘they need to be interrogated not simply in terms of their structural variety but also in terms of their inter-relationships and the resulting political and subjective effects over time’. To shed some light on these questions, we examine a set of data that includes Finnish governmental documents (laws, decrees, education-development plans, national reports to the OECD and the EU, among others) and reports, as well as material on evaluation commissioned or published by national authorities, mainly the National Board of Education and the Ministry of Education, from the 1970s until the present. Further material for this article was gathered in eleven interviews (Nos. 1–11) conducted in April 2007 with key Finnish actors in education policy, including heads and major actors from the National Board of Education (Opetushallitus), the Ministry of Education, the Finnish Education Evaluation Council (Koulutuksen arviointineuvosto), the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (Kuntaliitto) and the Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (Elinkeinoelämän keskusliitto).

Finnish education policy as a case Finland is a curious case in terms of relations between the trans-national, the national and the local in education policy. Because of its geopolitical position after the Second World War, its specific relations with the neighbouring USSR framed all of its international cooperation until the collapse of the socialist camp in Europe in the early 1990s. The most important international cooperative directions for official Finnish education policy, realized by the Ministry of Education and the National Board of Education, were first, towards other Nordic countries and second, towards UNESCO. Third, Finland joined the OECD only in 1969, the last of the Nordic countries to do so, and it

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took several years before Finnish participation grew beyond diplomatic representation. The OECD became the most influential international organization for education policy during the early 1990s, and Finland has been represented on the governing board of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) since 1989. Finnish representation on the Education Committee started a little later. The first official specializing in education was sent to the Finnish Mission at the OECD in Paris in 1990. This was a serious investment, and only one or two other member countries sent a permanent special expert in education to their national mission (Niukko, 2006: 106–7). As Rinne et al. (2004: 50–1) show, Finland was an early adopter of OECD influences: it has participated in a great number of country and thematic reviews since the early 1990s after a break following its first country review in 1981. According to Rinne and his colleagues (2004), Finland has been a ‘model OECD pupil’ since the 1990s. This characterization comes near to praise from the OECD side, although there may be an ironic ring to it: ‘Finland has a record of heeding the advice of past OECD education reviews. The review seems likely to continue that pattern helping to shape the future of a dynamic education sector’ (OECD, 2003; cited by Rinne et al., 2004). Finland is a country with a long and strong tradition of good and detailed statistics, which also cover the field of education.These statistics and the indicator systems were developed and organized primarily for national, top-down follow-up rather than for any international comparisons. Kauko and Varjo (2008), for example, emphasize the role of central administration as the main target group for the production of information since the 1970s when the new comprehensive school system was implemented. Despite the administrative emphasis, Finland also took part in international evaluations at an early stage. It joined the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) at the very beginning, in 1958, and since then the Institute for Educational Research (KTL) in Jyväskylä has been a collaborator in most of IEA’s comparative research projects. One could argue here that before the spectacle of PISA, international comparisons were of academic rather than administrative interest in Finland. It was largely accepted that the new comprehensive school system had to be implemented with strong top-down governance. One of our interviewees (No. 1) described the birth of the comprehensive school as a ‘reform implementation based on multi-level planning’, and another (No. 10) characterized the educational legislation of those years as a ‘handbook of good school keeping’, which had a tendency to swell. The piles of circulars, statutes and decrees mushroomed during the 1970s and 1980s, and all aimed at regulating schooling practices from curriculum implementation to schoolyard construction. Furubo et al. (2002: 21) suggest in their International Atlas of Evaluation that strong internal and external pressures resulted in the diffusion of evaluation to Finland. However, on the international level Finland is part of the second or

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even third evaluation wave, having been subjected to high external and internal pressure in the 2000s. A significant side effect of the comprehensive school reform was the amalgamation of the two existing teachers’ unions into the Trade Union of Education in Finland (OAJ) in 1973. The OAJ has become the strongest union in the influential ‘umbrella organization’ AKAVA, which includes all the unions of the academic professions. On the international level, it could be considered one of the strongest teachers’ unions in the world.3 An exceptional feature here is that the majority of its members are comprehensive school teachers. Some researchers are of the opinion that no important educational decision has been made without collaboration with the OAJ since the late 1970s (see, for example, Lehtisalo & Raivola, 1986: 176; Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988: 234). The Finnish teachers’ union seems to hold a certain power of veto over Finland’s educational policy, and this has had and still has a strong effect, especially on the comprehensive school level (cf. Simola, 1993). In summary, it could be said that the central function of evaluation in the 1970s and 1980s was top-down control in a corporatist mode. Its developing function in the arena of schooling, however, was explicitly enshrined in the Development Plan for Comprehensive Schools, published in the early years of the 1980s (NBE, 1982). The plan explicitly states that evaluation should be engaged more widely on the school level as a way to develop school-level action, which in turn should facilitate achievement of the goals set for education.

The era of decentralization and deregulation: management by results, QAE and the great recession As a result of many interrelated social, political and administrative events and changes during the late 1980s and 1990s, discourses of quality and evaluation gained ground in the field of Finnish educational policy and governance. Changes affecting the growing interest in evaluation policies were realized in the context of the changing political atmosphere and the deep economic recession of 1991–1993. The 1987 Right–Left coalition of Prime Minister Harri Holkeri aimed to bring about an essential change in Finnish politics. For the first time since the Second World War, the conservative Coalition Party now held the post of Prime Minister and its two decades in opposition were over. As far as education was concerned, this marked the end of the deal between the Central and Social Democratic parties in the Ministry of Education and the National Board of Education (NBE), and the right wing was set to dominate official school discourse for more than a decade. The post of Minister of Education also fell to right-wing ministerial candidates. Marking the beginning of the new era, Prime Minister Holkeri gave an epoch-making address in 1987 in which he

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redefined the central concept of Finnish education policy: people were different in terms of capacity, and equality meant the right of every pupil to receive education that corresponded to his/her prerequisites and expectations rather than the delivery of universal Bildung regardless of sociocultural background. It is clear that this definition refers to equity rather than to equality.4 In line with the changing times, a conservative replaced the socialdemocratic head of the NBE in 1991. According to the declaration of the new era, the Proposal of the NBE for a Structural Programme of Education (NBE, 1992), the development of the Finnish comprehensive school system would be characterized by concepts such as ‘decentralized and consumer-based accountability’, ‘result-based public funding’ and ‘self-responsible individual learning’. The changes in education were part of a general wave of decentralization and deregulation in Finland. The process started in the late 1980s with the Free Municipality Experiment (Law 718/1988), which gave local authorities in certain municipalities more freedom to make independent decisions about their own organization. Finally, The Act on Central Government Transfers to Local Government (Law 707/1992) and the Local Government Act (Law 365/1995) radically increased local autonomy and strengthened the judicial position of the municipalities. The new state subsidy system granted funding according to annual calculations per pupil, lesson or other unit, and liberated the municipalities from the previous detailed ‘ear-markedmoney’ budgeting towards free lump-sum budgeting for schooling. In general, the municipal practices of budgeting, accounting and auditing with regard to administration and finances were changed to accord with the doctrine of New Public Management (see, for example, Haveri, 2002: 36–8). This new administrative landscape differed radically from the old one. Management by results and information steering and evaluation replaced norm setting (Laukkanen, 1994, 1997, 1998). The NBE Director General Vilho Hirvi put it in a nutshell: Genuine management by results in the educational sector has two fundamental elements: first, a steering unit that sets the goals and gives resources, and second, a level that creates the products and services, i.e., the schools. (. . .) The National Curriculum Framework sets the central objectives for learning and education that define the teaching objectives for obligatory, optional and elective subjects, etc. The municipal or school-based curriculum, in turn, expresses how these objectives are to be achieved. (. . .) The evaluation of efficiency means assessing how the main idea and the main objectives in the area in question have been realised. (Hirvi, 1991) By the early 1990s, all traditional forms of control over the teacher’s work, such as school inspections, a detailed national curriculum, officially approved

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teaching materials, weekly timetables based on the subjects taught, and class diaries in which the teacher had to record what was taught each hour, had been eliminated. The only remaining control mechanism was the set minimum numbers of lessons to be taught in each subject in each school. The inspectorate, traditionally hated by teachers and municipalities, opposed the idea of local freedom (No. 6). All these traditional means of control were to be replaced with evaluation, realized by municipal and national authorities. The recession of 1991–1993 marked the deepest peacetime economic crisis in Finland. Unemployment in Finland was the third highest in Europe after Ireland and Spain. It is widely accepted that without shifting decisionmaking to the local level, the municipalities could not have been required to cut down spending as much as they did during the recession. Thus the new decentralized and deregulated mode of governance was moulded into the economic principles of savings and cutbacks.

Two rivals in the field: the NBE and the AFLRA The radical decentralization and deregulation brought about two competing coalitions in the national QAE field of compulsory schooling, neither of which have real normative power over the municipalities and schools. On the one hand, the Ministry of Education and the NBE see QAE from the perspective of the education system and the relevant legislation, whereas the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA) and the Ministry of the Interior – often together with the Ministry of Finance – see it in terms of municipal service production and legislation. Both of these coalitions have attempted to assume the role of determining the discourse of evaluation in the context of education. Three of the interviewees (Nos. 3, 5 and 10) independently described a QAE system in which the NBE has no contact with the municipalities but deals directly with schools and teachers, whereas AFLRA works with the municipalities and principals. AFLRA (2006: 18, 23) has also taken the stand that all evaluative actions in the field of education implemented in its municipal organizations should be planned in cooperation with the providers of education, which mostly means the municipality, and not with schools or teachers. It sees all evaluative action implemented in the municipality in the light of municipal autonomy and municipal education policy. It also interprets the Basic Education Act as giving the right and duty to participate in educational evaluation to the municipality but not to schools or teachers (see, for example, AFLRA, 2006: 2). The NBE’s dual status as a central agency with administrative duties, and an expert body on evaluation, started to provoke criticism, which made room for one more actor in the field of evaluation. The two coalitions focused on the principal question of the autonomy of the proposed Finnish Education Evaluation Council (FEEC). Should it be administratively integrated into the

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NBE or would the Institute for Educational Research (KTL) in Jyväskylä be a better host? The result was a notably loose network of evaluators, with undefined authority, set up in 2003: ‘For the purpose of external evaluation, there shall be a separate Education Evaluation Council attached to the Ministry of Education to organize activities in a network with universities, the National Board of Education and other evaluation experts’ (Law 32/2003, §21). These two coalitions have been launching training courses, publishing literature and devising models for their target groups since the early 1990s. AFLRA’s first publication, Quality Challenge: Public Government Needs Quality Thinking (1993), which was authorized by the Ministry of Finance, introduced concepts such as the ISO 9000 standards, and criteria for Quality Awards, auditing and benchmarking for the public sector. The association also discussed Total Quality Management, the Balanced Scorecard, the Quality Matrix and the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model in its later publications. The main argument was that all evaluation implemented on the municipal level should be seen first and foremost as a tool of municipal management and as part of the political processes and decision-making in the municipality. The external evaluations directed towards the schools should also be organized in cooperation with municipal authorities and not directly with schools and teachers. As far as the NBE was concerned, the curriculum and its development were at the core of QAE. The 2004 National Framework Curriculum (NBE, 2004), for example, was strongly based on the idea of evaluation: whereas the word ‘education’ is referred to 79 times, ‘evaluation’ appears almost five times as often (380) – more than once on every page. Since the 1990s, many national institutional actors have attempted to push through evaluation in educational and governing discourses. Summing up the administrative reforms of the 1990s, however, the evaluation group for educational administration in Finland state: One of the most serious institutional issues in our educational system is the unsatisfactory relation between the State and the municipalities. (. . .) The decentralisation level of the educational administration in Finland is one of the highest in Europe, according to the information of the OECD. (Temmes et al., 2002: 129, 92; emphasis in original) At the same time, a European Commission study on the evaluation of schools providing compulsory education in Europe states that Finland is one of the few European countries – the others are Italy and Norway – in which there is no direct control from the national to the school level (EURYDICE, 2004).

Local implementation of QAE In a curious and ambitious publication, three ex-officials of the NBE attempted to find explanations for Finnish success in recent education surveys such as

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PISA. They call the new period of education policy in Finland since the early 1990s ‘the era of trust’ (Aho et al., 2006: 12). We observed in interviews we conducted with state-level politicians in the late 1990s (Rinne et al., 2002; Simola et al., 2002) unanimity and a strong belief in the superiority of local decision-making. According to the interviewees, expertise rested in the municipalities and in the schools, and could only be drawn upon if the decisionmaking power was on the local level. This was a remarkable contrast to the international discourse on neo-liberal education – whereas in many countries the motives inspiring market-driven accountability policies appeared to be based on distrust, trust motivated the same ideology in Finland. One should not overstate the rhetoric of trust, however. The basic idea was clearly expressed by the late Secretary General of the Ministry of Education: evaluation is a pivotal element in the new steering system since it ‘replaces the tasks of the old normative steering, control and inspection system’ (Hirvi, 1996: 93). The first attempt to apply a strong evaluation system came to light in the last draft of the Curriculum Framework of 1994, which included a detailed Structural Model of Evaluation emphasizing effectiveness, efficiency and financial accountability, summed up in 33 issues to be evaluated. This was dropped from the final version, however (Simola, 1995: 297). The Framework for Evaluating Educational Outcomes (NBE, 1995) was published a year later. It is a rather loose model for a national evaluation system analysing selected ‘evaluation objects’, again using the concepts of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The change in regime of the 1990s is tangibly present in the framework – or at least in the rhetoric: the three E’s are the cornerstones of the New Public Management doctrine (e.g. Lähdesmäki, 2003: 65–9). In accordance with the decentralizing and deregulating administrative reforms, however, the Framework for Evaluating Educational Outcomes has no legal power and became merely a set of recommendations addressed to all education providers. As part of its information management, the NBE published a multitude of texts characterized as ‘inspirational material’ (virikemateriaali), especially with regard to evaluation. The essential role of evaluation was legitimized in the Basic Education Act of 1999 (Law 628/1998). A statutory system was considered necessary in the move from norm setting to the control and evaluation of outcomes. The new purpose of evaluation is ‘to support the development of education and improve conditions of learning’. Guided by the Ministry of Education, the NBE has decided on the means by which to accomplish evaluation procedures. The organizers (mainly the municipalities) are obligated to evaluate the education they provide and to submit to external evaluations of their operations. Moreover, as a common but vaguely articulated norm, the results should be made public: ‘The main results of evaluations shall be published’ (Law 628/1998, §21). As one concrete element of the new evaluative control, the NBE published ‘The Criteria for Graduating Evaluation in Basic Education’ (NBE, 1999). These criteria define exactly what ‘good level’ student performance is in all

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subjects at comprehensive school, and thus form a rather firm basis for the marks given in the school-leaving certificate. The introduction refers to the need for equality in evaluation that serves as a basis for placement in subsequent education. The same kinds of criteria were published for early and middlestage evaluation in the 2004 Framework Curriculum (NBE, 2004). In fact, this could be seen as the only direct and normative evaluative mechanism reaching the classroom level. Given that all these QAE proposals are directive rather than obligatory, it is no wonder that their implementation on the municipal level varies widely. One of the key factors affecting the implementation of any state-level reforms in Finland is the curious and rare structure of the municipalities. They vary widely in size, ranging from Helsinki with its half a million inhabitants to Sottunga in Åland, with 117 inhabitants. Consequently, there are very many of them – as many as 415 in 2002, and still 320 following the amalgamation campaign in 2012. The NBE conducted two surveys, in 2000 (Rajanen, 2000) and 2005 (Löfström et al., 2005), of QAE implementation on the local level. In general, these surveys do not give a very reliable picture for two symptomatic reasons: the task of responding was given to lower-level and thus not necessarily well-informed staff in many municipalities, and many did not even reply (23 per cent in 2000 and 19 per cent in 2005). In both cases, this is indicative of the low priority given to QAE. According to the 2000 survey, only one-third of the providers of comprehensive education said they had some system of evaluation to underpin their work (Rajanen, 2000: 31). The 2005 survey contained more detailed questions on what this ‘system of evaluation’ they used was. Only a few of the respondent municipalities used the models AFLRA had been promoting for a decade, such as ISO, Quality Awards, Balanced Scorecard and EFQM, and a quarter of those using some model referred to the NBE’s Efficiency Model of Educational Evaluation. The great majority (more than 70 per cent) said they capitalized on ‘their own application of different models’, which could mean anything from a genuine new model to no evaluation whatsoever. The Committee for Education and Culture of the Finnish Parliament concluded in 2002: The evaluation work done has had very small effects at the level of municipalities and schools. Nation-level evaluations have been implemented to a creditable extent, but there is no follow-up on how these evaluations affect the actions of the evaluated and the development of the schools. (. . .) [o]nly evaluation of the biggest providers of schooling seem to be systematic enough and based on a system provided by the present model of administration. Many municipalities are at the very beginning in the evaluation of education. (CEC, 2002)

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At the same time, however, one of our interviewees (No. 6) described the chaotic situation as ‘evaluation bloat’ (arviointiähky), referring to a colleague from a Northern municipality complaining of more than 50 different evaluation tasks per year.This informant also emphasized the lack of any coordination in the field as the various actors were jealously clinging to their evaluation ‘fiefdoms’: It’s a runaway situation, there is no systematic indicator production, except those few twenty or so of the NBE gathered together for their indicator publication (. . .) there is no coordination, it’s overlapping, overlapping even in one state authority (. . .) when all these inquiries arrive at the municipalities, it does look like a chaotic evaluation bloat. We don’t have much to develop, we should have some coordinated information production here, indeed. (No. 6) The frustration seemed to be most evident among our interviewees from the NBE, whereas there appeared to be a kind of complacent acceptance of the predominant situation in AFLRA (No. 8). One NBE high official expressed the general frustration: ‘we have no jurisdiction to touch anything, we have no legislation about it, we have no mechanisms, we have nothing. This, in a nutshell, is our biggest weakness’ (No. 5). This stagnation is reflected in the report of the Working Party for the Development of Educational Evaluation (ME, 2007a), set up by the Ministry of Education: virtually the only concrete proposal is to move the FEEC office to Helsinki. There are also serious political projects on the agenda of both main coalitions: on the state level, the role of the NBE in the evaluation process is an open question, whereas AFLRA is currently engaged in another project (PARAS) for restructuring local government and services in Finland, the aim of which is essentially to reduce the number of municipalities.

Finnish QAE curiosities in basic education Our research material identifies at least four specific characteristics of national-level QAE discourse. First, on the most general level, since the middle of the 1990s official texts have repeatedly stated that evaluation is ‘for developing educational services and not an instrument of administrative control’ (e.g. ME, 1995: 55; ME, 1996: 85). The Basic Education Act of 1999 (Law 628/1998, §21) states that ‘[t]he purpose of the evaluation of education is to ensure the realisation of the purpose of this law and to support the development of education and improve the prerequisites of learning’. However, AFLRA as a municipal interest group representing all Finnish municipalities challenged this official educational ‘truth’, claiming that evaluation had been wrongly promoted to schools and teachers primarily as an instrument for

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development. Furthermore, all evaluation implemented in municipal organizations was part of municipal evaluation, which meant at the same time that it was a tool for municipal management and control (AFLRA, 2002: 23). Second, the information produced through evaluation serves administrative bodies and schools rather than the public and families. The Basic Education Act makes no reference to families, parents or customers among those interested in the evaluation of knowledge beyond the school achievements of their own children. The only incidental reference to families needing evaluative knowledge in order to make their school choices is to be found in texts such as the government’s preface. Since the mid 1990s, families and students have appeared as afterthoughts: The purpose of the evaluation system is to produce the information needed in local, regional and national development work and educational decision-making. Besides this, the evaluations should produce information on which students and their families can base their choices. (ME, 1996: 85) AFLRA (2006: 18) also challenges this, arguing that information gleaned from evaluations should respond to the needs of citizens in the municipalities, both municipal and state politics and government, and different types of authorities and employees (see also AFLRA, 2002: 23). Third, hardly any education officials or politicians have supported the provision of ranking lists or making schools transparent in competition by comparing them in terms of average performance indicators. The Education Committee of the Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (CIE) has been virtually the only body to openly back English-type league tables and national testing (CIE, 1990; 1991).The Standing Committee for Education and Culture of the Parliament of Finland stated first in 1998, and then again in 2004: The publicity concerns only the main results of evaluations. The purpose of the new Basic Education Act is not to publish information directly linked to an individual school or teacher. Publishing the evaluation results cannot in any case lead to the ranking of schools or the categorisation of schools, teachers or pupils as weak or good on unfair grounds. (CEC, 1998) Finally, Finland has not followed the Anglo-Saxon accountability movement in education, which advocates making schools and teachers accountable for learning results. The evaluation of student outcomes has traditionally been the task of each teacher and each school. The only standardized high-stakes assessment is the matriculation examination at the end of upper-secondary school before students enrol in tertiary education. Prior to this, no external national tests or examinations are required (Aho et al., 2006: 12).

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One of our interviewees (No. 10) suggested that it was, at least partly, because of the pressure from the Education Committee of the CIE to introduce national testing that in 1994 the NBE launched a series of thematic sample-based studies as an alternative to the national testing scheme. The person in charge of these studies describes them as follows: Since 1994, large national assessment projects have been carried out, suitable for use in fine-tuning the assessment methodology. The national learning result assessment system has become a central way of producing data on the effectiveness of operations. Wide-ranging evaluations of the state of education have made use of large-scale surveys, statistical data, interviews and statements given by professionals. (Jakku-Sihvonen, 2002: 3) Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the idea of large, national, sample-based learning tests was not unknown in Finland before the mid 1990s. Adding to the various international comparisons, the Institute for Educational Research conducted a large national survey in 1979 to follow up the consequences of the implementation of the new comprehensive school system. The aims of the project, which was funded mainly by the National Board of General Education, are retrospectively considered both academic and akdministrative – a typical 1970s double bind between the Institute for Educational Research and the National Board of General Education (Välijärvi et al., 2005: 220).

The Finnish QAE model Clearly, it may be a rhetorical overstatement to speak about a specific and intentional Finnish model of QAE – at least in the way Aho et al. (2006) attempt to explain Finnish success in recent PISA comparative listings. Not even the four most well-formulated proposals mentioned above were articulated in their entirety by any of the interviewees or in any of the documents as a list of guiding principles for QAE practices. Nor is it valid to conclude that what happens in Finnish QAE merely echoes the unintended effects of radical decentralization. We are not suggesting that there is no consensus in the education field on these issues: there is, in fact, a very strong tradition of consensus in Finland. The General Director of the new NBE joked about that in a parliamentary discussion in the early 1990s: ‘The parts of the addresses concerning education policy, and its importance and needs for development, could be written by one and the same person’ (Hirvi, 1996: 42). This consensus on certain QAE issues could be characterized as silent, based on antipathy rather than conscious and articulated principles. Our interviewee from the NBE compared the reception of market discourse in schools and other public services: ‘The schools and other educational institutions were clearly the stickiest of all. And the discussion was about this

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terminology, for example this issue of customership: who is the customer of the school? And that was very foreign to the school people’ (No. 5). There has been clearly articulated antipathy towards ranking lists. The informal consensus on the municipal level not to study schools in a way that would enable the results to be used to produce ranking lists is a good example here. On the national level, the sample-based thematic studies of learning achievements implemented by the NBE could be considered a genuine part of a Finnish QAE model. One could say that this innovation essentially counteracted both external and internal pressure (cf. Furubo et al., 2002: 21) in favour of national testing, and thereby also against ranking lists. Paradoxically, what may have strengthened this antipathy to ranking was the bureaucratic tradition (see, for example, Tiihonen, 2004; Pekonen, 1995, 2005) according to which administrative innovations are basically considered to support the system and its development rather than to open it up or inform citizens about it. Another Finnish peculiarity, an emphasis on development rather than control in QAE, seems to be a slightly different case. Even though there certainly are individuals among politicians and officials in the field of education who consciously support the development rather than the control approach, one might arguably claim that the hegemony of developmental QAE has been the result of a radical decentralization and deregulation policy rather than conscious political will. Put simply, development rather than control may be more easily implemented by means of inspirational material or friendly guidelines without normative power. It could thus be concluded that, until now, the antipathy towards ranking in Finland, together with a bureaucratic tradition and a developmental approach to QAE strengthened by radical municipal autonomy, have reflected two national and local embedded policies that have been rather effective in resisting a trans-national policy of testing and ranking. It is significant, however, that both of these are curious combinations of conscious, unintended and contingent factors. Therefore, it also seems evident that the articulated unity these practices constitute is rather fragile given the exogenous trends and paradigm convergence of GERM, the Global Educational Reform Movement. QAE practices have indeed recently become more expansive, academic and politicized (Linnakylä, 2002; also No. 11). In addition to the Ministry of Education, the NBE and the FEEC, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance in particular are actively cooperating with AFLRA and the Regional Administration to frame and recommend QAE activities, and are also running independent evaluations on the municipal and school levels. Recently, the future of national sample-based learning-result assessment has proved to be not so stable and taken-for-granted. On the contrary, according to one recent Director General of the NBE (Timo Lankinen, 2008–2011): The follow-up of learning results will be carried out as web-based examinations in all schools. These exams would assess what learning goals

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have been attained and give an overall diagnosis of the state of education. The aim is to give up the sample-based learning result assessments and produce evaluation information and feedback for the whole age cohort and all appropriate teachers. (ME, 2007b: 194) Nevertheless, if local passive resistance and national mute consensus do not create overt politics, they certainly give time and space for reasonable readjustment or even for the creation of a national model. A more obvious outcome, however, may be a Finnish combination of wishful thinking and stubborn resistance as displayed in the desperate battles against the overpowering enemy in the Second World War: if we stand just one more day, maybe the world will change and we will be saved. This kind of optimism is evident in the QAE field, according to one of our interviewees: Internationally, it will still go in the direction of accreditation and control for some time, and towards international comparisons.These are the trends and it won’t take too long, but still some time, though. Because nobody wants to work on something for such a long time when the results are put to no use (. . .) but this hard line, it won’t last for ever, before I retire there’ll be talk of these developing evaluations. (No. 2) Let us conclude with another quotation from the same actor. We believe it captures some of the characteristics of this quiet consensus, albeit clearly and strongly contested from above and from the outside: Just as a personal deliberation, I have a strong personal love–hate relationship with evaluation. I know it will stand you in good stead if it is used properly, but it’s rarely used properly.Therefore it’s a bit like drinking alcohol: a small amount is OK; it’s good for your system and so on. With evaluation it’s the same thing. If it’s accurately focused and accurately used, it produces knowledge that’s useful for management. (No. 2) As a comment from a QAE officer this sounds reasonable, but how it will work in a world that is saturated with evaluation is another matter – even though we know there is evidence that we could live without it.The same could be said of alcohol - and Finns are not especially known as moderate users of anything.

Notes 1 Simola, H., Rinne, R., Varjo, J., Kauko, J. & Pitkänen, H. (2009) Quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in Finnish comprehensive schooling – a national model or

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just unintended effects of radical decentralisation? Journal of Education Policy, 24(2): 163–78 [lightly edited]. 2 We are indebted to Pasi Sahlberg (2007: 263) for his witty formulation of the new education-reform orthodoxy, which ‘outlines the logic and evolution of education development as most countries adjust their education systems to respond to fit new economic realities and social challenges’. 3 OAJ members are engaged in early-childhood education, basic education, uppersecondary-school teaching, vocational training, polytechnic-level teaching, basic art education, vocational adult education, as well as university teaching. Over 95 per cent of Finnish teachers are members of OAJ. 4 As a symptom of the symbolic power of equality in Finnish educational discourse, there is no analogous concept for equity, even though it would be easy to find one (e.g. right as oikeus, justice as oikeudenmukaisuus or fairness as reiluus). The concept of equality is used in two contrasting ways. These two conceptions are connected in a curious both–and formulation in a major document published by the Educational Evaluation Council (FEEC, 2004: 15): ‘The economic and social welfare of Finnish society is based on an egalitarian public system of schooling. Its mission is to guarantee for every citizen both educational opportunities of good quality regardless of his/her sex, dwelling place, age, mother tongue and economic position and the right to tuition accordant with his/her capabilities and special needs and his/her self-development’ (emphasis added).

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FEEC (2004) Koulutuksen arvioinnin uusi suunta. Arviointiohjelma 2004–2007 [New Directions in Educational Evaluation: Evaluation Programme 2004–2007]. Koulutuksen arviointineuvoston julkaisuja 1. Furubo, J., Rist, R.C. & Sandahl, R. (2002) International Atlas of Evaluation. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Green, A. (1997) Education, Globalization and the Nation State. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Hämäläinen, K., Laukkanen, R. & Mikkola, A. (eds.) (1993) Koulun tuloksellisuuden arviointi [Evaluation of Educational Outcomes]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Haveri, A. (2002) Uusi julkisjohtaminen kunnallishallinnon reformeissa [New public management reforming municipal administration]. Hallinnon tutkimus, 21(1): 4–19. Hirvi,V. (1991) Koulutuspolitiikan suuntaa täsmennettävä [On the Direction of Educational Policy]. A statement for the media, 12 August 1991. Hirvi, V. (1996) Koulutuksen rytminvaihdos. 1990-luvun koulutuspolitiikka Suomessa [The Changing Rhythm of Education: 1990s Education Policy in Finland]. Helsinki: Otava. Jakku-Sihvonen, R. (2002) Evaluation and Outcomes in Finland: Main Results in 1995–2002. Evaluation 10/2002. Helsinki: National Board of Education. Kauko, J. & Varjo, J. (2008) Age of indicators – changes in the Finnish education policy agenda. European Educational Research Journal, 7(2): 219–31. Lähdesmäki, K. (2003) New Public Management ja julkisen sektorin uudistaminen. Tutkimus tehokkuusperiaatteesta, julkisesta yrittäjyydestä ja tulosvastuusta sekä niiden määrittelemistä valtion keskushallinnon reformeista Suomessa [New Public Management and Reforming Public-sector Management: A study of the Principles of Organizational Efficiency, Economy and Effectiveness, and Public-sector Entrepreneurship, Performance Management, and their Accountability in the Public-sector-management Reforms in Finland from the Late 1980s to the Early 1990s]. Acta Wasaensia 113. Hallintotiede 7. Vaasa: University of Vaasa. Laukkanen, R. (1994) Koulutuksen tuloksellisuuden arvioinnin keskeiset kysymykset ja trendit keskushallinnon näkökulmasta [The Main Issues and Trends in Evaluating Educational Outcomes from the Point of View of Central Administration]. Jyväskylä: Kasvatustieteiden tutkimuslaitos. Laukkanen, R. (1997) Manageristinen näkökulma koulutuksen arviointiin [The managerial approach in educational evaluation]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 28(4): 351–63. Laukkanen, R. (1998) Accountability and evaluation: decision-making structures and the utilization of evaluation in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 42(2): 123–33. Laukkanen, R., Salmio, K. & Svedlin, R. (1992) Koulun itsearviointi [Self-Evaluation in Schools]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Law 718/1988. Laki vapaakuntakokeilusta [Act Concerning Free Municipal Experimentation]. Law 707/1992. Kuntien valtionosuuslaki [The Act on Central Government Transfers to Local Government]. Law 365/1995. Kuntalaki [Local Government Act]. Law 628/1998. Perusopetuslaki [Basic Education Act]. Law 32/2003. Laki perusopetuslain 21 §:n muuttamisesta [An amendment to the Basic Education Act].

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Lehtisalo, L. & Raivola, R. (1986) Koulutuspolitiikka ja koulutussuunnittelu [Education Policy and Planning]. Helsinki: WSOY. Linnakylä, P. (2002) Kansainvälisten ja kansallisten oppimistulosten arviointien välisestä suhteesta [On the relation between international and national evaluations of education], in E. Olkinuora, R. Jakku-Sihvonen & E. Mattila (eds.) Koulutuksen arviointi – lähtökohtia, malleja ja tilannekatsauksia [The Evaluation of Education – Starting Points, Models and Surveys]. Kasvatustieteiden tiedekunnan julkaisuja B: 70. Turku: Turku University. Löfström, E., Metsämuuronen, J., Niemi, E.K., Salmio, K. & Stenvall, K. (2005) Koulutuksen paikallinen arviointi vuonna 2004 [The Local Evaluation of Education in 2004]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Marques Cardoso, C. (1998) Reforms of School Management and Governance: Portugal and England 1986–1996. London: King’s College. Ministry of Education (ME) (1995) Koulutusta koskevan lainsäädännön kokonaisuudistus [The Reform of Educational Legislation]. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö. Ministry of Education (ME) (1996) Koulutuksen lainsäädännön kokonaisuudistus. Komiteamietintö 1996: 4 [The Reform of Educational Legislation]. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö. Ministry of Education (ME) (2007a) Koulutuksen arviointijärjestelmän kehittämistyöryhmän muistio [Memorandum from the Working Group Developing a National System of Educational Evaluation]. Opetusministeriön työryhmämuistioita ja selvityksiä 2007: 27. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö. Ministry of Education (ME) (2007b) Opetushallituksen asema, rooli ja tehtävät sekä koulutustoimialan ohjaus muuttuvassa toimintaympäristössä [The Position, Role and Tasks of the Finnish National Board of Education and the Steering of the Educational Branch in a Changing Ooperating Environment]. Opetusministeriön työryhmämuistioita ja selvityksiä 2007: 46. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö. Morley, L. (2003) Quality and Power in Higher Education. Philadelphia, PA: Society for Research into Higher Education. National Board of Education (NBE) (1982) Peruskoulun kehittämisohjelma 1980-luvulle. Kouluhallituksen ehdotus opetusministeriölle, 30 November [Development Plan for the 1980s: A Proposal to the Ministry of Education]. Helsinki: Kouluhallitus. National Board of Education (NBE) (1992) Opetushallituksen ehdotus opetustoimen rakenneohjelmaksi [Proposal of the NBE for a Structural Programme of Education]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. National Board of Education (NBE) (1995) Koulutuksen tuloksellisuuden arviointimalli [A Framework for Evaluating Educational Outcomes in Finland]. Arviointi 9/1995. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. National Board of Education (NBE) (1999) Perusopetuksen päättöarvioinnin kriteerit. Arvosanan hyvä (8) kriteerit yhteisissä oppiaineissa [The Criteria for Graduating Evaluation in Basic Education:The Criteria for the Mark ‘Good’ (8) in the Common Teaching Subjects]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. National Board of Education (NBE) (2004) Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelman perusteet [National Core Curriculum for Basic Education]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Neave, G. & Van Vught, F.A. (1991) Prometheus Bound: The Changing Relationship between Government and Higher Education in Western Europe. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Niukko, S. (2006) ‘Yhteistyötä ilman riskejä’? OECD: n rooli Suomen koulutuspolitiikassa [‘Co-operation without Risks’? The Role of the OECD in Finnish Education Policy]. Turun yliopiston julkaisuja C 251. Turku: Turku University.

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Normann Andersen,V., Dahler-Larsen, P. & Strømbæk Pedersen, C. (2007) QAE in the public arena. A working paper for a Fabricating Quality workshop, 17–18 September 2007, Ghent. Ozga, J. & Jones, R. (2006) Travelling and embedded policy: the case of knowledge transfer. Journal of Education Policy, 21(1): 1–17. Ozga, J. & Lingard, B. (2007) Globalisation, education policy and politics, in B. Lingard & J. Ozga (eds.) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education Policy and Politics. Abingdon: Routledge. Pekonen, K. (1995) Kohti uutta hallinta-ajattelua julkisessa hallinnossa? [Towards a New Governance Thinking in Public Administration?]. Helsinki: Painatuskeskus. Pekonen, K. (2005) Suomalaisen hallitsemiskäsitteistön historiaa [On the History of Finnish Administrative Concepts]. Helsinki:Yliopistopaino. Power, M. (1997) The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rajanen, J. (2000) Selvitys koulutuksen paikallisen tason arvioinnin tilasta [The State of Local-level Evaluation]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Rinne, R. & Jauhiainen, A. (1988) Koulutus, professionaalistuminen ja valtio julkisen sektorin koulutettujen reproduktioammattikuntien muotoutuminen suomessa [Education, Professionalization and Formation of the Public Sector Professions of Reproduction in Finland]. Research Series A: 128.Turku: Faculty of Education, University of Turku. Rinne, R., Kallo, J. & Hokka, S. (2004) Too eager to comply? OECD education policies and the Finnish response. European Educational Research Journal, 3(2): 454–85. Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J. & Simola, H. (2002) Shoots of revisionist education policy or just slow readjustment? The Finnish case of educational reconstruction. Journal of Education Policy, 17(6): 643–58. Rose, N. (1999) Governing liberty, in R. Ericson & N. Stehr (eds.) Governing Modern Societies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sahlberg, P. (2007) Education policies for raising student learning: the Finnish approach. Journal of Education Policy, 22(2): 147–71. Simola, H. (1993) Educational science, the state and teachers: Forming the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland, in T.S. Popkewitz (ed.) Changing Patterns of Power: Social Regulation and Teacher Education Reform in Eight Countries (pp. 161–210). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Simola, H. (1995) Paljon vartijat. Suomalainen kansanopettaja valtiollisessa kouludiskurssissa 1860-luvulta 1990-luvulle [The Guards of Plenty: The Finnish Schoolteacher in Educational State Discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s]. Research Report 137. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Simola, H. (2009) Trans-national technologies, national techniques and local mechanisms in Finnish university governance: a journey through the layers. Nordic Educational Research, 29(1): 6–17. Simola, H., Rinne, R. & Kivirauma, J. (2002) Abdication of the education state or just shifting responsibilities? The appearance of a new system of reason in constructing educational governance and social exclusion/inclusion in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 46(3): 237–46. Sweeting, A.E. & Morris, P. (1993) Educational reform in post-war Hong Kong: planning and crisis intervention. International Journal of Educational Development, 13(3): 210–16. Temmes, M., Ahonen, P. & Ojala, T. (2002) Suomen koulutusjärjestelmän hallinnon arviointi [Evaluation of the Finnish Education Administration]. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö.

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Temmes, M. & Kiviniemi, M. (1997) Suomen hallinnon muuttuminen 1987–1995 [Changes in Finnish public administration 1987–1995], in Sääty-yhteiskunnasta Ahtisaareen [From a Class Society to Ahtisaari]. Hallintohistoriallisia tutkimuksia 21. Helsinki: Hallintohistoriakomitea. Tiihonen, S. (2004) From Governing to Governance: A Process of Change. Tampere: Tampere University Press Välijärvi, J., Linnakylä, P. and Kupari, P. (2005) Kansalliset arviointitutkimukset [National learning tests], in K. Hämäläinen, A. Lindström & J. Puhakka (eds.) Yhtenäisen peruskoulun menestystarina [The Success Story of the Common Comprehensive School]. Helsinki:Yliopistopaino Kustannus.

Part II

Teachers and their education Paradoxes in a successful professionalization project

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Chapter 4

Educational science, the state and teachers Setting up the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland 1

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the way in which Finnish teacher education was formulated during and after the educational reform process. It is, on the one hand, a professional success story for primary school teachers and also for teacher educators and educational scientists. It is also a story about the formation and function of corporate regulation mechanisms in educational policy. I will describe how the social field of teacher education was reconstituted through the reforms, scrutinizing strategies and mutual relations between the welfare state and the teachers and educational scientists involved. Certain features of post-reform discursive practices in the educational sciences and teacher education are analysed in the third section, the aim being to connect the discursive and the social field as a basis for the new social regulations that emerged as teacher education evolved. In the concluding section, I outline a model of exchange relations between the actors and the discourse structure in the field of teacher education in Finland. A unique solution for teacher training was devised in Finland in the 1970s with the transfer of full responsibility to the universities and the elevation of education to the Master’s level. Since 1979, teachers in both comprehensive and upper secondary school have all qualified at the same academic level. Thus, within about ten years the length of occupational preparation for primary school teaching doubled. Teacher training was moved from teachers’ colleges and small-town ‘seminars’ to the brand-new university faculties of education established as ‘teacher-education units’. At the same time, teaching as a career was limited to those with proven ability and a willingness in the ever-lengthening schooling apparatus, and who had matriculated from upper secondary school. A country that had just left its agricultural lifestyle behind embarked upon one of the most advanced programmes of professional teacher training. In the context of teacher education, the emphasis in this chapter is on the training of primary school teachers, for various reasons. The Comprehensive School Reform and the academization of teacher education in its entirety brought primary school teachers to the forefront in the national discussion of schooling. The former strengthened the position of the occupation – primary school (class) teachers now cover six grades of the Finnish nine-year

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comprehensive school – and the latter raised their status to a level approaching that of secondary school (subject) teachers. The reform in teacher education was thus most dramatic on the primary school level. For students preparing to teach subject areas in comprehensive and upper secondary schools it simply meant, in practice, increasing the amount of pedagogical studies, whereas those preparing to teach at primary school had to struggle through traditional academic studies and write their Master’s thesis in educational science. Primary school teachers also reached a dominant position in the post-reform united teachers’ union (OAJ), which was founded in 1973. Thus, it is not surprising that this level of education, in terms of both visions and problems, has consistently been the major focus of all state committee reports since the reforms were instituted. The training of primary school teachers is, without doubt, the arena in which basic decisions on teacher education have been and continue to be made.

The reforms and beyond The 1970s were, in many ways, a turning point in the social and economic history of Finland. Compared with Central Europe and other Nordic countries, the process of industrialization and urbanization in Finland was quite sluggish until the Second World War.The result of Finland’s comparatively late industrial development and the simultaneous growth of the service sector was exceptionally rapid structural change in society. The transition from an agricultural to an industrial society and, further, to a post-industrial society took place within such a short period of time that one could almost say the three societies currently co-exist in a very special way. Moreover, Finland was slower than the other Nordic countries to implement an institutionalized welfare policy, and some scholars conclude that it has been possible to speak of Finland as a welfare society only since the 1960s. It is no wonder, then, that the late 1960s and the 1970s witnessed an optimistic and ambitious programme of educational reforms. If one had to choose one country that exerted the strongest influence on Finland’s educational-reform policy one would have to mention Sweden. The planning and realization of the Comprehensive School Reform in particular followed the Swedish model of ten years’ previous. A curious flavour, especially in the reforms of higher and vocational education, seemed to emanate from the German Democratic Republic (see, for example, Antikainen, 1990: 77–8; Lehtisalo & Raivola, 1986: 160; Numminen, 1987: 194), which many people during that period considered representative of very active educational reform thinking in Europe. However, even stronger than the influence of some individual countries was that of international educational organizations. As some scholars (Lehtisalo & Raivola, 1986: 160) note, thus far the OECD has clearly played a more important role than UNESCO, the European Council or the European Community. This is remarkable because it means that the

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strongest international influence on Finnish educational policy came from quite a narrow economic direction.2 Given the late leave-taking of the agrarian society, it is no wonder that the agrarian Centre Party has been able to maintain its position between the Right and the Left on the Finnish political map. The period from the end of the Second World War until 1987 was primarily an era of ‘Red-Soil’ coalition governance shared between the Social Democrats and the Centre (former Agrarian) Party, strengthened by some smaller parties. The parliamentary elections of 1987 brought the conservative Coalition Party into power, and the Prime Minster also came from its ranks. Ever since, the governments have comprised two of the trident parties, leaving the third one in opposition. The state’s educational apparatus has long comprised the same two pillars: the National Board of General Education (NBE), primarily led by the Social Democrats from the 1950s until the early 1990s, and the Ministry of Education (ME), in which the Centre Party has been dominant. The Coalition Party or the Social Democrats have controlled these two pole positions of Finish education policy-making since the early 1990s. The reform of teacher education was planned in close connection with the Comprehensive School Reform. It was carried out in a two-phase process. The first phase was based on the Act on Teacher Education, which was passed in 1971 and transferred the training of primary school teachers to the universities, albeit still on a three-year basis. Faculties of education, known as ‘teacher-education units’, were established in eight universities during 1974. The scientific basis of these new faculties was narrow. Most of them comprised only two departments, a department of teacher education and a department of educational science. At the same time, the traditional teacher-training ‘seminars’ were abolished. All members of the teaching staff at these ‘seminars’ and at the teachers’ colleges with two or more years of service were transferred to the university as faculty members, a decision that naturally increased the suspicions in traditional academic circles about the new affiliates. The training content did not change dramatically from what it had been since 1968.Thus, the period from 1968 to1979 could be seen as a phase of transition from the ‘nearly Bachelor’s’ to the ‘full Master’s’ level. The second phase proceeded in accordance with the report of the Committee for Teacher Education (CR, 1975). Whereas earlier committee reports started from the assumption that the education of primary school teachers, although academic, would be at the Bachelor’s level, the 1975 report promoted it to the Master’s level. The official reason given was that the Bachelor’s degree would be abolished in the general reform of higher-education degrees. Thus, as from 1979, all student teachers training for comprehensive and upper secondary school followed the new curriculum, syllabus and degree system. Primary school teachers complete their Master’s degree (160 study weeks or credits) in four to five years, with educational science as their major, whereas subject-teacher students still major in their teaching subject but also take many

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additional credits in educational science (the minimum is 40 study weeks). The basic differences in content between the new and the old training reflect the greatly increased weight on educational science and the transfer of emphasis from specialization in certain subjects to a basic mastery of all school subjects taught at the lower level of comprehensive school. Various acts, general and institution-specific decrees, and degree regulations strictly governed the administration of teacher education and the curricula. By way of further regulation of the reform process in the universities, the Ministry of Education established a special council, the Council for Teacher Education, which represented not only the state and the universities but also the teachers’ union OAJ. Such an arrangement was unique in the Finnish academic field. It evolved into an influential instrument of corporate regulation and guidance of teacher education, and was merged with the Council of Higher Education in 1988. From the perspective of higher education policy, the influence of the new faculties of education as teacher-education units is by no means minor. In 1988, 12 per cent of all students in higher education were in teacher education (one-third of them studying to be primary school teachers),18 per cent of examinations passed were in teacher education, and 6 per cent of professorships were in education (Central Statistical Office of Finland, 1990: 7, 33).

Actors, intentions and relations Conceiving of the arena of teacher education as a social field means treating it as a multi-dimensional space of positions and relationships (Bourdieu, 1985: 724). It is a site in which the struggle between individuals and groups is essentially a struggle over the legitimacy of ideas and practices. Thus, the power is symbolic (Bourdieu, 1977a) rather than open or direct. It represents the ability to classify, to differentiate and, above all, to make others in the field recognize a certain discourse as natural and legitimate. There are, of course, also direct and concrete ‘power-as-sovereignty’ relations, but it seems that this increasingly needs legitimation through the symbolic systems recognized in the field. The following sections describe the creation of a new social field in which teacher education is practised, discussed and regulated. I will illustrate how change was realized through the educational reforms of the 1970s as a modernization process in which, first of all, a corporate mode of governing was introduced; second, the disposition of teachers shifted from the traditional vocational ethos towards more rationalized and science-legitimated professionalism; and third, Anglo-American educational sciences definitively displaced German ‘state-ethics’ flavoured pedagogy and didactics in education as an academic discipline. This section considers some of the intentions and relations of the actors involved in the teacher-education reforms. None of these actors are monolithic, however – the state is characterized as constellational rather than unitary. Although there has been a strong cognitive consensus in

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educational science, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, there have always been different ‘voices’, too. Teacher educators comprise very different populations, from professors to piano teachers, and among the teachers there are different groups with different interests. For the purpose of this outline, therefore, the documents and sources referred to are either official (reports of state committees and union addresses) or statements that purport to address the subject authoritatively (texts of state officials and esteemed educational scientists). Welfare state

Even though the history of the Finnish welfare state is quite short, the state has been engaged in social reform for a much longer period. This centralized tradition, a peculiarity of Finnish culture and history, has its roots in the tight intertwining of nation- and state-building processes that have left relatively little room for a ‘free’ civic society. From the nineteenth century onwards, civic movements and the state have been working towards common aims rather than as rivals or from contradictory positions (Alapuro & Stenius, 1987). Social reforms were, and partly still are, carried out via a centralized authority, planned by state employees, and sanctioned through state legislation.Thus far, this model has proved to be effective. Perhaps this is the basic reason why the welfare state is still seen as the legitimate representative of society and of the common good, whereas the state as an active, powerful apparatus is often ignored. In fact, terms that distinguish between the state and civic society have entered the political vocabulary only relatively recently. Thus, it would seem fruitful to analyse the Finnish welfare state as an actor in the field of education through the concept of corporatism. Rust and Blackmore (1990) define corporatism as emphasizing the significance of interest groups rather than of social classes or class conflict.There is a mutual interdependence and interpenetration in the public and private sectors. Governments recognize the value and political legitimacy of interest groups, granting them a representational monopoly in their own spheres. Corporatism in the welfare state is characterized by tendencies towards cooperation and stability rather than political competition, relatively covert forms of decisionmaking, and the exclusion of certain interest groups from the decision-making process. Rust and Blackmore emphasize the fact that, in terms of education, professional groups in a corporate system not only work to gain sectional advantages but also help to maintain the system’s authority and legitimacy as a whole.This general characterization seems to fit the case of Finland very well (see, for example, Andersson, 1989). As a cornerstone of the continuity and consensus in Finnish educational policy, belief in education as an agent for social equality has remained stronger than in many other advanced liberal countries.There are various reasons for the durability of that belief. Both the educational authorities and the political

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parties have strongly committed themselves to the aim of educational equality. Furthermore, the educational administration and its staff were moulded in the ‘golden age’ of equal opportunity on the policy level. Finally, quite apart from the traditional social-democratic thinking on equality, there has been a strong rural tradition since the nineteenth century to regard education as an important channel for upward mobility in society (Antikainen, 1990: 79). Ari Antikainen also offers various other explanations. First, the overall rise in student enrolments included increasing numbers from the lower classes, even though their proportion overall remains low.This could be ‘a shared experience among the common people’, who also have their own experience of education as a real resource in the rapid transformation of Finnish society, not least as a channel of migration from rural areas and from agriculture to the cities during the ‘Great Migration’ of 1960–75. Another reason could be the favourable coincidence of economic and technological development. As the growth of the industrial sector continued in Finland into the late 1970s, criticism of public education of the like that emerged in many industrial countries did not arise. Economic growth was extremely good in the 1980s, and a vision of the ‘information society’ that contributed to the expansion of education was adopted as a formal basis for technological policy. As one indication of educational consensus, between the mid 1970s and the late 1990s there was no extensive discussion on educational policy in government, in Parliament or in the press. For example, the landmark act that legislated the development of upper secondary and vocational education in 1978 was passed by 152 votes to two. The acts that came into force in the mid 1980s and provided for reforms in comprehensive, upper secondary and vocational schools were also approved by Parliament without any significant discussion. Educational optimism and expansion continued in the 1980s – as Antikainen (1990: 80) put it, despite changes in governments, the comprehensive principle in educational policy ‘is not strong but it is still alive’. Continuity in Finland’s educational policy has been strong and remains so (Lehtisalo & Raivola, 1986: 109), but models of policy planning seem to be changing. There is a tendency away from parliamentary committees comprising specialists, bureaucrats and politicians as representatives of the people to more corporatist cooperation merely between bureaucrats and specialists. One clear example of this is the way ‘the largest codification and reform work of legislation in our educational history’ was carried out in 1976–85: the ‘committee’ ultimately consisted of four high state officials. Thus, one could say that client (i.e. parents) representatives are giving way to experts in the educational decision-making process. Teachers and their union

It is not surprising that the new school was seen to need new teachers. The traditional Finnish primary school teacher did not fit very well into the

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scenarios associated with the modern, rationalized school. Until the Second World War, the social background of these teacher recruits was predominantly rural. A teaching career allowed access to the middle class for the daughters and sons of country people, and both the upper and the working classes were under-represented. On the other hand, the positions of rural and urban teachers changed a great deal over the years. At least before the 1980s the culture, the way of life and the activities of the Finnish primary school teacher could hardly be considered uniform throughout the country.3 As far as teacher education was concerned, it was based in small-town training institutes and comprised ‘teacher-preparation seminars’. This was consistent with the long-standing moral curricular code or metacurriculum (Lundgren, 1979; Rinne, 1987a, 1987b). The moral code did not turn into the civic code until the Second World War, although the same phenomenon occurred in Sweden, for example, in the 1920s (Rinne, 1987a, 122). The official school doctrine was one of defending the agrarian tradition by ‘ensuring the undisturbed continuation of the earlier agricultural life-style and means of production into the future’ (Kivinen, 1988: 338–9). Agrarian ideology survived on the level of official state school doctrine until the advent of the Comprehensive School Reform of the 1970s, when the curricular code became individualistic. However, a tendency that clashed with the ethos of rural seminars was the effort to improve the status of the teaching occupation through raising the level of teacher training (Rinne, 1988a). As early as in 1890, elementary school teachers claimed that their extension training should be organized on the university level. One explanation for this could be that the occupation of primary school teacher had always been attractive. According to a Finnish historian (Halila, 1950: 296), before the Second World War there were more primary school teachers with an upper secondary school certificate (the matriculation examination) in Finland than in any other country. Moreover, a state committee for teacher training in the 1920s had proposed, although without any positive response, the transfer of extension training to the universities. A significant breakthrough in raising the status and prestige of teaching was the establishment of the University College of Education in Jyväskylä in the 1930s, followed in the 1940s by the establishment of three teacher-training colleges in the bigger cities. These were the first institutions to offer graduate-based training for elementary school teachers, and in the educational hierarchy they clearly ranked above the teacher-training seminars. After the late 1950s, the teachers’ union actively demanded that the training of primary school teachers be adjusted to the same level as that of grammar school teachers, in other words to the university level (Henttonen, 1987: 100). There was no consensus, however, among primary school teachers regarding shifting all the training to the university level. Academic training was seen as endangering the traditional vocational identity of teachers that was based on the Lutheran and patriotic ethos and substituting it with scientific technicism

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(see, for example, Kähkönen, 1979). In the view of those committed to ‘seminar ideology’, ‘the best authorisation for the work of the popular teacher was not formal education and the knowledge transmitted through it as such: the teacher was on a mission, and justification would ensue from dedication’ (Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988: 220). The validity of the seminar training is evidenced by the fact that, together with the college route to the occupation of primary school teacher, it remained viable and trained half of the new teachers until it was abolished in the 1970s. The union of primary school teachers was established in 1893, and unions for private and state grammar school teachers in 1906 and 1917, respectively. The two existing teachers’ unions were combined in 1973 following the establishment of the comprehensive school, and the new organization (OAJ) covered all the teachers from the comprehensive to the upper secondary level. More than 90 per cent of teachers belong to the union. The political thinking of Finnish teachers has always been more conservative that that of the population in general.4 The absence of radical labour politics among them is thus not surprising. During the 1980s, the OAJ became the strongest union in the influential AKAVA umbrella organization, which includes all unions representing the academic professions. Understandably, some people are of the opinion that no important educational decisions have been made since the late 1970s without collaboration with the teachers’ union (see, for example, Lehtisalo & Raivola, 1986: 176; Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988: 234). Thus, it is reasonable to state that the teachers union of today used to hold a certain power of veto over Finnish educational policy. Efforts to improve the occupational status of primary school teachers in Finland have been intense and continuous over the years, to the extent that some scholars refer to the teachers’ professionalization project (Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988). According to many writers (e.g. Brante, 1988; Freidson, 1970; Gouldner, 1979; Johnson, 1972; Larson, 1977), the basic formative logic of a profession is the pursuit of a monopoly of work, training and knowledge in one’s own field. Professionalism, as defined in ideology theories, is ‘a peculiar type of occupational control rather than an expression of the inherent nature of particular occupations. A profession is not an occupation, but a means of controlling an occupation’ (Johnson, 1972: 45). Hence, the very essence of professionalism as an occupational ideology is to establish a monopoly of expertise in a certain field and to find and use the means to produce, organize and control the market for professional services. The union had representatives on the most influential state committees set up to reform teacher education up to the 1990s. It also had a strong role on the Teacher Education Council, which until 1988 directly controlled the development of the new academic teacher-education programme and its successor, the Teacher Education Section of the Council of Higher Education5 – the main medium through which teacher training is influenced in terms of quantity, recruitment mechanisms, length and curricula. All this may explain, to some

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extent, why the Academy’s recent evaluation report on Finnish educational research states: ‘It is possible that the interests of the teachers’ union have restricted question formulation [in research on teachers and teacher education]’ (Educational Research in Finland 1990: 140; my translation). Faculties of education are the major producers of scientific knowledge in the field of schooling, and the majority of professors of education are, in fact, former primary school teachers. Thus, it was hardly an overstatement to claim, as the OAJ journal did in the mid 1980s, that educational science in the country used to be basically in the hands of teachers (Nurmi, 1984: 10). Teacher educators and educational scientists

The literature on teacher professionalism has few references to the role or interests of teacher educators or, more generally, educational scientists. Outlining the social epistemology of teacher education from a historical perspective, Thomas Popkewitz (1987, 1991) discusses educational sciences as an important dimension of institutional relations and discourse in the United States from the formative years of mass schooling until the recent reforms. David Labaree (1992), in turn, argues that the current drive to professionalize teaching in the USA is an extension of the efforts by teacher educators to raise their own professional status. In addition, various studies (see Lanier, 1986) are cited on the specific position of teacher educators in the US academic field. Not only do they seem to be the lowest-status group in the academic hierarchy, their socio-cultural background is also considered to be lower than that of other academic groups. There is a marked distinction between academic disciplines such as ‘education’ (i.e. policy and administration) and ‘teacher education’ (i.e. curriculum and instruction) in the US, the latter clearly having secondary hierarchical status. The only study on the social background of Finnish professors reports a parallel situation: professors of education in Finland also come from a lower socio-economic background than most of their academic colleagues in other disciplines (Antikainen & Jolkkonen, 1990). The transfer of teacher education to the universities meant clear social and economic advancement for Finnish teacher educators. Before the reforms of the 1970s, educators in the ‘seminars’ and teachers’ colleges had basically the same qualifications as teachers in the upper secondary schools.The only exception was the University College of Education in Jyväskylä, where not only professors but also some lecturers had to have a doctorate. The state policy was to move virtually all of the seminar and college staff to the university faculty. It is a reasonable assumption that this move was intended, at least partly, to stifle criticism of the reform and the scepticism with regard to basing teacher training on academic educational science. In fact, the shift in emphasis from preparing the traditional teacher legitimated by the missionary ethos to educating the teaching expert legitimated by science occurred without any notable public controversies.

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Professor Martti Haavio (1965), the eminent representative of the old ‘seminar ethos’ in education and the author of a widely used textbook on the teacher’s personality, issued the last serious statement emphasizing the missionary ethos in the teaching vocation and criticizing the narrowness of vision in empirical educational science. As was characteristic of the time, his critics claimed that his speculative approach produced ‘pedagogical novels’ rather than scientific contributions (Kähkönen, 1979: 130). This voice seemed to disappear totally from educational discourse during the years of reform, however, with the exception of some negative references to the seminar spirit and the critics of ‘seminarists’ as opposed to ‘university pedagogues’ (e.g. Kansanen & Uljens, 1990: 206;Viljanen, 1985: 12). As far as I know, however, the criticism is not officially documented, obviously having arisen orally in meetings, for example. One can find signs of clear discrimination against the seminar tradition: it was represented in only one of the three state committees on teacher education in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Although the training practices in the small city seminars and the teachers’ colleges in the larger cities did not differ a great deal, the seminar spirit became the symbol of social and educational conservatism. Some professors of education were such eager advocates of radical reform in teacher education that their confidence in the scientization of teacher training was characterized as a ‘hubris of educational science’ (Kähkönen, 1979: 84, 79). In 1961, professors at the University College of Education in Jyväskylä outlined a radical reform plan for the full academization of all teacher education. The basis of the policy was finally set in the Committee for Teacher Preparation in 1967, which was the first state committee on which professors of education were strongly represented. The chairman, Professor Matti Koskenniemi, was a prominent figure in the Finnish educational field after the Second World War, and the author of various didactic textbooks in common use in teacher training from the 1940s until the late 1980s. The two later committees (The Comprehensive School Teacher Committee in 1969 and The Committee for Teacher Education in 1975) followed the same principles. One national peculiarity in Finland is that education as an academic discipline has been very closely connected to teacher education from the start. The first chair of education (or, literally, of ‘Pedagogy and Didactics’, kasvatus-ja opetusoppi) was established at the University of Helsinki in 1852, and from then until 1955 the professor of education was directly responsible for the training of prospective grammar school teachers. The second professorship of education, established in 1907, was clearly oriented to training and didactics for primary school teachers. The third was founded to meet the needs of teacher training for elementary school when the University College of Education was established in Jyväskylä in 1934. By the beginning of the 1960s, there were seven full and associate professorships in education, and the discipline usually functioned as one department in faculties of social sciences. Nevertheless, the position of educational science as an academic discipline was rather weak until the educational-reform activity of the late 1960s.

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As a symbol of the maturity and independence of a modern, academic discipline, the titles of the chairs in education were changed from ‘Pedagogy and Didactics’ to ‘Educational Science’ in 1966. One could interpret this action as state confirmation of the new phase of academic educational research. According to the report of the Committee for Teacher Education, it reflected ‘the development of educational research as an independent discipline with its own research problems, methods and subjects’ (CR, 1975: 19). At the same time, ‘teacher training’ became ‘teacher education’, emphasizing its dynamic and life-long character in contrast to the former, more limited conception. Thus it seems that these symbolic changes represented the final shift from a missionary to an expert approach to knowledge; from a German-based legacy to the cognitive structures imported from the US. The reform of education for primary school teachers in 1968, from two years of study to a three-year programme, strengthened the position of educational science as a major theoretical subject in the curriculum of all prospective teachers. There were already 23 professorships in education at the beginning of the 1970s. However, it was only with the transfer of all teacher education to the universities, and finally to the Master’s degree level, that the real expansion came. By the beginning of the 1980s, there were 75 professorships in education, and more than one hundred at the beginning of the 1990s. Almost two-thirds of these are associate professorships (this percentage is reversed in most academic disciplines), mainly in the didactics of a specific school subject in teacher education. The number of professorships in education in Finland is double the number of posts in history and sociology combined.The increase is comparable only with that of the economic sciences (Antikainen, 1987).6 Wittrock and Wagner’s (1990; cf. Giddens, 1984) theory of discourse structuration in the social sciences in relation to state development seems to fit the case of Finnish educational science very well. They argue that the emergence and evolution of the social sciences have critically depended on the ability of their proponents first, to find an epistemic grounding in major intellectual traditions; second, to find ways in which to institutionalize and reproduce their particular forms of discourse in knowledge-producing institutions; third, to establish some kind of linkage to political-administrative institutions; and fourth, to draw some kind of discursive affinity with broad, socially significant policy traditions (Wittrock and Wagner, 1990: 117). One could thus conclude that through rigid engagement with the empirical paradigm as its epistemic basis since the Second World War, Finnish educational science has achieved the necessary credibility to become an autonomous discipline not only in the academic field, but also and possibly primarily in the field of state educational reform. From the perspective of Finnish educational science, a certain kind of ‘cognitive consensus’ might be a necessary condition for expansion, and especially for gaining credibility among politicians and administrators. At least this condition was clearly fulfilled in Finland in the late 1960s and 1970s. The main influence on educational research up until the

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Second World War came from Germany. The empirical approach was used to some extent in the psychology of education, but most of the research was historical or philosophical in nature. The situation changed dramatically after the war when American influence took over. Since then, and at least until the early 1980s, cognitive consensus in the spirit of positivism and empiricism prevailed. Even though this could not explain many of the pressing problems of schooling, the sophisticated methodology and terminology were very effective in establishing the legitimacy of the expertise of educational scientists. The development of educational science in Finland also fulfilled the second condition in Wittrock and Wagner’s theory, institutional legitimation, very well: although the position of educational science in the academic field was not strong, there was a network of departments and chairs of education covering all universities as early as in 1966. It seems clear that it was only the Comprehensive School Reform that enabled Finnish educational science to gain the politicaladministrative as well as the societal legitimacy needed for its expansion. This social legitimacy, along with a strong ‘discursive affinity’, was gained through the active participation of many professors of education in the public debate on schooling. For educational scientists, the final academization of teacher training meant state-guaranteed expansion in the academic field; for teacher educators, it was elevation to the position of a science-legitimated profession.

Speaking authoritatively about teacher education The focus in this section is on the formation of a research-based scientific and academic discourse on teacher education. The development of a ‘teacher education theory’ is necessary to serve the professional interests of both teachers and teacher educators, although their approaches and points of view are different. For teachers, it means credibility and the scientific legitimation of their occupation; for teacher educators, it is the very justification of their ascent into the academic world. First I consider the tradition in Finnish educational research, especially in relation to the state. I then scrutinize the two basic levels of pedagogical knowledge, ‘tacit’ and official knowledge mediated by teaching practice and didactics, and see how they relate to each other. Finally, I analyse a recent report from a state committee and its critics as an example of discourse in the field of teacher education in Finland. My aim is to trace how the intentions of the actors have become intertwined and have formed the discursive field of teacher education. My main sources for the analysis include an evaluation of educational research by the Academy of Finland, the opinions of a high state official, the critiques of some sociologists of education, and a recent committee report on teacher education. None of these are scientific texts, but are rather what Foucault (1982: 48–9) would call the serious verbal acts of experts who speak as experts, practices that systematically form subjects from the things they address. Certain things become important, meaningful and imitable. It is a question of

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finding a serious, reasonable and respected way of speaking about teacher education. At the same time, choosing the right way also means rejecting other alternatives. Bourdieu (1977b: 159–71) uses the concepts of doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy in analysing the production, reproduction and transformation of discourse and its limits in social formations. Doxa is the universe of the undiscussed and undisputed; it is the world in which there is no place for opinion. The experience of doxa is based on misrecognition of the arbitrariness of the established order and its systems of classification that make it natural, self-evident and unquestionable. Inside doxa is a field of opinion, the locus of confronting discourses, a universe of argument in which there is room for alternative orders, questioning and competing possibles. Bourdieu describes orthodoxy as ‘a straight, or rather straightened, opinion, aimed, without ever entirely succeeding, at restoring the primal state of innocence of doxa’. It exists only in the objective relationship that opposes it to heterodoxy that is (with reference to the domain of heresy) ‘made possible by the existence of competing possibles and to the explicit critique of the sum total of the alternatives not chosen that the established order implies’. Orthodoxy is defined as ‘a system of euphemisms, of acceptable ways of thinking and speaking the natural and social world, which rejects heretical remarks as blasphemies’. However, and this is important, Bourdieu notes that the manifestation of censorship imposed on orthodox discourse an overt opposition between euphemistic and blasphemous opinion that delimits ‘the universe of possible discourse [and] . . . masks in its turn the fundamental opposition between the universe of things that can be stated, and hence thought, and the universe of what is taken for granted’ (Bourdieu, 1977b: 169–70). Although Bourdieu’s conceptualization was originally aimed at analysing societies rather than more limited social formations, it seems to me that there is no reason not to use it in relation to discourses in a social field such as that of teacher education, educational science or schooling. It may be useful in describing the constant movement between orthodoxa and heterodoxa in that the borders of doxa are not questioned. It is possible to conceive of a situation in which ‘the dominant’ are too strong and ‘the dominated’ do not have the necessary material or symbolic means of rejecting the definition of real (of schooling). There is then no other language to use in speaking about reality than that of the dominant. From this point of view, as important as what and how teaching and teacher education are spoken about is what remains silent. There is danger, however, in the idealistic overtones inherent in the descriptions of professionals as executors of power, empowered by their monopoly of knowledge or language. This is especially important in the case of teachers. It seems clear that studies of teacher professionalism emphasize the strong dependence on the mechanisms, apparatus and organisations of social reproduction. The advance of professionalization in the case of teachers is essentially an institution-dominated phenomenon in which the relationship with the

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state plays a central role (Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988: 163). Thus, in the case of teachers it is especially important to understand that ‘[t]he concept of professionalization is a concept of relations; it is impossible to attribute professional status to occupational groups without talking about those who are granting this status to those occupational groups’, as Inga Hellberg (1978, quoted in Brante, 1988: 136) points out. Educational science in service

The evaluation of Finnish educational research published by the Academy of Finland focuses on science as providing useful knowledge for the state: ‘The strong growth in the educational sciences has largely been a result of its becoming part of state improvement and evaluation activities, and great hopes have been invested in it as such’ (Educational research in Finland, 1990: 32).The concept of educational science in service to the state is embodied in the Institute for Educational Research based at the University of Jyväskylä. At one time, almost half of Finnish research in the field of education was carried out there, and one half of that was commissioned research, mainly for the authorities and directed especially towards on-going school reforms. Quite often the research capacity for such studies, especially those involving school experimentation projects, serves to legitimise reform decisions already made in the state apparatus. Jaakko Numminen, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Education and thus the highest state official in education during 1973–94, openly states: Finland’s educational policy per se is not the result of experimentation as such: it is rather that so-called experiments help in bringing about the reforms. Innovation has been launched in the name of experimentation, and has been expanded step by step.The aim was not so much to experiment but to initiate the process of reform. In this, and in cooperation, we have succeeded. (Numminen, 1984: 324) The open instrumentalist stance of the state apparatus for educational science is also clearly articulated in Numminen’s assessment of the essence of educational research: ‘[T]he reason for the existence of educational science in universities and research institutes is to improve education, the training of educators and the teaching process itself – the whole educational process’ (1987: 252; my translation). These utilitarian demands seem to be taken seriously, at least in the way educational research is oriented. As Pertti Kansanen (1990: 280), Professor of the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki, concludes: ‘A predominant characteristic in the Finnish study of education is the strong position of teacher education and through it the sub-discipline of didactics with its various branches.’ Half of the professorships of education are

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in teacher education, and half of the monographs, edited volumes, journal articles and research projects in education published during the 1980s were in the fields of didactics and educational psychology (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: Appendixes 3–7). However, the Academy’s evaluation report on Finnish educational research points out the problem with this tendency: Establishing independent faculties of education [such as teacher-education units] signifies the narrowing of educational sciences, the more central position of teacher education at present compared with former decades, and the growing gulf between education and its neighbouring sciences. (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 4; my translation) The report also takes issue with the scarcity of studies in sectors other than didactics and educational psychology (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 161). If the orientation of educational research has been one-sided and narrow, this is also true of the methodological approach. According to Kansanen (1990: 282): [P]sychometric theory and statistical testing have been the core contents in educational methodology, and only lately has the picture seemed to change towards a more balanced situation. (. . .) The postivistic approach based on critical rationalism or [the] empiric-analytical school has nevertheless a strong hold on Finnish educational research, but research reports are no more one-sided than before. Another feature in addition to positivist empiricism seems to be present in Finnish educational research: the lack of a critical tradition with regard to the state. The Academy of Finland refers to this in noting the lack of critical theoretical studies of school-related research: ‘In sum, there is in Finland very little of this kind of development activity that capitalizes on research and might deviate from the officials’ development programmes for schools’ (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 56, 48; my translation). The Academy report continues: Given that most studies concerning the institution of schooling are restricted to official curricula and school reforms, there is a need for a more critical research attitude, and at the same time more vigorous and more innovative experimentation. (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 116) There is considerable irony in the fact that Numminen, a high state official, can state without being contradicted, ‘I have encountered very few writings from educational scientists in which the basic lines of educational policy in

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the country are criticized or even challenged’ (Numminen, 1987: 261). At the same time, however, there is a curious paternalistic flavour in his statement. He could almost be the disgruntled father asking his good and obedient children: ‘Why do you always obey me?’ Educational research in Finland has been positivist in its methodology, but at the same time seems to have been normative in terms of commitment to the values of the official policy. One might say that the research is a product of two different traditions, the old German ‘state ethics’ that has been influential since the nineteenth century, and the Anglo-American empirical research that came to the fore after the Second World War. The former tradition produced the uncritical loyalty to the state of Finnish intellectuals, and the latter tended not to question it. The liveliness of that tradition is evident in a basic theoretical paper outlining the new academic and Master’s-level education programme for primary school teachers at the University of Helsinki: ‘Society gives the goals [for teacher education]. The vision of society should also be the basis of the realization of the degree programme. (. . .) [Although] it is possible to struggle towards the same goals of teacher education as defined by society through different action models’ (Hytönen, 1982: 13; my translation). The will of the personalized society is analogous to the will of the state. Inherent in centralized state control and the lack of a critical tradition is the danger of taking for granted all official, administrative discourse in education. This discourse, according to Bourdieu (1990: 136), has three characteristics: first, ‘it performs a diagnostic, that is, an act of cognition which enforces recognition and which, quite often, tends to affirm what a person or a thing is and what it is universally, for every possible person, and thus objectively’; second, ‘via directives, orders, prescriptions etc., [it] says what people have to do, given what they are’; and third, ‘[I]t says what people really have done, as in autized accounts such as police reports.’

The dualism of omnipotent didactics and traditionbound teaching practice One criterion for professionalism is recognized and institutionally secured knowledge (see, for example, Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988). Academic education produces and maintains the impression of a scientifically based profession to which the expert is actively and intimately related. However, science can never directly guide professional practice, although professionals themselves and their educators may tend to believe it does. Occupational practices are also and, perhaps, principally influenced by an unofficial, unexpressed and often even unconscious level of knowledge that is hidden in the occupational tradition. The ‘hidden’, ‘invisible’, ‘indeterminate’ or ‘tacit’ knowledge (Atkinson & Delamont, 1985; Jamous & Peloille, 1970) comprising these myths and beliefs is doubly secured in comparison with scientific knowledge. One could thus say that the knowledge guaranteeing the prestige and authority of the profession is

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strengthened by a two-level system of legitimation: on the one level is the official, concealed and in principle generally recognized knowledge, and on the other is the unofficial, doubly concealed and tacit knowledge generated within the profession (Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988: 36). On the official level the knowledge is science-generated, which in the case of teachers means educational science, or more precisely educational psychology and didactics. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, is mediated through teaching, both in practice schools and in the field: this is the aspect of teacher training that both the teachers’ union and the state always strongly emphasize. Referring to this official level of knowledge, Thomas Brante (1988: 129) writes thus: all social groups develop specific ideologies or myths, underscoring the beneficial properties of their activities’ in order to ‘justify the activities of the group in a broader context, and also to justify the enterprise to group members. Some scholars also refer to ‘the mythology by which alternative approaches are displaced’ (Ozga & Lawn, 1981: 39), which is strongly related to a belief in the scientific basis of the profession on which problems are considered solvable. The keys to the solutions are to be found in what is very often a narrowly understood concept of science. The interest in knowledge is clearly technical, and there is a tendency to orient towards what are essentially social problems and contradictions from one’s own, omnipotent scientific standpoint. Thus, illnesses are medicalized, crimes turn into judicial problems, and learning difficulties are seen as solvable in a pedagogical, psychological or, even more rigidly, a didactic framework. It is a question of credibility and prestige, of the reproduction of legitimation within the profession: the threat lies in admitting the contradictory nature of reality, the unsolvable nature of many problems, and the framing of professional activity within certain structural conditions. Didactics in Finland is a sub-discipline within educational science. As Kansanen (1987) notes, the ever-broadening formal and official, statute-defined curriculum of the comprehensive school has, in practice veered towards didactics, which both the textbooks and the lectures are duty-bound to explain and justify. He thus characterizes didactics as normative ethics or justification of the official curriculum. It is linked to the nationwide curriculum such that it cannot be understood as a descriptive science or as a theory of teaching. It is entirely normative.7 It is interesting to compare this concept of curriculum/didactics to that used in the sociology of education.Within the critical tradition the curriculum could be characterized as an ideological scenario (see, for example, Rinne, 1987a). Rinne (1987b) also emphasizes its dual nature: it reflects, at the same time, the utopia of a civic society and state educational ideology. There is also a paradoxical double character in the school praxis in which this utopian-ideological

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curriculum meets the hidden curriculum that embraces the basic factors and traditions of the school. This so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ has not always been as well concealed as it is nowadays, when the official curriculum is even referred to as ‘poetry’ (Svingby, 1979) because there is minimum equivalence between its ‘ought-to-be world’ and the ‘to-be world’ of the school reality. It seems reasonable to claim, then, that the didactics in Finnish teacher education, although rigid in terms of explaining and justifying the existing official curriculum as a self-evident, unquestionable and taken-for-granted basis for teacher training, ignores its dual nature. Evidence (Kansanen, 1990: 281) of prevailing confusion among educational scientists between the normative and descriptive nature of didactics, as well as certain efforts to rename it as ‘teaching science’ (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 49), could be indicative of this duality, which is considered unproblematic and is taken for granted. It is also apparent that the major legislative change in 1985 that, in principle, shifted some responsibility for curriculum design to the level of local administrators and even to the school, has had no influence on teacher training (see, for example, CR, 1989: 32–3). At the same time, many writers clearly state that didactics comprises the core of Finnish teacher education (see, for example, CR, 1989; Kansanen, 1989; Lahdes, 1987).Thus, it would be reasonable to conclude that the core discourse of teacher education tends to ignore an important part of the reality of schooling in over-emphasizing didactics. If such is the case, one might find some analogies between the role of didactics in Finnish teacher education and the role of theology in the ancient training for missionaries: it might strengthen one’s faith in the doctrines but does not have much to do with the reality of the heathen to be converted.

Mutual exchange relations and the formation of discursive principles This chapter is a story of the academization of teacher education in Finland and the expansion of educational science through state-centred educational reforms. It is not difficult to find opinions of this development as natural and selfevident. However, there are no ‘natural’ or ‘self-evident’ developments in human societies, simply because they contain willing and active actors who tend to have very different interests and intentions. They do, of course, have their traditions and engage in great societal projects, such as the building of a welfare state that has affected the development of teacher education in Finland as elsewhere, but the current situation cannot be viewed simply as a product of those ‘objective’ tendencies. The most influential forms of ideology in modern societies, according to Anthony Giddens (1979), are precisely those that have to do with, first, the generalization of one’s own group interests; second, the rejection of basic contradictions; and third, the reification that makes the present natural. It could thus be said that serving societal interests beyond the discourses embodied in them is one of the main tasks of scientific social research.

Educational science, the state and teachers 87

The actors in the field are first, the welfare state, represented here mainly by high officials in the National Board of Education and the Ministry of Education, whose mutual tensions are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this study. The second group of actors consists of educational scientists, represented by professors of education: other teacher educators (lecturers, assistants and normal school teachers) appear quite voiceless in the process. The third category is the teachers’ union (OAJ). All three groups have very different positions in the field, and also differ widely in their ability to exert a direct influence in the struggle for its regulation.What appears to matter apart from the traditional and direct forms of power based on different positions and capabilities, however, is the symbolic power based on the ability to define what is good, right, scientific, rational and reasonable. The relationship between the various actors and something Foucault conceptualizes as ‘regimes of truth’ is becoming more significant in concrete, political decision-making in the field. Figure 4.1 should be seen as a hypothetical model, a conceptual tool for further empirical research and, as such, changeable. As a two-dimensional illustration it also represents the materialization of a frozen moment. Furthermore, as an explanatory model it is basically functionalist: it is not about causality, but is rather about functions of which the actors may be unaware and that remain hidden behind the misty rhetoric that is so important in education. The state has recognized educational science as a modern, developed body of knowledge in calling it ‘science’, and has guaranteed its right to speak in the name of those with the highest expertise in educational issues. It employs its representatives as chairs, members and specialists on state committees, for example, and gives it the monopoly in terms of organizing the new form of teacher education. At first, this monopoly was limited under the control and steering of the Council for Teacher Education, but it seems to have consolidated since 1988 when the Council was merged with the Council of Higher Education. The state has also agreed to the demand for the autonomy of educational science in the form of independent faculties. The biggest contribution on the part of the state, however, is the more than tenfold increase in professorships over the last 20 years. For its part, educational science has legitimated the Comprehensive School Reform and has influenced the development of the new school through the directing of research to the issues the state considers necessary, primarily through the Institute for Educational Research. This also meant the acceptance of the dominant position of didactics and educational psychology in the research. Educational scientists have recognized the unquestionable monopoly the state holds in the area of education, especially with respect to the comprehensive school curriculum. Although the state has, to some extent, shared this monopoly with the local authorities since 1985, this does not seem to have prompted new questioning in educational science: scientists have accepted state demands to classify and select student teachers based on the score they receive for teaching skills, and to develop a scientific rationale for doing so.

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STATE

~

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Figure 4.1 Exchange relations between the actors and structures of discourse in the field of teacher education in Finland

As far as the teachers are concerned, the state has accepted higher salaries, especially for primary school teachers, as a ‘price’ for loyalty to its educationalreform ideology, and academic training as basic elements of their professionalization project. It has recognized a certain veto power of the teachers’ union on general educational policy that pertains directly to the teacher’s work and position.The OAJ has not had representatives on all state committees, although its opinion is always sought before important decisions are made. In turn, it has recognized the arena of state action, such as the right to define teacher certification and the curriculum in comprehensive schools and teacher education. It has also been loyal to the educational-reform ideology. Teachers have been granted legitimation with regard to their academic studies and certification. The grading of teaching skills is not solely a state

Educational science, the state and teachers 89

demand, the teachers’ union also being opposed to its abolishment.The OAJ, in turn, accepts the monopoly of educational scientists in organizing teacher training, and acknowledges their expertise on educational issues. Like the state, it seems to recognize the educational sciences, especially didactics and educational psychology, as genuine disciplines in its own sector. One could claim that the ‘relations of exchange’ mentioned above are essential in structuring the discourse in the field of teacher education. A fairly strict ‘regime of truth’, in Foucauldian terms, seems to have developed, based on the three unquestioned hidden principles of discourse that all the actors appear to take for granted. The first of these, a belief in the omnipotence of didactics, serves the professional purposes of both teachers and teacher educators: it offers teachers the promise of a scientific solution to the problems of the teaching profession, whereas for teacher educators it justifies their existence in the academic field. For the state, it is a cornerstone in promoting the idea that pedagogy will solve the problems of the modern school without the need for structural or social changes. The second principle, the state monopoly of the curriculum, was not challenged until the new legislation came into force in 1985. The National Board of Education still defines the basic principles underlining the curriculum and the national core curriculum, but this is probably the most volatile issue. Interestingly, describing the teacher as a curriculum designer and developer has become a trend in the international discourse on teacher professionalism (e.g. Lundgren, 1987). Thus, at least in the long run, recognition of the state’s monopoly of the curriculum might seem to contradict the professional pursuits of teachers. In terms of teacher-education theory, this could be tantamount to emphasizing the development of American-style curriculum theory. Finally, belief in the objective necessity of academic training for the teacher’s occupation has received the least attention in this chapter.There is a vast amount of literature on potential changes in the nature of teachers’ work that has supported the basic argument for raising the level of training. What seems to be of significance, however, is that the most common starting point in this literature is the ‘ought-to-be’ world, primarily certain ideological scenarios, and not the facts related to the real changes in the work.The thinking has been that changes are to be launched through better teacher education, and the various studies on constancy and change in school reality (e.g. Cuban, 1984; Goodlad, 1984; Sirotnik, 1983) do not seem to cast much doubt on this confidence in the omnipotence of research-based scientific teacher training.

Notes 1 Simola, H. (1993) Educational science, the state and teachers: forming the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland, in T.S. Popkewitz (ed.) Changing Patterns of Power: Social Regulation and Teacher Education Reform in Eight Countries (pp. 161–210). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press [essentially abridged and lightly edited].

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2 The 1970s had its political peculiarities, which are not insignificant in analyses of the educational discourse of those days. Student radicalism hit the country with some time lag and a different emphasis than in other Western countries. From the very beginning of the decade, the student movement was dominated by a Sovietoriented Marxist-Leninist student organization (SOL); between 1973 and 1979 it took, on average, over 20 per cent of the votes in direct and secret ballots for student union elections in all Finnish universities (Jalava, 2012; Silvonen, 1990). Given its overwhelming activity and enterprising practices, SOL’s influence was apparent on all political and cultural levels. An interview statement from the influential Chief Secretary of the Economic Council (EVA), described by the Left as the headquarters of Finnish capitalism, reflects the atmosphere very well (interview with Max Jakobson, Tiedonantaja, 1 May 1988). He stated that in the mid 1970s, ‘a very high percentage’ of the representatives of economic institutions tended to think that Finland was inevitably moving towards some kind of socialist system. This is notable because, at the same time, the parliamentary proportion of the radical Left, the People’s Democratic Union, was only 19 per cent, and that of another leftist party, the moderate Social Democrats, 25 per cent. 3 It is illustrative that urban teachers had the right to vote within the bourgeoisie before universal suffrage in 1905, but their colleagues in the country did not. These teachers were active in making plans for a separate union until the 1930s, and the salary-payment systems were different until the 1960s. As Rinne (1988b: 141) states: ‘In town schools there was a school institution controlled by competent trained popular teachers, where in principle the aim was to practice social control and reproduction in the way ordered by the state. The town schools also intermediated, at least in principle, the official curriculum and pedagogy, and in towns was the ground for the new teacher groups, experiments, and services of experts. In the countryside there was up to the 1960s a “reduced basic education”, and quite a few of the people who were in charge of it were unaware of the general will of the state and ideology, at least as far as training is concerned, and quite often they carried out their educational duties on the basis of their experience, not on the basis of training.’ 4 According to a study conducted in 1983, 30 per cent of teachers were supporters of the Conservative Party, 23 per cent supported other non-socialist parties, and only 11 per cent were supporters of leftist parties, whereas at the same time in the Parliamentary elections, the Conservative Party had 22 per cent of the votes and the Left 40 per cent. 5 The Council of Higher Education was replaced in the late 1990s by the Higher Education Evaluation Council, and only then the academic teacher education became free from a special state steering. 6 The following table (Kivinen & Rinne, 1990: 39) shows the development of professorship numbers in education (including associate professorships) in the Nordic countries: Table 4.1 Development of professorship numbers in education (including associate professorships) in four Nordic countries

Finland Sweden Norway Denmark

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1989

3.5 4 2 –

6 4 3 –

7 6 4 2

23 12 12 4

80 18 19 9

106 29 23 11

Educational science, the state and teachers 91

7 Lahdes also emphasizes the close intertwinement of didactics and official, written curricula. He writes (1986: 87; my translation; original emphasis): ‘Didactics generally represent the means by which the precedent curriculum is realized . . .Whereas the curriculum is strategic, didactics are more tactical . . . In itself, there is nothing in principle to prevent a curriculum–didactics merger, and to see them only as different levels of curriculum or didactics.’

References Alapuro, R. & Stenius, H. (1987) Kansanliikkeet loivat kansakunnan [Civic movements created the nation], in R. Alapuro, I. Liikanen, K. Smeds & H. Stenius (eds.) Kansa liikkeessä (pp. 5–49).Vaasa: Kirjayhtymä. Andersson, J.-O. (1989) Controlled restructuring in Finland? Scandinavian Political Studies, 12(4): 373–89. Antikainen, A. (1987) Kasvatuistiede, kasvatussosiologia ja koulutuksen kehittäminen [Educational science, the sociology of education and the development of education]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 18(4): 265–9. Antikainen, A. (1990) The rise and change of comprehensive planning: the Finnish experience. European Journal of Education, 25(1): 75–82. Antikainen, A. & Jolkkonen, A. (1990) Sivistyneistöä vai teknokraatteja? Selvitys tohtoriksi ja professoriksi tulosta Suomen korkeakoululaitoksessa historiassa, kasvatustieteessä, liiketaloustieteessä ja sosiologiassa vuosina 1950–1985 [Intellectuals or Technocrats? A Survey of PhDs and Professors in Finnish Higher Education in the Disciplines of History, Education, Economics and Sociology]. Research Report A 43.Tampere: Department of Education, University of Tampere. Atkinson. P. & Delamont, S. (1985) Socialization into teaching: the research which lost its way. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 6: 307–22. Bourdieu, P. (1977a) Symbolic power, in D. Gleeson (ed.) Identity and Structure: Issues of Sociology of Education (pp. 112–19). Driffield: Nafferton Books. Bourdieu, P. (1977b) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1985) Social space and the genesis of groups. Theory and Society, 14: 723–44. Brante, T. (1988). Sociological approaches to the professions. Acta Sociologica, 31(2): 11942. Central Statistical Office of Finland (1990) Korkeakouluihin hakeneet ja hyväksytyt [The Applicants and those Accepted to Higher Education]. Helsinki: Tilastokeskus. Committee Report (CR) (1975) Vuoden 1973 opettajankoulutustoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1975: 75 [Report of the 1973 Committee for Teacher Education]. Helsinki: Oy Länsi-Suomi, Rauma. Committee Report (CR) (1989) Opettajankoulutuksen kehittämistoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1989: 26 [Report of the Committee for the Development of Teacher Education]. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus. Cuban, L. (1984) How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms 1890–1980. New York: Longman. Educational Research in Finland (1990) Kasvatustieteellinen tutkimus Suomessa. Valtion yhteiskuntatieteellisen toimikunnnan asettaman arviointiryhmän raportti [Educational Research in Finland: Report of an Evaluation Group Appointed by the Research Council for the Social Sciences]. Helsinki: Suomen Alkatemian julkaisuja 1/1990.

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Foucault, M. (1982) The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books. Freidson, E. (1970) Professional Dominance. New York: Aldine. Giddens, A. (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London: Macmillan. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goodlad, J. (1984) A Place Called School. New York: McGraw-Hill. Gouldner, A. (1979) The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Oxford University Press. Haavio, M. (1965) Seminarihenki [The seminar spirit]. Kasvatus ja koulu, 50: 286–91. Halila, A. (1950) Suomen kansakoululaitoksen historia IV. Oppivelvollisuuskoulun alkuvaiheet (1921–1939) [The History of the Finnish Primary School]. Helsinki: WSOY. Henttonen, A. (1987) Pilkkeitä koulu ja lehtimiehen polulta [An Autobiography of the Long-serving Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Teachers Union (OAJ)]. Helsinki: WSOY. Hytönen, J. (1982) Opettajankoulutuksen teoria-aineksia [Theoretical issues for teacher education]. Käytännön sovellutuksena Helsingin yliopiston luokanopettajan koulutusohjelma. Research Report 1. Helsinki: Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Jalava, M. (2012) The University in the Making of the Welfare State:The 1970s Degree Reform in Finland. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Jamous, H. & Peloille, B. (1970) Professions or self-perpetuating systems?, in J.A. Jackson (ed.) Professions and Professionalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, T.J. (1972) Professions and Power. London: Macmillan. Kähkönen, E.I. (1979) Opettajankoulutus Suomen koulunuudistuksessa v. 1958–1978. Yleissivistävän koulun opettajien koulutuksen järjestelyt ja tavoitteet [Teacher Training in the Finnish School Reform Period 1958–1978]. Acta Universitatis Ouluensis, Ser. E Scientiae Rerum Socialium No. 1, Paedagogica No. 1. Oulu: University of Oulu. Kansanen, P. (1987) The curriculum as a factor directing teaching, in P. Malinen & P. Kansanen (eds.) Research in Finnish Curriculum (pp. 47–68). Research Report 53. Helsinki: Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Kansanen, P. (1989) Kvalifikaatio – opettajankoulutuksen elinehto [Qualification – the prerequisite of teacher education]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 20(1): 12–16. Kansanen, P. (1990) Education as a discipline in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 34(4): 271–84. Kansanen, P. & Uljens, M. (1990) Lärärar utbildning in Finland [Teacher education in Finland]. Nordisk Pedagogik, 19(4): 2014–212. Kivinen, O. (1988) Koulutuksen järjestelmäkehitys. Peruskoulutus ja valtiollinen kouludoktriini Suomessa 1800- ja 1900-luvuilla [The Systematization of Education: Basic Education and the State School Doctrine in Finland in the 19th and 20th Centuries]. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Scripta Lingua Fennica Edita C67. Turku: University of Turku. Kivinen, O. & Rinne, R. (1990) The university, the state and professional interest groups: a Finnish lesson in university development policy. Higher Education Policy, 3(3): 15–18.

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Labaree, D.F. (1992) Power, knowledge, and the rationalization of teaching: a genealogy of the movement to professionalize teaching. Harvard Educational Review, 62(2), 123–54. Lahdes, E. (1986) Peruskoulun didaktiikka (The Didactics of Comprehensive School). Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1987) Akateemisen luokanopettajakoulutuksen ensimmäiset askeleet [First Steps in Academic Training for Primary School Teachers]. Kasvatustieteiden tiedekunta, julkaisusarja A: 121. Turku: Turku University. Lanier, J.E. (1986) Research on teacher education, in M. Wittrock (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 527–69). New York: Macmillan. Larson, M.S. (1977) The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lehtisalo, L. & Raivola, R. (1986) Koulutuspolitiikka ja koulutussuunnittelu [Educational Policy and Planning]. Helsinki: WSOY. Lundgren, U.P. (1979) Att organisera omvarlden: en introduktion till laroplansteori [Organising the Environment: An Introduction to Curriculum Theory]. Stockholm: Liber. Lundgren, U.P. (1987) New Challenges for Teachers and their Education. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Standing Conference of European Ministers of Education, Helsinki, May 1987. Numminen, J. (1984) Vastauksia kasvatustieteilijöille [Responses to educational scientists]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 15(4): 322–5. Numminen, J. (1987) Yliopistokysymys [The University Question]. Helsinki: WSOY Nurmi,V. (1984) Opettajien asema tutkimuksen näkökulmasta [The position of teachers from the research perspective]. Opettaja, 8: 8–11. Ozga, J. & Lawn, M. (1981) Teachers, Professionalism and Class: A Study of Organized Teachers. London: Falmer Press. Popkewitz, T.S. (ed.) (1987) Critical Studies in Teacher Education: Its Folklore, Theory and Practice. London: Falmer Press. Popkewitz, T.S. (1991) A Political Sociology of Educational Reform: Power/Knowledge in Teaching,Teacher Education, and Research. New York: Teachers College Press. Rinne, R. (1987a) Onko opetussuunnitelma ideologiaa – Opetussuunnitelma aikakautensa sosiaalisten ehtojen raamittamana skenaariona (Is the curriculum ideologcal?), in P. Malinen & P. Kansanen (eds.) Opetussuunnitelman tutkimukselliset kehykset (Research Framework for Curriculum Studies) (ss. 95–129).Tutkimuksia 48. Helsinki: Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Rinne, R. (1987b) Has somebody hidden the curriculum? The curriculum as a point of intersection between the utopia of civic society and the state control, in P. Malinen & P. Kansanen (eds.) Research Frames of the Finnish Curriculum (pp. 95–116). Research Report 53. Helsinki: Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Rinne, R. (1988a) Kansan kasvattajasta opetuksen ammattilaiseksi: suomalaisen kansanopettajan tie [From an educator of the people to a professional in teaching: the path of the Finnish primary school teacher]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 19(6): 430–44. Rinne, R. (1988b) The formation and professionalization of the popular teachers in Finland in the 20th century, in T. Iisalo & R. Rinne (eds.) Läraren i 1900-talets kultur och samhälle (pp. 106–48). Research Reports A: 135. Turku: Faculty of Education, University of Turku. Rinne, R. & Jauhiainen, A. (1988) Koulutus, professionaalistuminen ja valtio. Julkisen sektorin koulutettujen reproduktioammattikuntien muotoutuminen Suomessa [Education,

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Professionalization, and the State: The Formation of an Educated Public Sector in Finland]. Kasvatustieteiden tiedekunnan julkaisusarja A: 128. Turku: Turku University. Rust,V.D. & Blackmore, K. (1990) Educational reform in Norway and in England and Wales: corporatist interpretation. Comparative Education Review, 34(4): 500–22. Silvonen, J. (1990) Suomalaisen opiskelijaliikkeen valtiosuhteesta [On the relationship to the state of the Finnish student movement]. Politiikka, 32(1): 286–96. Sirotnik, K.A. (1983) What you see is what you get: consistency, persistency, and mediocrity in classrooms. Harvard Educational Review, 53(1): 16–31. Svingby, G. (1979) Fran laroplanspoesi till klassrumverklighet [From Curricular Poetry to Classroom Reality]. Malmo: Liber. Viljanen, E. (1985) Opettajankoulutu tutkimuksen valossa tarkasteltuna [Teacher education in the light of research], in P. Moilanen (ed.) Opettajankoulutuksen tutkimus Jyväskylän yliopistossa (pp. 10–13). Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Wittrock, B. & Wagner, P. (1990) Social science and state developments: the structuration of discourse in social sciences, in S. Brooks & A.-G. Gagnon (eds.) Social Scientists, Policy, and the State (pp. 113–37). New York: Praeger.

Chapter 5

The birth of the modern Finnish teacher A Foucauldian exercise 1 with S. Heikkinen & J. Silvonen

Education is a phenomenon with very obvious links to three main themes of Michel Foucault’s work: knowledge, subjectivity and power. Foucault has been characterized, and with reason, as a philosophical nomad, always on the move. This unceasing movement might make his work seem like a series of provocative desertions of promising themes and standpoints. However, this should not prevent us from seeing that, like a nomad, he was always practising the same trade: the name of the trade, we argue in this chapter, is a history of truth. We thus emphasize the continuity and coherence of Foucault’s work rather than its ruptures. We also believe that treating knowledge, subjectivity and power as interrelated, which in our opinion is the essence of a Foucauldian history of truth, can offer new insights into research on education. Our aim in this chapter is, first, to formulate our interpretation of a Foucauldian history of truth that connects knowledge, self and power as technologies of truth, as an intertwining of techniques of discourse, self and government. Second, we demonstrate the use of this ‘catalogue of possibilities’ in studying the ‘truths’ of modern teacherhood. Finally, we discuss further potential applications of the Foucauldian history of truth in the field of education research. When we refer to Foucault as a historian of truth, we mean that truth as ‘something that can and must be thought’ (Foucault, 1985: 7) was a phenomenon he considered worth studying. The question he asks is not, ‘What is true?’ but rather, ‘How is truth created?’The ‘games of truth’ that interested him could be played in the three-dimensional space of knowledge, subjectivity and power. He examines practices and techniques for the production of truth, the constitution of the truth-willing subject, and the separation of true and false – in other words, techniques of discourse, self and government. We call the ensemble of these techniques technologies of truth (cf. Heikkinen et al., 1999).

Knowledge: the techniques of discourse A field of knowledge, for Foucault, is a twilight zone between or beyond several conventional dichotomies in the history of ideas or sciences: science versus

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ideology, internal to versus external to science, true versus false, logic versus linguistics, and words versus things. From the perspective of truth production, however, the central question is not whether the truth is true or false, scientific or ideological, but how it is produced, circulated, transformed and used. Foucault’s analysis of discourses represents his attempts to illuminate that twilight zone of knowledge, ‘to reveal a positive unconscious of knowledge’ (Foucault, 1991b: xi). Discourses, in the Foucauldian sense of the word, are first and foremost techniques, practices and rules, which fall into three sets: those concerning the speaking subject, those connected with power relations, and those internal to the discourse itself. Our aim in this section is to clarify the key points in Foucault’s arguments on the subjects of knowledge, discourses and truth. First of all, Foucault rejects the notion of defining knowledge purely as a linguistic or logical phenomenon. There is a domain in which discourse ‘exercises its own control’, but it is not the domain of pure ideas, rather that of the internal rules of discourse. Foucault (1971: 12–17) classifies these rules into three forms of identity control and discourse regulation: (i) the identity of ‘repetition and sameness’ effected by the rule of ‘commentary’, the play between primary texts and secondary texts; (ii) the identity of ‘individuality and the I’ achieved through the principle of ‘author’; and (iii) the identity ‘taking the form of a permanent reactivation of the rules’ of discourse, produced by the rule of ‘disciplines’. Second, Foucault (1971: 21) rejects ‘the philosophy of a founding subject’, in other words the absolute priority of the knowing subject, and defines the subject in discourse as ‘a particular, vacant place that may in fact be filled by different individuals’ (Foucault, 1972: 95). Such a place cannot be filled by anyone, however. There are certain discursive rules that regulate access to the place of a speaking subject. Foucault divides these rules of rarefacation among speaking subjects into four categories: (i) ‘verbal rituals’, which determine the required ‘individual properties and agreed roles of the speakers’; (ii) ‘fellowships of discourse’, the function of which is ‘to preserve and to reproduce discourse within a closed community’; (iii) ‘doctrinal groups’, the effect of which is ‘a dual subjection, that of speaking subjects to discourse, and that of discourse’ to the doctrinal groups; and (iv) mechanisms of ‘social appropriation’ regulating the access to subject status (Foucault, 1971: 17–19). Finally, Foucault rejects the assumption that the relationship between the knowing subject and knowledge could be immediate. In stating that it is always mediated through power relations, he thus abandons the assumption that ‘knowledge can exist only where power relations are suspended’, and claims that there is no ‘knowledge that does not presuppose’ power relations (Foucault, 1977: 27). Power relations are seen not as external to the field of knowledge but as immanent to it: ‘Indeed, it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together’ (Foucault, 1980: 100). The functioning of power relations in a field of knowledge takes its most distinct shape in the discursive techniques

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Foucault calls procedures of exclusion. He divides these procedures into three categories: (i) ‘prohibited words’, which make it obvious ‘that we cannot simply speak of anything, when we like or where we like’; (ii) the principle of ‘division and rejection’, or ‘the division of madness’, which defines the border between reason and folly; and (iii) the ‘will to truth’, a historical form of the ‘will to knowledge’ (Foucault, 1971: 8–10).

Subject: the techniques of self In 1983, Foucault stated that the aim of his work during the previous twenty years had been ‘to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects’ (Foucault, 1983b: 208). He rejected an a priori theory of the subject: the subject is not a substance but a form.The basic question is thus ‘how the subject constitutes him/herself through practices that are basically related to power and knowledge’ (Foucault, 1988a: 10).These practices and techniques of subjectivation could be divided into three dimensions: modes of subjectivation, the will to knowledge and the art of governmentality. First, there is an ethical axis referring to self–self relations. Foucault writes about four modes of subjectivation. (i) Ethical substance refers to ‘the way in which the individual has to constitute this or that part of himself as a prime material of moral conduct’ (Foucault, 1985: 26–7), the material that is going to be worked over by ethics (Foucault, 1983a: 238). (ii) The mode of subjection determines ‘the way in which people are invited or incited to recognize their moral obligations’ (ibid.: 239), which could be formulated, for example, as a divine law, a natural law, a cosmological order or a rational rule. (iii) The practices of the self are ‘the means by which we can change ourselves in order to become the ethical subjects’ (ibid.: 239). (iv) The goal of the ethical life or telos determines ‘the kind of being to which we aspire when we behave in a moral way’ (ibid.: 239): it is the moral teleology (Foucault, 1985: 32), a mode of ethical fulfilment (Foucault, 1986: 239–40). The second dimension of subject creation is its power axis, because subjectivation also involves being ‘subject to someone else by control and dependence’ (Foucault, 1986: 212). Whereas the will to knowledge constitutes techniques that relate the subject to knowledge, the subject is related to the others through the art of governmentality. It is the capacity simultaneously to govern and to be governed. It concerns practices that ‘are frequently linked to the techniques for the direction of others’ as, for example, in ‘educational institutions’ (Foucault, 1983a: 250). The question is of (moral) behaviours that will always be realized in relations between forces or in power relations (Foucault, 1985: 25–6). There are at least three modes here. (i) Stylistics of existence is a mode of being in response to certain relationships with others in an extensive and complex field of power (Foucault, 1985: 86; 1986: 71); (ii) mastery of norms means both subjection to the rules of social games and the ability to capitalize on them; and (iii) governmentality is the link between

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the technologies of domination of others and those of the self (Foucault, 1988b: 19). The third mode refers to ‘the totality of practices, by which one can constitute, define, organize, instrumentalize the strategies which individuals in their liberty can have in regard to each other. It is free individuals who try to control, to determine, to delimit the liberty of others and, in order to do that, they dispose certain instruments to govern others’ (Foucault, 1988a: 19–20). The third dimension, the truth axis, consists of techniques for constituting the self both as a subject of knowledge and as a knowing subject (Foucault, 1988a: 11). It is not possible to construct oneself as a knowing subject without having a certain (practical and material) stance on knowledge, referred to here as the will to knowledge (e.g. Foucault, 1983a: 251–2). At least three elements constitute this will. (i) The subject is to be willing and able to undertake self-examination, ready to produce knowledge from the self for him/ herself (Foucault, 1988b: 46; see also 1983a: 250). (ii) The subject has to be open to codification and classification (see, for example, Foucault, 1985: 30); one cannot become a subject without a certain number of rules of conduct or of principles, which are truths and regulations at the same time. It is a question of fitting one’s self out with these truths (Foucault, 1988a: 5). And (iii) the subject has to be open to confession, ready to produce individual knowledge for institutions of knowledge. Forms of confession include the Christian confessional and the psychotherapeutic session (Foucault, 1983b: 215).

Power: the techniques of government Foucault tried to outline the ‘analytics’ of power rather than create a general theory. Power is not only negative, ruling, prohibiting, censoring and uniformly dominating, but also positive, productive and creative (Foucault, 1980: 199). It is exercised over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free (Foucault, 1983b: 221). It is a total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible actions, a set of actions upon other actions. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others (ibid.: 220). A ‘regime of truth’ is linked with systems of power that produce and sustain it (Foucault, 1980: 133). In this relational sense, Foucault uses the term gouvernementalité, which apart from meaning to control and to guide could also refer to a certain mentality that is willing and able to be governed. In the following, we summarize Foucauldian analytics of power in three techniques: the ordering of forces, disciplining practices and individualizing practices. First, there is a specific domain of power and its associated techniques, which we call the ordering of forces, that focus on how power is exercised as a tactical and strategic game, from innumerable points, from below, immanently on other relationships, both intentionally and non-subjectively. It is a question of the multiplicity of relations and positions immanent to power relations in their own organization (Foucault, 1990: 92–102). The techniques of this specific domain of power include concepts such as the microphysics of power,

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bio-power, political economy of the body and political technology of the individual. Second, there are techniques of government connecting knowledge and power (Foucault, 1983b: 216–19), which could be called disciplining practices that constitute a strategic dimension of power realized as manoeuvres of normativity, strategic integration and tactical productivity. Discipline here means being subjugated to both a certain specialized domain of knowledge and a certain regime and order. Disciplining refers not so much to heightened obedience and allegiance as to the ordering and organizing of the mutual relation between the basic relationships so that they become more sophisticated, rational and economical as they are subject to more and more surveillance. Perhaps one of the best examples of disciplining practices is the examination, in which the exercise of power and the production of knowledge are linked (Foucault, 1977). The third dimension is the level connecting the self and power. These techniques are called individualizing practices here, producing at the same time facts, subject domains and rituals of truth. Foucault also refers to dividing practices in which the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the criminal and the ‘good boy’ are divided both within themselves and from the others (Foucault, 1983b: 208). It works rather inside local communities than from the outside, or from the top down in modern power regimes. The pastoral techniques of power could be considered the most typical individualizing practice (Foucault, 1983a: 213–16).

A catalogue of possibilities We have attempted to demonstrate that it is reasonable to describe Foucault as a historian of truth.The domain of a Foucauldian history of truth, according to our interpretation, could be summarized in the form of a knowledge–subject– power (K–S–P) triangle, which illustrates the elements of the processes of truth production we refer to as technologies of truth, (in details, see Heikkinen et al., 1999).This triangle consists of three K–S–P sub-triangles, each of which is then further divided into three dimensions (see Figure 5.1). Foucauldian ‘totality’ thus has three dimensions, each of which has a totality in it. Techniques of self, for example, comprises an element of these technologies of truth, but at the same time contains the three dimensions of knowledge (will to knowledge), power (art of governmentality) and subject (modes of subjectivation). Foucault’s work, as we see it, resembles an onion that reveals layer after layer when peeled. A Foucauldian historian of truth, in our sketch, is a person asking ‘How?’ in the middle of the ‘What–Who–Why’ triangle. He or she is trying to answer the following questions: What is the truth that ‘can and must be thought’? What is the field of knowledge in which the truth is produced? Who can take the place of the truth-speaking subject? Why is that truth produced? How is the truth produced? What are its technologies? In what way are techniques of discourse,

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SUBJECT (WH 0)

Modes of subjectivation TECHNIQUES OF SELF

Willto knowledge

'Rarefication of speaking subjects

TECHNOLOGIES OFTRUTH (HOW)

TECHNIQUES OF DISCOURSE Internal rules of discourse

Artof governmentality

Systems of exclusion

KNOWLEDGE (WHAT)

Individualizing practices TECHNIQUES OF GOVERNMENT

Disciplining practices

Ordering offorces

POWER (WHY)

Figure 5.1 Technologies of truth

of subjectivation and of government connected to each other to produce simultaneously certain ‘fields of knowledge, types of normativity and forms of subjectivity’? (Foucault, 1985: 4). We claim at the beginning of this chapter that education as a social phenomenon is tightly linked with Foucault’s basic themes: knowledge, subjectivity and power. It is now evident to us that the Foucauldian problematic of knowledge is relevant to the study of systems of education, the main purpose of which is precisely to transmit knowledge. It is also quite clear that education is one of the ‘modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects’ (Foucault, 1983b: 208), which again turns to Foucauldian techniques of self. Furthermore, it would require a huge amount of naïveté to dispute the claim that education as a social apparatus is a game of power, and is dependent on other power relations. One might thus use one or more of these three aspects in applying Foucault’s ideas to education research, examining educational

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systems as promoters of knowledge subordinated to games of power, for example, or scrutinizing how schooling produces the modern individual, or analysing school as a disciplining and punishing institution, a crypto-prison. Without denying the potential in these kinds of approach, however, we would like to emphasize another application of Foucault’s work, the interaction of themes of knowledge, subjectivity and power – in our opinion, this is the central and most fruitful angle in his writing. Although we emphasize the coherence and systematicity of Foucault’s thinking, we do not consider the triangle presented in Figure 5.1 an omnipotent theory. In fact, we think it futile to look for a grand theory in his oeuvre, which consists of empirical studies that he characterized as ‘philosophical fragments put to work in a historical field of problems’ (Foucault, 1991c: 74). Therefore, the contribution of his work, apart from his empirical results, is not as a theory to be used for the purposes of explanation in research on the historical problematics of knowledge, subjectivity and power, but as a ‘catalogue of possibilities’, a ‘meta-methodological device’ or a ‘heuristic tool’ to be used in various kinds of empirical studies. This is what our triangle is supposed to be. As a ‘catalogue of possibilities’ it could also be used in education research, which we attempt to prove with the help of an example that deals with the birth of the modern Finnish teacher.

Truths of the modern Finnish teacher The modern Finnish teacher came into being in the 1970s – sometimes described as the ‘Golden Era of Educational Reforms’. Discursive changes accompanying these reforms, as both their product and producer, were no less dramatic.The comprehensive school presented itself as the New School and did its best to distinguish itself from the old elementary school. Similarly, new teachers and educational scientists distanced themselves from their predecessors. It is not an exaggeration to say that a new ‘truth’ about both school and teacher was created.The following discussion is based on a study (Simola, 1995) analysing the official school discourse in Finland from the 1860s to the 1990s. We present four truths of the modern teacher and two discursive principles for serious and authoritative speaking about the modern Finnish teacher. Although the study is based on official text material, it is limited to an archaeological analysis. Thus, it tells more about the field of knowledge than about the fields of self and power. We do show, however, that the immanent existence of all three dimensions is of essential importance. Where are the truths of the modern teacher to be found? The committee and curricular texts that constitute the research material discussed here are serious and authoritative verbal acts of experts speaking as experts, who with their speech form the official truth on teaching. They are — to quote Foucault — discursive ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972: 49). Although they are products of individuals, they give the

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SUBJECT

Whatmust a teacher pursue to be "good"l WHOIS THE "GOOD" TEACHERI

What must a "good" teacher want to knowl

How must a "good" teacher be able to govern and to be governedl

TRUTHS OF THE MODERN TEACHER Who is authorized to speak about teaching and howl WHAT IS THE "TRUE" KNOWLEDGE ABOUT TEACHINGI What is to be spoken about teaching and howl KNOWLEDGE

What is not to be spoken abou1 teaching and howl

How are the teacher and the pupil to be individualized WHAT KIND OF POWER IS "RIGHT"1 How are the teacher and the pupil to be examinedl

How is the teacher bound up in relations of forcesl POWER

Figure 5.2 Truths about the modern teacher: a preliminary questionnaire

appearance of anonymity, of an official truth (especially when circulating as law texts or administrative orders, but also as state documents). One could assume that in these texts are to be found traces and marks of what is the ‘true’ knowledge about teaching, what the ‘good’ teacher is like, and what kind of power is ‘right’ in the field of schooling. The Foucauldian K–S–P triangle was used in the first step of Simola’s (1995) study as a ‘catalogue of possibilities’ to formulate the following questions and sub-questions with the help of which the text material was ‘interviewed’ (Figure 5.2). These questions formed a springboard for the research process, starting a hermeneutic circle between the empirical data and the theoretical framework in which the questions were reformulated again and again, and where four truths on modern Finnish teacherhood were finally distilled. Our aim in the following is to show how ‘new’ truths on teacherhood (T1–T4) have replaced the ‘old’ truths in the official school discourse.

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The ‘true’ knowledge about teaching Ever since ethics and psychology separated from religion at the beginning of the twentieth century, the knowledge base of teaching, in other words the field of educational studies, has consisted of pedagogical, psychological, philosophical, societal and practical knowledge. Until the Second World War – and in certain respects even until the 1960s – educational aims came from ethics and the prerequisites from psychology. The task of pedagogy was to combine these two premises into practical teaching methods. The character of educational studies was ideological on the one hand, because they were to develop devotion to and consciousness of the mission in the teacher. On the other hand, educational knowledge was to be practical and provide a repertoire of teaching methods to apply in the various circumstances of the teacher’s work. The stance on the empirical, academic educational science that had been emerging since the 1950s was rather lukewarm. One could conclude that, until the mid 1960s, educational studies in teacher training were multiple, pragmatic and ideological, based on psychology and ethics, and related to the needs of teaching practices as interpreted by the National Board of Education (NBE). Training and its contents were directly and strictly controlled and administered by the NBE, which confirmed the curriculum and the syllabus, accepted the textbooks and, if desired, its representative even chaired the examinations. The 1967 report of the teacher-training committee was the turning point. The teacher as a science-legitimated expert replaced the teacher as a welleducated handyman. It was stipulated in the 1969 report that responsibility for teacher education was to be wholly assigned to the universities, and in the 1975 report that the training was to be raised to the Master’s degree level. Through the scientification of teacher education it was hoped to transform teaching from ‘a haphazard activity into a rational one’ (CR, 1975: 40).The new teacher was to become a ‘didactic thinker’ and ‘researcher into his/her work’ (CR, 1967, 1975).The student teacher of the 1990s would grind his or her way through educational studies five times as long as those of his or her fellow student in the 1960s. Practical, philosophical and even societal knowledge were almost completely deleted from the knowledge foundation of the teacher’s work from the late 1970s. This ‘disciplination’ of the teacher’s knowledge base culminated in the 1989 committee report that refers to ‘didactically oriented educational science’ as virtually the only source of true knowledge for teaching. Among the rhetoric on the multiplicity of the teacher’s work was only one reference to educational psychology, and none to sociology or the history of education, for example. One could thus conclude that the ‘old’ truth – the knowledge base of teaching as a multiple, pragmatic and ideological combination of ethical, psychological, pedagogical, historical and content knowledge determined by the NBE – was replaced in the late 1960s with the ‘new’ truth (T1), whereby a didactically oriented educational science forms the knowledge base of the teacher’s work.

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The ‘good’ teacher The concept of the teacher as a ‘model citizen’ has permeated the official discourse. Given that the duty of the primary school teacher was to make sure that every citizen achieved the proper level of decent manners and behavioural habits, teachers were carefully recruited according to the same premises. Traditionally, the teacher was to be an exemplary citizen both externally and internally (see also Rinne, 1986, 1988a).The criterion of external exemplariness did not disappear from the official texts until the 1980s, and finally from the legislation in the 1990s. The notion of teachers’ inner exemplariness has been even more persistent, although the content has changed. Democratic values gradually replaced the Christian ethos between the 1940s and 1970s. A ‘pedagogical love’ of children shifted to the more cognitive ‘correct educational attitude’ or – as a curricular committee report for teacher training put it in the late 1960s – the student teacher should have a ‘positive attitude towards the school and the career of teacher, and an interest in pupils and their development’ (CR, 1968: 9). Emotions were thus directed towards the institution and the profession rather than the pupils. Goal consciousness emerged in the 1970 curriculum as an essential quality of the teacher for the new comprehensive school, and the teacher’s obligation ‘to pursue the attainment of goals stated for the comprehensive school’ was written into the legislation in 1984 (CUR, 1985: 59). Commitment to goals then constituted the point at which the institutional belief in mass schooling intersected with the conviction that the power of the official curriculum was the main tool for developing school practices. Furthermore, it was believed that these goals were, in some reasonable sense, attainable and realistic. One could thus conclude that the old truth – that model citizenship and consciousness of mission are the key occupational qualities of a teacher – has little by little given way to the new truth focusing on internal rather than external exemplariness. The good intention, the right attitude and a deep belief in schooling are now at the core of model citizenship in the modern teacher. Goal consciousness has replaced both the traditional consciousness of the mission and external exemplarity. Thus, the second truth (T2) of the modern Finnish teacher could be formulated as follows: Goal consciousness is the key professional quality of the teacher. The third truth deals with the object of teachers’ work: is it a group of pupils or the individual pupil? Finnish pre-Second World War curricular and committee texts rarely referred to pupils as individuals. Although its benefits for the people were mentioned, mass schooling was principally legitimated by the needs of society, the Nation and the Fatherland.When a child or a pupil was spoken of in the singular, it was in the sense of the generalized individual – in other words, as a member of the group of Finnish children who were to be educated. There was just one, albeit significant exception to this. The ‘founding father’ of the Finnish elementary school, Uno Cygnaeus, noted in 1860 that the

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task of the elementary school was ‘to awake and to develop those individual inclinations that nature has implanted in each child’ (Cygnaeus, 1910: 295). It is remarkable that during the next 80 years there were no references of this kind to the original solitary individuals the school promised to take into account. Only after the Second World War did the modern individual emerge at the side of Society as a legitimate target of compulsory schooling, although still clearly subordinated to the interests of Society: the clear mission of the compulsory school was to train citizens for Society. The modern individual surpassed Society as the primordial source of legitimation for schooling in Finland only in the late 1960s. The curriculum code was cracked and turned individualist, the main ethos residing in the new promise to respond to the individual learning needs and qualities of each pupil. The 1970 curriculum proposed the core of the new individualist discourse in stating that pedagogical expediency and flexibility were more important than the number of pupils. At the same time, the basic problem of teaching mentioned in official texts shifted from the number of pupils to the diversity of pupil personalities.The work of the teacher changed from moulding the school life of a group of pupils to focusing on the individual. Corresponding with this break, there was a dramatic change in the skills that were officially considered necessary for a teacher. Talk about discipline and order in the classroom first gave way to the concept of ‘peace for work’ (CUR, 1970). Later the whole issue of maintaining ‘a socially positive order’ in the classroom – including topics such as classroom management and social psychology – was moved from theoretical studies to teaching practice in teacher-education texts (CR, 1975). The courses were filled with educational science instead. The new pedagogical notion of ‘differentiation in teaching’ was proposed as a basic tool for taking the diversity of pupils into account in the classroom. Whereas the teacher in the ‘old school’ was supposed to give individual attention only to those with problems in adapting to classroom discipline, the ‘new teacher’ promised to treat everybody as individuals. The teacher, whether a class teacher with 20 pupils or a subject teacher with 200, should know every pupil, and ‘be aware of the learning-related factors of the individual pupils’ home environment’ as well as ‘of the previous learning results, abilities, attitudes, expectations and the health condition of the pupil’ (CR, 1975: 32–3). The promise to respond to pupil diversity culminated in the most recent texts in which an emphasis on the ethical character of work adds weight to the teacher’s individual-centred task (CR, 1989). The 1994 curriculum depicts the teacher as a ‘counsellor of learning’ and a ‘designer of the learning environments’ of the individual ‘learners’. The school now undertakes to offer ‘individual study plans’, or even ‘personal curriculums’ in accordance with learning needs and pupil qualities (CUR, 1994: 10, 20). Thus, whereas the omnipotence of the school in the 1970s and 1980s was based on didactics, it now seems to lean on flexible organization and school-based curricula.

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We therefore claim that the ‘old’ truth – teachers’ work is to mould the school life of a group of pupils – changed in the late 1960s to a new one: (T3) Teachers’ work is an individual-centred task.

The ‘right’ power in schooling Grading and assessing the pupil were not problematized in official school discourse before the 1960s. The theme was not even mentioned in curricular or committee texts, although all the decrees determining the tasks of teachers clearly prescribed that the teacher shall ‘check and supervise the exercises, carry out the grading and prepare the report cards of pupils’. This state of affairs was attributable to the existence of the parallel school system, which severely limited the selective function of the elementary school. It was only in 1960 that ‘the assessment of learning results and grading the pupils’ was first mentioned as one aspect of pedagogics in teacher training (CR, 1960: 77). A dramatic change occurred in the comprehensive-school texts in 1966 when examination became a constant and central element of the official school discourse. The 1966 report noted the problem that traditional grading and assessment gave quantitatively and qualitatively limited information about the progress of pupils in their studies. Pupils, parents and teachers, following the lead of educational institutes and employers, acknowledged the need for comprehensive and individual assessment during school years, and for objective and comparable grading in the leaving certificate.Verbal reports for the former and standardized tests for the latter purpose were proposed.These two main examination techniques – grading by marks and assessment by words – have served ever since as the basis for the two main functions of schooling: grading for the selection of pupils and assessment for the inscription of self-selection into them. Educational science is thus seen as both legitimating profound intervention in the personality of the pupil and offering the tools for carrying it out. The 1985 curriculum heralded a rupture in the tradition according to which ‘the assessment carried out by the teacher would be focused on the performance and certain concrete behaviour of the pupil but not on his/her personality as a whole’ (CUR, 1970: 52). Since then, ‘the achievement of general educational goals that are notable for the whole development of the pupil’ have been taken into account alongside knowledge and skills criteria in the grading of school subjects (CUR, 1985: 30). Examples of such criteria are mentioned, including ‘active participation’, ‘the ability and willingness to cooperate’, and ‘a positive attitude and the willingness to act according to the educational goals’ (ibid.: 31). Assessment is presented in 1985, above all, as a service to the pupil himself or herself while ‘giving a realistic picture of his/her potential in continuing studies, for example’ (ibid.: 29–30). This emphasis on examination as an objective and comparable, comprehensive and individual resource for self-selection in the pupil culminates in the 1994 curriculum: assessment ‘supports most effectively the progress of the individual learning

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process of the pupil, strengthening the self-confidence and identification of his/her own abilities and skills’ (CUR, 1994: 25). Thus, one can see the move from the old truth of the limited and partial, external and formal elementary-school examination that guaranteed citizenship to the individual, and the in-depth, exact and multifaceted comprehensive-school assessment system that works for objective selection and, more and more, for the inscription of self-selection into the pupil.Therefore, the fourth truth could be formulated as follows (T4): Comprehensive assessment and the objective grading of pupils is one of the basic tasks of the teacher.

Pastoral professionalism as a tacit principle of discourse The four truths reconstructed above have emerged from an ‘archaeological’ analysis of the official texts aimed at tracing various veins of the concept of modern teacherhood, veins originating in different decades and emanating from different sources. These truths are the cornerstones of modern teacherhood in Finnish state educational discourse. They constitute the ‘positive unconscious of knowledge’ in the field of schooling, the unconscious that determines what knowledge is accepted as ‘true’ for the teacher, what is the essence of the ‘good’ teacher and what is the ‘right’ way to use power in schooling. We summarize these ‘truths’ as follows: (T1) A didactically oriented educational science forms the knowledge base for the teacher’s work. (T2) Goal consciousness is the key professional quality of the teacher. (T3) The teacher’s work is an individual-centred task. (T4) The comprehensive assessment and objective grading of pupils is a vital duty of the teacher. Our aim in this section is to put these truths into a larger context. This enables us, on the one hand, to widen the archaeological perspective and analyse the official Finnish school discourse as part of a broader epistemological space (Foucault, 1991b: xi) specific to the period, say, from the 1960s onwards. On the other hand, we come to the threshold of a ‘genealogy’ of institutions and practices of education. However, we remain standing on the threshold because the official texts we use as source material tell us nothing about actual non-discursive practices in schooling. While truths T1–T4 describe what must be said in order to be taken as a serious expert speaker in this specific discursive field, in the following we suggest answers to other questions: How is it to be spoken? Who can speak the truth? Why is it spoken? We summarize our tentative, and in no way exhaustive, answers as two tacit principles of discourse, which are sort of ‘meta-truths’ defining rules or codes of the truth-game in this discursive field. We characterize these principles as tacit because they have yet

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to be articulated explicitly. We call them tacit principles of wishful rationalism and pastoral professionalism. If wishful rationalism (see a detailed presentation in Chapter 1 of this book), mainly constitutes an institutional framework discourse of schooling, pastoral professionalism could be seen as a discursive principle that directly constructs the modern teacher.The first component of pastoral professionalism in teaching is indivi-dualism. It is generally known that a basic argument for accepting teaching as a full profession is its comparability with archetypal professions such as medicine and law. However, little attention has been paid to the difference under consideration here. Whereas doctors and lawyers meet clients individually, teachers meet groups of clients. The teacher still has a mass clientele and the possibility of dialogic interaction is very limited. Let us consider just two hypothetical situations. How would a physician survive in a situation in which, say, 25 patients with their individual problems had to be attended to in the same room? How would a lawyer cope if he or she had to plead for a group consisting of rapists, pickpockets, drunken drivers and tax dodgers all at the same time? (Simola, 1993: 179–80). One might say that this individualism makes it possible to create an individual-centred professional ethos for teaching. It is a critical issue because individualism is related to changes in the way the teacher uses power. In the case of obligatory mass schooling it is a question of justifying more and more systematic, comprehensive and sophisticated examination. These changes become evident if we compare the power relations between teacher and pupil in the ‘old’ elementary and the modern comprehensive school. Whereas the teacher in the old school was supposed only to treat those with problems in adapting to the disciplined life of the classroom as individuals, the modern teacher promises to treat everybody as such and, by offering individual study programmes and personal curricula, to respond to the learning interests and qualities of every pupil (see Chapter 4 of this book). The truth about the individual pupil, which the teacher of the old school was supposed to know and tell, was partial and limited to general conduct on a pass/ fail scale, and in school subjects on a numerical scale.The modern teacher needs to be convinced of his or her ability, and of the justification, to penetrate the most secret nooks of the personality of the pupil, and should promise to tell the whole truth. Whereas it was clear to the teacher in the old school that school success was not available to all pupils, the new teacher, believing in the egalitarian omnipotence of the school institution and in the science-legitimated humanism of academic pedagogy, promises salvation for every child. Finally, whereas there was a clear and open, coercive and sanctioned obligation to follow the commands of compulsory schooling in the old school, the modern school rather invites and induces, declaring and underscoring a right to learning. Power in modern schooling, indeed, seems to work inductively and invitingly rather than through coercion and command, positively and productively rather than negatively and preventatively.

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One can see here a certain ‘pastoralization’ of power in the sense that Foucault (1983a: 213–16) used the word. He characterizes pastoral power as a historically unique, ‘tricky combination in the same political structures of individualization techniques and of totalization procedures’ (ibid.: 213–16), which was born with Christianity and its modernized form could be seen as a basic technique of Western nation-states. According to Foucault, Christianity is the only religion that has organized itself as a church in which certain individuals can serve others as pastors: first, working for the salvation of parishioners; second, sacrificing themselves for these parishioners if necessary; third, treating them as individuals; and finally, possessing special knowledge of their souls. Pastoralization is thus a vital technique in the process of governmentalization, which is the essence of the modern state.There are three characteristics of this new pastoral power that distinguish it from its ecclesiastical precursor: first, the promised salvation concerns this world rather than the next; second, the officials have changed; and third, ‘the multiplication of the aims and agents of pastoral power focuses the development of knowledge of man around two roles: one, globalizing and quantitative, concerning the population; the other, analytical, concerning the individual’ (ibid.: 215). The new forms of pastoral power create, first of all, the new pupil who is willing and able to engage in self-evaluation and self-selection. This means that pupils undergo constant assessment and grading, and invest in and incline themselves towards the faith of schooling. Whereas the old school demanded allegiance and obedience for only a few years and for a stated period, the new school presupposes it for ever, in the name of life-long education – or perhaps life-sentenced schooling. Individualized knowledge is now to be based on the ever more penetrating gaze of the teacher, the ‘observation of constant evidence’ (jatkuvan näytön havainnointi) as expressed in the 1985 curriculum (CUR, 1985: 30). It creates the new field of individual knowledge, accumulated in a complete archive of generalized knowledge. The 1952 curriculum proposed creating a certain type of pupil register for the continuous and cumulative documentation of notes and observations about ‘the mental development and particularities of the child’ (see Chapter 4 of this book). However, it was planned specifically for pupils ‘at risk’, for those whose ‘mental balance and working capacity may easily get disturbed’ (CUR, 1952: 36). Only the 1970 curriculum introduced the fully fledged archive that was supposed to consist of a massive information load of ‘gifts, character, family background, hobbies, physical development and school performances’ that were to be gathered through ‘testing, questionnaires, interviews, home visits, exams, etc.’ (CUR, 1970: 186) This personal ‘pupil register’ was a ‘confidential document’, and as such closed to the pupil and his/ her parents but open to teachers, school officials and researchers. The second element of the principle of pastoral professionalism is disciplining (for a more detailed treatment, see Chapter 6 of this book). In terms of speaking about teachers’ work, this includes at least three dimensions. First, it means that, instead of different domains of knowledge, one academic discipline – educational

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science or, more precisely, didactically oriented educational science – has a monopolistic position in determining the true knowledge need. In this sense, one might characterize the disciplining of teachers’ knowledge as ‘didactization’ in which academic ‘teaching science’ replaces the practical, multiple and ideological knowledge of teachers, as interpreted by NBE officials up to the 1960s. The second dimension of disciplining refers to the use of language when speaking about teaching. Here it seems that there is strong continuity in the texts. The contents of the teacher’s pre-service studies were determined in detail, course by course, as well as in the reports of the 1920s, 1960s and 1970s. Effective administrative regulation of the reform guaranteed that the shift from the ‘shadow’ of the NBE to the ‘light’ of university did not threaten the traditional unity and uniformity of teacher-training discourse in Finland. Only in the 1989 report was the possibility of departmental ‘profilization’ of departments mentioned, although there is still an emphasis on ‘structural uniformity’ (CR, 1989: 73). There also seems to be continuity in the third dimension of disciplining, which concerns the question of who is able to take the place of the speaking subject. Educational scientists (later didacticians) and officials of the NBE (later also of the Ministry of Education) have been eligible to take the position of authoritative speaker in teacher-education committees. Being a classroom teacher has rarely sufficed for those positions. Although a few professors of subject disciplines have been members of some committees, subject knowledge has had no voice in outlining the required knowledge for teacher education. Neither has any sociologist or historian of education – not to mention parents, the clients of schooling – been a member of any committee on teacher training. To conclude, pastoral professionalism as a tacit principle of discourse is a combination of individualism and disciplining. One could say that it creates the new expert teacher and the new pupil, both willing to take part in continuous and comprehensive examination. If the mission of the teacher of the old school was to be a gatekeeper of fully authorised citizenship, the mission of the modern comprehensive school teacher, according to Rinne (1988b: 443), is ‘to inscribe into the pupils the sense of “self-selection” and “suitability”, to guide them in making free choices and taking the routes that are fitting and suitable for them’. Pastoral professionalism comprises a specific type of professionalist discourse that is much more analogous – at least in its relations with knowledge, institutions and clients – to that of the priest than that of archetypal professionals such as physicians and lawyers. What is more important, however, is that the teacher using the pastoral power of the modern comprehensive school seems to practise par excellence what Foucault describes as: This form of power is salvation oriented (as opposed to political power). It is oblative (as opposed to a principle of sovereignity); it is individualizing (as opposed to a legal power); it is coextensive and continuous with life; it is linked with a production of truth – the truth of the individual himself. (Foucault, 1983b: 214)

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It is clear that pastoral professionalism cannot be understood as a phenomenon belonging exclusively to the world of discursive practices, or as only a characteristic of the world of education. To understand it fully we would have to analyse not only official texts but also the institutions and practices of education. To understand the dispositifs of education, we would have to bring the fields of knowledge, social apparatuses and subjects together in a manner similar to Foucault’s in his analysis of the birth of the clinic (Foucault, 1991a). In this analogy, educational science equals clinical medicine, school equals hospital, teacher equals physician, and pupil equals patient. We would then have to analyse the general processes of individualization and disciplining as general developments rather than as limited to school and education. Thus, in order to explain fully the principle of pastoral professionalism, we would have to reach beyond the domain of archaeological analysis to genealogical comprehension and the Foucauldian ethics of subjectivation. That, however, is another story.

Conclusion The aims of this chapter were twofold: first, to show that Foucault’s work could be summarized as a project of the history of truth, and second, through the history of current modern Finnish teacherhood, to demonstrate that this approach is fruitful in empirical studies. Although our reading of Foucault is experimental, and the scope of application limited, we believe it opens up some promising perspectives in two directions: on ‘Foucauldian studies’ on the one hand, and education research on the other. Although a first reading of Foucault can give the confusing impression of ideas going in multiple directions, we emphasize the coherence of his work. We read it as a systematic whole consisting of the three basic themes of knowledge, subjectivity and power. We do not deny the fruitfulness of studying these themes separately, but we do wonder whether such approaches do justice to the full potency of Foucault’s original and divergent thinking. We believe that the analytical power of his work lies precisely in bringing together these three dimensions, in seeing knowledge, subjectivity and power in their immanent relationality.The games of truth are played in the intermediate space of these dimensions, games with specific rules and strategies that remain invisible if considered from only one corner of the field. It should be emphasized, however, that we see the Foucauldian triangle constructed above as a ‘catalogue of possibilities’, as a tool with which to raise and analyse new problems, rather than as a Theory in the strict deductive sense of the word. The aim of the device is not to act as a decontextualized, universal model for answers but rather to make space for new ways of asking questions. It is not a method for concrete empirical research, but a way to question the conditions of empirical inquiry, going beyond the dichotomies of essentialism and nominalism, deduction and induction. As such, it is compatible with different types of empirical method, and applicable to various kinds of material: it allows for deviating theoretical preferences in fields including education research.2

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What possible use, then, would our Foucauldian triangle have in education research? The example we present above mostly concerns the ‘knowledge corner’ of the triangle, and the discursive techniques of creating the ‘truth’ of the modern Finnish teacher.We hope, however, to have shown that this truth is not purely a knowledge phenomenon. It is not independent of relations of power in the field of education, or of processes in which not only teachers, but also pupils, administrators, educational scientists and teacher educators create their subjectivities. The birth of the modern Finnish teacher — and that of other actors in the field — could also have been approached from the other corners of the triangle: from the perspectives of subjectivity and power, thereby placing stronger emphasis on techniques of self and of government. However, and this we would like to stress, it is not fruitful to see the teacher only as a pawn in a game of power, or simply as an independent individual agent. Although the perspectives and emphases are different, we believe that all three elements should be considered in analyses of the birth of the modern teacher. Furthermore, we believe that this applies to education research in general, because education deals precisely with questions of knowledge, subjectivity and power.

Notes 1 Simola, H., Heikkinen, S. & Silvonen, J. (1998) Catalog of possibilities: Foucaultian history of truth and education research, in T.S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (eds.) Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education (pp. 64–90). New York: Teachers College Press [shortened and lightly edited]. 2 In a more detailed article on this “Foucaludian onion”, we concluded ‘not quite seriously but half ’ (Heikkinen et al., 1999: 154): “The triangle is a device like a cloud chamber used in elementary particle physics to make the traces of the particles visible. The Foucauldian triangle is a device making the study of the elementary particles of truth possible – not words, not things - which may be as difficult to observe directly as elementary particles are. Stretching the analogy further we may argue that Foucault’s history of truth makes ’traditional’ history of ideas or sciences (analysis of words, things, objects, concepts, theories, authors etc.) obsolete as much or as little as elementary particle physics makes the classical physics obsolete. Thus, we believe that is misguided to read Foucault’s work as a Grand Theory or a philosophy of history. He does not offer an overarching, omnipotent theory but a theoretically inspiring space in which to be a ’happy positivist’.” We finally formulated in an endnote (ibid.: 154, en 8; see also Hannus & Simola, 2010: 11) - ‘not quite seriously but half ’- some cautionary instructions for use of our knowledge-subject-power (K-S-P) – triangle as follows: “(1) make sure that the subject of your study is located in the realm of history of truth. Warning: If you are scrutinizing the progress of science, the role of genious subjects in history, ideologies as false consciousness, power as an repressive action only, subjectivity as anthropological standard or individual as a unique psychological phenomenon, never use the triangle. (2) Put your research material into the triangle, shake carefully and check if something has been gathered in the corners. Warning: Do not push oversized pieces of material into the triangle—all the material must be preworked. (3) Collect the material found in the corners of the triangle and start thinking. Warning: Remember that the triangle cannot be used as explanation, theory, system etc.You have to create those by yourself.”

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References Committee Report (CR) (1960) Seminaarilainsäädännön uudistamiskomitean mietintö. KM 1960: 7 [The Report of the Committee for the Reform of Seminar Legislation]. Helsinki:Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Committee Report (CR) (1967) Opettajanvalmistustoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1967: A 2 [The Report of the Committee for Teacher Preparation]. Helsinki: Valtion painatuskeskus. Committee Report (CR) (1968) Opettajanvalmistuksen opetussuunnitelmatoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1968: A 6 [Report of the Committee for Teacher Training Curriculum]. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus. Committee Report (CR) (1975) Vuoden 1973 opettajankoulutustoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1975: 75 [Report of the 1973 Committee for Teacher Education]. Helsinki: Oy Länsi-Suomi, Rauma. Committee Report (CR) (1989) Opettajankoulutuksen kehittämistoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1989: 26 [Report of the Committee for the Development of Teacher Education]. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus. Curriculum (CUR) (1952) Kansakoulun opetussuunnitelmakomitean mietintö II. KM 1952: 3 [Report of the Committee for the Elementary School Curriculum II]. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Curriculum (CUR) (1970) Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelmatoimikunnan mietintö I. KM 1970: A 4 [Report of the Committee for the Comprehensive School Curriculum I]. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus. Curriculum (CUR) (1985) Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelman perusteet [Framework Curriculum for the Comprehensive School 1985]. National Board of Education. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus. Curriculum (CUR) (1994) Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelman perusteet [Framework Curriculum for the Comprehensive School 1994]. National Board of Education. Helsinki: Painatuskeskus. Cygnaeus, U. (1910) Kirjoitukset Suomen kansakoulun perustamisesta ja järjestämisestä [Writings on the Establishment and Organisation of the Finnish Elementary School]. Helsinki: Kansanvalistusseura. Foucault, M. (1971) Orders of discourse. Social Science Information, 10 (2): 7–22. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (edited by Colin Gordon). New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1983a) On the genealogy of ethics: an overview of work in progress, in H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (eds.) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (pp. 229–52). Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Foucault, M. (1983b) The subject and power, in H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (eds.) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (pp. 208–26). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1985) The History of Sexuality,Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. London: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1986) The History of Sexuality,Vol. 3:The Care of the Self. New York:Vintage Books.

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Foucault, M. (1988a) The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom (an interview), in J. Bernauer & D. Rasmussen (eds.) The Final Foucault (pp. 1–20). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foucault, M. (1988b) Technologies of the self, in L.H. Martin, H. Gutman & P.H. Hutton (eds.) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 16–49). Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press. Foucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1991a) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1991b) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1991c) Question of method, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon & P. Miller (eds.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 33–86). London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Hannus, S., Simola, H. (2010) The effects of power mechanisms in education: Bringing Foucault and Bourdieu together, Power and Education, 2(7), 1–17. Heikkinen, S., Silvonen, J. & Simola, H. (1999) Technologies of truth: peeling Foucault’s triangular onion. Discourse, 20(1): 141–57. Rinne, R. (1986) Kansanopettaja mallikansalaisena: opettajuuden laajeneminen ja opettajuuteen rekrytoimismekanismit Suomessa 1851–1986 virallisen kuvausaineiston ilmaisemana [The Teacher of the Common People as the Model Citizen: The Expansion of Teacherhood and Recruitment to Teacherhood in Finland from 1851 to 1986, as Expressed in Official Documents]. Research Report A: 108. Turku: Faculty of Education, University of Turku. Rinne, R. (1988a) The formation and professionalization of the popular teachers in Finland in the 20th century, in T. Iisalo & R. Rinne (eds.) Läraren i 1900-talets kultur och samhälle. Research Report B: 26. Turku: Department of Education, University of Turku. Rinne, R. (1988b) Kansan kasvattajasta opetuksen ammattilaiseksi: suomalaisen kansanopettajan tie [From educator of the people to a teaching professional: the path of the Finnish primary school teacher]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 19(6): 430–44. Simola, H. (1993) Professionalism and rationalism of hopes: outlining a theoretical approach for a study on educational discourse. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 3(2): 173–92. Simola, H. (1995) Paljon vartijat. Suomalainen kansanopettaja valtiollisessa kouludiskurssissa 1860-luvulta 1990-luvulle [The Guards of Plenty: The Finnish Schoolteacher in Educational State Discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s]. Research Report 137. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education.

Chapter 6

Didactic closure Professionalization and pedagogical knowledge in Finnish teacher education 1 with O. Kivinen & R. Rinne

The professionalization of teaching has become one of the self-evident prerequisites in Anglo-American academic discussion on school improvement. Two US reports from 1986 (The Nation Prepared and Tomorrow’s Teacher) have been especially influential in constructing the almost unanimous conviction that teaching should be regarded more as classic professional work, like that of the physician, for example (see Darling-Hammond, 1990; Labaree, 1992). In Britain, even formerly critical scholars are arguing for the reassertion of professionalization as an effective weapon against Conservative education policy (Avis, 1994; Montane, 1994). Although it is clearly accepted by the mainstream, some scholars have questioned the self-evident rhetoric of the good intentions of professionalism (see, for example, Burbules & Densmore, 1991; Glazer, 1991; Noddings, 1990; Popkewitz, 1987, 1991; Sykes, 1987; Weiler, 1988). David Labaree (1992) claims that those most eager to professionalize teaching are not the teachers themselves, or even their unions, but academic teacher educators. He argues that such professionalization is first and foremost an extension of the efforts of teacher educators to raise their professional status by developing a science of teaching based on a formal rationalist model. American teacher educators began to adopt a formal, rationalist worldview in the 1960s and to apply it to the task of constructing a ‘science of teaching’. Labaree describes, eloquently, how teacher educators, looking for ‘the most powerful form of intellectual technology that was available . . . naturally’ turned towards empiricism and positivism as ‘an intellectual approach that over the centuries had proven effective for understanding social life and guiding social practice, and that have accumulated an enormous reservoir of cultural legitimacy’ (Labaree, 1992: 141). Labaree also claims that it was educational psychology that offered the most suitable pattern because it had already established a model for carrying out academically credible and scientific research in education. The question addressed here concerns the symbolic and strategic value of science-legitimated pedagogical knowledge – which could be characterized as the ‘science of teaching’ or ‘educational science for teacher education’ – in the professionalization of teacher education. Our aim is to shed light on certain

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peculiarities in this body of knowledge with reference to the history of ‘the science of teaching’ and of the professionalization of teacher education.

A perspective on the professions Raymond Murphy (1988) elaborates on the Weberian approach to the theory of ‘social closure’, meaning the processes through which an occupational group attempts to regulate market situations in accordance with its own interests. From this perspective, professional status is understood to result from successful strategies among collective occupational groups seeking to exclude other competing groups from the market and to achieve a monopoly in their fields of activity. On the historical level, it is a question of how an occupational body can succeed in achieving high social status, privileges and a monopoly market position. This chapter analyses the field of education as a social field, a multidimensional space of positions, dispositions and relationships in which the way of life and the expert discourse acknowledged as authoritative is produced, reproduced and transformed. Neither individuals nor groups, nor even occupations, move around in social space in a random way: they are subjected to the forces that structure this space, or then they resist the forces in the field with their specific inertia (Bourdieu, 1984). We approach teacher education as a social sub-field within the field of higher education. In this context, the field is analysed as a network or configuration of objective relations between the various positions.This field is a space of potential and active forces, of struggle aimed at and preserving or transforming their configuration. The field ‘as a structure of objective relations between positions of force undergirds and guides the strategies whereby the occupants of these positions seek, individually and collectively, to safeguard or improve their position and to impose the principle of hierarchization most favourable to their own products’ (Bourdieu & Waquant, 1992: 101). Actual or potential states in the division of power and capital formation, which are needed to access the profits distributed in the field, and the objective relation of one position to others, determine the whole existence of the positions, as well as their occupants, the agents and the institutions (ibid.: 97–8). Capital – be it cultural, economic or social – only exists and functions in relation to the field. Hence, the capital of teacher educators only exists and functions in relation to the prevailing field of higher education.Transformation in the social field, such as the general growth of education, affects the composition of the university field. The rapid expansion of the student population as well as the diversification of university faculties thus led to growth in the professorial body, especially after the 1960s. Moreover, increasing the number of faculty posts led to accelerated careers, at least in the new disciplines and new faculties. We would propose, quoting Pierre Bourdieu (1988: 130) ‘as a general law’, that this also happened ‘apart from the purely mechanical effects of crowding’. Social agents inevitably also get lost in the crowd, and exercise the

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social processes of ‘anonymization’ and ‘irresponsibilization’ with their special effects through the specific logic of the field. We would therefore like to know what these specific effects are, especially in the new faculties of education and the new units of education for primary school teachers2 that came into being in Finnish universities in the 1970s. Three significant issues should be taken into account in using the socialclosure approach to the sociological study of professions. The first of these is the role of the state. As Magali Sarfatti Larson (1977) puts it, the ideal of a free and autonomous profession is nothing but an ideal in corporative capitalism. At the same time, it serves as an ideology that mystifies the real social structures and relations.The state, especially in the European continental model of professions, has traditionally been ‘the holder of legitimate symbolic violence’, the ‘geometric locus of all perspectives’ and the ‘central bank which guarantees all certificates’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 137). Second, a prerequisite for a successful professional project is to arrive at a cognitive consensus and to create a body of knowledge that is science-legitimized. The authoritative expert discourse has to be constructed (Larson, 1977, 1990; cf. Rinne & Jauhiainen, 1988). Third, for a professionalization project to succeed, it is necessary to exclude competing groups by means of social-closure mechanisms. It is thus obvious that the pursuit of isolation and distinction rather than solidarity and cooperation characterizes relations with the closest occupational groups in the field. In the following, we first analyse the relationship between the state and teacher education, then we move on to consider the knowledge on which teacher education is based. Finally, we scrutinize Finnish teacher educators in the field of higher education.

Teacher education in the service of the state, and national curriculum design Scholars analysing pedagogical discourse, teacherhood and the profession of teacher educators in Finland should keep in mind the strong traditional relationship between the state and its civil servants. In this respect, Finland resembles the continental model of professionalization (see, for example, Collins, 1990; Konttinen, 1989). The state guarantees by law the right of professional groups to exercise their work and power. This was the situation under the Swedish crown (until 1809) and the Russian tsar (until 1917), and also thereafter following independence. Rulers have come and gone but the connection between the state authority and the civil-service professions produced by universities has been quite stable. In the field of education, the state authorities have retained the monopoly in giving accreditation for practising teaching in Finnish schools, which in turn have been owned by the municipal authorities since the church lost its power over education. The state is a ‘field of fields’ in a sense, a place where struggles over legitimate symbolic violence are fought. The state is the ‘fountain of symbolic power’ – it

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performs different kinds of wedding ceremonies and rites, such as validating licenses, statuses and diplomas, and all the procedures by which authorized occupants of authorized positions ensure that the agent and the person is what he or she is said to be, and guarantee who he or she is and what he or she ought to be. It is the state that carries out these official procedures, appoints the agents and pushes the process through via its legitimate representatives (cf. Bourdieu & Waquant, 1992: 141). The development not only of teacher education but also of education as an academic discipline has been strongly dependent on state policy. It was the Comprehensive School Reform in the 1970s that finally offered Finnish educational science the possibility of seizing the political-administrative as well as the societal legitimacy needed for expansion. For educational scientists, the academization of teacher training meant state-guaranteed expansion in the academic field; for teacher educators it was elevation to the position of a science-legitimated profession (see Simola, 1993: 178–83). Jaakko Numminen, Secretary General at the Ministry of Education, was one of the first to evaluate the new academic training for primary school teachers at the end of the 1980s, after almost two decades. He formulated his question thus: The great number of university teachers and researchers in the field gives us the right and the obligation to ask, in what respect does educational research help to manage the national educational policy in practical teaching duties and educational administration. (Numminen, 1988: 251–2) Strict state control in the field of primary school teacher training gave academic freedom and the Humboldtian tradition of ‘cultivation’ a rather ironic meaning. Regardless of whether it takes place in seminars, colleges or universities, teacher training has been largely a school-like process with highly standardized compulsory curricula and study programmes. Until recently, the freedom of choice allowed to students was minimal compared with many other disciplines. In a very careful process of recruiting members of the teaching profession through its educational monopoly, the Finnish state has succeeded in engaging an extremely loyal army of primary school workers. Neither primary school teachers as a body nor their rather strong union has ever been very radical. On the contrary, compared with most other national teacher unions and their members, Finnish teachers have been among the most loyal conservative allies of the state. This tradition and the close connection with state service may also partly explain why teacher educators and those responsible for teacher education are not very interested in analysing the social and historical frames of the teacher’s work, or in trying to educate would-be primary school teachers to be socially reflective (Kivinen & Rinne, 1994, 1995). A focus in this chapter is on the very special Finnish discipline of educational science for teacher education, didactics, which as so many developers in the

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field claim has proved to be its core legitimating point (see, for example, CR, 1989a; Kansanen, 1989; Lahdes, 1987). The official standardized comprehensive-school curriculum has become one of the most influential frameworks in the development of Finnish didactics. In this respect, too, the relationship between didactics and the official state curriculum is of the essence. Kansanen (1986) characterizes didactics as normative ethics, or the justification of the official curriculum. It is linked to the nationwide curriculum such that it cannot be understood as a descriptive science or as a theory of teaching – on the contrary, Finnish didactics should be seen as a normative and political steering mechanism. Ulf Lundgren (1991) conducted an interesting analysis of the relationship between psychology-based pedagogical thinking and the state-centred school reforms. He claims that there are two basic notions behind the curriculum reforms of recent decades. The first is ‘the progressive notion that the curriculum ought to centre on the individual child’s demands and experiences’, and the second is ‘the pragmatic notion that the objectives for education should be precisely stated and founded on demand analysis’ (ibid.: 46). He sees a very close connection between this and the fact that psychology has been established as the basis of most educational research, and that goals should be formulated in order to specify the expected behaviour. These two notions are closely related: behavioural goals were influenced by psychology and were prerequisites for evaluation. Precisely defined goals also enabled decision-makers to evaluate and choose between comparable instruction methods and materials. The curriculum reforms in Finland and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s were similar in tendency: although not founded directly on political decisions, they were successively implemented through teaching materials and the growing consensus about the foundations of the curriculum (ibid.: 47). The narrow, psychological individualism of didactics and educational reform, for which the policy goals are formulated in terms of individual learner behaviour, constitutes a basis for consensus on curriculum design. According to Lundgren (1991: 50), educational sciences and educational politics shared mutual goals. Educational research fought for recognition as an empirically founded social science and became, from an economics perspective, dependent on a growing bureaucracy. It was important for the decision-makers to have scientific legitimation for their pursuits and reforms, and it was equally important for the researchers to engage in legitimate scientific research in the form of simple, isolated empirical studies, educational ideas and innovations. Consequently, when the educational researcher is standing as an innovator, he or she may easily at the same time be serving as the loyal and uncritical legitimator of the never-ending reforms. Educational research is unlikely to result in critical explanations of the educational system or the curriculum because most of the knowledge gained will concern what the individual learner can do, rather than how the systems function. Given the constant stream of educational reforms, there is neither the time nor the need for research that

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seeks to create conditions for the individual learner, or to examine the constraints on, and the opportunities for, change (Lundgren, 1991: 49; see also Popkewitz, 1991).

Towards a decontextualized, psychology-based, school-free pedagogy The Finnish pedagogical tradition is strongly flavoured with Herbartianism. When the florescence of the pedagogy founded by the famous Swiss philosopher Johan Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) was already mostly over in the rest of Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, it arrived in Finland. Although Herbartianism in academic pedagogy was passé by the 1920s, the only textbook of didactics that was taught in all teacher seminaries until the Second World War was the Herbart-Zillerian one (Isosaari, 1966: 216; Lahdes, 1969: 21).What is interesting here is the strong emphasis Herbart gave to psychology as the science that forms the very basis for didactics. In his pedagogy, the goal was built on pillars of ethics, and didactics was to create the means for education. The famous ‘Herbartian triangle’ was to be found in official Finnish teachertraining documents until the 1960s, when ethics disappeared, psychology turned into educational psychology, and educational sciences became the scientific basis of studies in teacher education (Simola, 1993). The Finnish pedagogical tradition thus has a very strong connection with psychology as the basis for didactics, especially concerning teacher education. The Herbartian tradition in Finnish teacher training was phased out only in 1944 through a textbook of didactics written by Matti Koskenniemi, a leading academic figure of Finnish education throughout the 1950s and 1960s. During this era, the psychology-based tradition continued but was strongly influenced by a mission of social education. Linked with the moral and civic curriculum code,3 keywords of the Finnish progressive ‘new school’ movement that arose in the 1930s included Die Arbeitschule, workbooks and social education rather than child-centred individualism (Lahdes, 1961; Simola, 1995: 118). The social psychology of the classroom and the school context with its historically formed compulsory and mass character was explicitly present until the 1970s, dedicated to moulding the institutional life of a group of future citizens. The psychologization of educational sciences was strongly connected with the orientation towards dynamic gestalt psychology, depth psychology and intelligence testing. The first Finnish psychological laboratory was founded at the University of Turku in 1921, and the first professorship was established in 1936 at the Educational College of Jyväskylä (Rinne, 1988a: 127). The educational sciences faced many problems in taking control of the new educational psychology because the field was strongly associated with ‘pure’ psychology and ‘pure’ philosophy. There was a change in orientation towards empirical educational research after the Second World War, which continued

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until the 1970s. To an increasing degree they became psychologically and didactically oriented applied sciences, and at the same time began to make use of mathematically and statistically based psychological research. The rapid growth of the educational system made it necessary to gather more information about schools as well as pupils, and large-scale intelligence testing of pupils became a major subject of educational research. Although the experimental approach was used in educational psychology to some extent before the Second World War, most Finnish research in the field of education was from a historical or philosophical perspective (Kansanen, 1990: 281). The educational sciences began to struggle for academic recognition in the 1950s, and empirical didactics achieved the dominant position in the 1960s (Päivänsalo, 1980: 233). The didactics model was to be found in connection with educational psychology – a close relation that also becomes clear in any attempt to place Finnish didactics in the Anglo-American educational literature. Kansanen compares US textbooks of educational psychology to those dealing with Finnish didactics: ‘It becomes quite soon apparent that (. . .) textbooks [of educational psychology] contain two parts: educational psychology, in the strict sense of the word, and a part with normative advice, which is very much like didactics’ (Kansanen, 1990: 278). During the comprehensive-school period and until the 1990s, one textbook on didactics dominated the market. The author was Erkki Lahdes, the late Professor of Didactics at the University of Turku and the first secretary of the Comprehensive School Curriculum Committee.4 The book was rewritten twice (Lahdes, 1969, 1977, 1986), in line with changes in the conception of educational psychology. The clear behaviourism of the late 1960s was flavoured with influences from Mastery Learning Strategies and the structural ideas of S.C.T. Clarke in the late 1970s. Lahdes then announced a ‘modern’ turn in the psychology of learning in the 1980s, from behaviourism to cognitivism. He characterizes the approach in the latest book as constructivist and refers to the Swiss scholar and student of Jean Piaget, Hans Aebli, as the most influential figure.5 The psychology-based background of Finnish didactics has strongly bound the legitimation of Finnish teacher training with psychometric theory and statistical testing, the core contents in educational methodology (Kansanen, 1990: 282). Against the grain, Kansanen (1993) suggests distinguishing between the concepts of ‘school pedagogy’ and ‘didactics’. Both concern the teaching process, but the orientation of the former is towards the social sciences, especially the sociology of education, whereas the latter derives from educational philosophy and psychology. The subject of school pedagogy is the school as a social system with its framework factors limiting the didactical procedures and possibilities of both teachers and pupils. It thus seeks to construct a theory of schooling. Didactics, on the other hand, concerns the individual teacher and pupil, and involves attempts to construct universal models and theories of teaching. However, as Kansanen (1993: 25) points out, ‘whenever we try to apply these models in practice, we need the help of school pedagogy and theories of schooling’.

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It is fair to conclude from the historical analysis of official school discourse presented above that, thus far, Finnish didactics has not really needed the ‘help of school pedagogy and theories of schooling’. On the contrary, ‘the rationalism of hopes’ as a ‘tacit discursive principle’ of official texts (see Chapter 1 of this book) has produced a tendency towards pure didactics, a kind of abstract, non-historical and decontextualized science of teaching. Schooling as a historically formed institution for obligatory mass education tends to be dismissed as uninteresting. The everyday activities of teaching and learning in school, the socio-cultural system of time, space and rituals (Kivinen et al., 1985) – ‘the grammar of schooling’6 – appears to be out of focus, or even absent, when improvements in teaching and learning are being planned and propagated. The ‘true’ knowledge of teaching in Finnish official school discourse could be characterized in its decontextulization by the term ‘school-free pedagogy’: the science of how the teacher should teach and how the pupil should learn in school – as if it were not school (Simola, 1998; Simola et al., 1998).

Didactic closure through isolation, exclusion and distinction The oldest faculties in the Finnish university system are those of humanities and law.The first university, the Turku Academy, was founded in 1640, but there was no broadening of the university system until the twentieth century. Finland among other nations saw the expansion of the higher-education system at an ever-accelerating speed after the Second World War, and this was the time when faculties of social sciences became established. Finland implemented a strong regional decentralization policy and thus higher-education institutions were spread all over the country. In this connection, education for primary school teachers was elevated to the university level in the 1970s, which resulted in the establishment of eight brand new faculties. Although the first chair in educational sciences was established in 1852, growth in this respect was very slow for over a century: at the beginning of the 1970s there were only seven full professors in the country. By the beginning of the 1980s, however, the number had already risen to more than 30 following the inclusion of primary school teaching in the higher-education system. In 1995 there were 50 full professors and 83 associate professors of education. The corresponding growth of staff in teacher training was very rapid after the 1970s, comparable only with economics.The total number (133) of professors in education in Finland in 1995 was five times the number of comparable posts in Sweden, or double if posts in both history and sociology are combined. The main struggles of symbolic power and power relations in any academic field centre on the naming and filling of the highest academic posts, the professorial chairs. Next we look at the division of professorships in the field of

Didactic closure 123 Table 6.1 Professors of education in Finland by department, 1995 and 2006 N in 1995 Departments of Teacher Education Departments of Education and others Total

per cent in 1995

N in 2006

per cent in 2006

88

66 %

84

62 %

45

34 %

52

38 %

133

100 %

136

100 %

education and academic teacher training.The following tables help to show the extent to which the process of didacticization is realized and embodied in the most eminent representatives of the field, agents holding professorships. Table 6.1 gives the distributions of professors in departments of ‘pure’ education vis-à-vis departments of teacher education. In 1995, two out of three professors (88) worked in teacher training: the corresponding proportions at the dawn of the reform in 1975, when the faculties of education were founded, was half and half, and the number of professors in teacher training was slightly more than 30. In other words, the number tripled. This relation remained largely unchanged between 1995 and 2006. Table 6.2 shows the distributions of professors among the different sub-fields of education in terms of percentages and numbers from 1995 to 2006. It is clear from the table that more than one-third of the professors (36 per cent) in 1995 directly represented the field of didactics (the number climbing to 48). The proportion (26 per cent) accounted for by ‘general’ education was clearly smaller. Moreover, basic fields such as educational psychology and the sociology Table 6.2 Professors and associate professors of education in Finland by subfield, 1995 and 2006

Didactics Education/Pedagogy (General) Adult education Special education Psychology of Education Preschool Education Sociology of Education Others

1995 N

1995 %

2006 N

2006 %

48 34 11 8 7 5 4 16 133

36 26 8 6 5 4 3 12 100

53 32 13 9 11 11 7 – 136

39 24 8 7 8 8 5 – 100

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of education, which attempted to maintain connections with the old ‘basic’ sciences outside the faculty, are minimally represented. Special education and adult education took rather large steps in the 1980s and 1990s to widen their interests in the field. Compared with the situation in 1975, the composition of the professoriate changed dramatically. The number and proportion of professors in didactics increased much more rapidly than among their counterparts in general education, as well as in disciplines connected with the sciences outside the faculty of education. Again, there were no changes between 1995 and 2006. In sum, it is evident from Table 6.2 that the invasion of didactics is most visible in the field of education and teacher training. The teacher-education programmes at the universities opened an extraordinary ‘appointment game’, the winner of which secured a pleasant future on the personal level and success for the discipline concerned. It seemed necessary at the beginning of the game to invent a name for this strange, previously unknown field of research. Sub-disciplines were created for virtually all the subjects taught in comprehensive school, regardless of whether there was a scarcity of research in the area, and professorships were established in the didactics of technical work, the didactics of home economics and the didactics of textile crafts, for example. After that, ‘new’ academic achievements had to be squeezed out by more or less forceful persuasion to fulfil the need for qualified experts to assess the qualifications of applicants for posts in the newly named field. Foreign experts could rarely be invited because most of these new fields were unknown elsewhere, and in any case most of the applicants’ publications were in Finnish. The next phase was to find suitably qualified applicants to fill the posts, which is not always easy. The incumbents may not be qualified, and the competition is not only about scholarly merits but also about credibility. In a small country like Finland, the proliferation of posts led to a situation in which social capital (‘contacts’) plus the opinions of a few energetic mandarins could carry a disproportionate amount of weight alongside rather modest scholarly merits (Kivinen & Rinne, 1990, 1992). Accordingly, an evaluation group appointed by the Academy of Finland reported great difficulties in filling some academic posts in education. The statements submitted by invited experts seemed to indicate that universities had lowered the relevant requirement levels (cf. Educational Research in Finland, 1990). Furthermore, ‘only a few tenured professors continue intensive research in their own specific field, or supervise a research group (. . .) The integration of teacher training into universities and the formation of specific education faculties has weakened the connections of educational research with related fields’ (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 18). Compared with other Nordic countries, as in other fields of Finnish higher education, the number of professors was astonishingly high. However, in terms of the number of students in education and degrees completed it is not so high,

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which says something about the mass character of Finnish teacher education. Compared with many other traditional university disciplines, teacher education concentrates heavily on training, but not as much on research. In fact, professors responsible for the training of primary school teachers are really professors of ‘mass higher education’, who do not have much in common with the old ‘elite university’ professoriate (cf.Trow, 1974) concerning their orientation, positions, dispositions and habitus in the ‘massification’ and diversification of higher education. Even if the state with its policy of educational reform is a central force constituting the social space for teacher educators, it is in the academic field that the new group has to struggle for a position among other disciplines. According to the results of various studies (see, for example, Lanier, 1986), the status of teacher educators in the academic arena seems to be rather low, and in terms of socio-cultural background it is also lower than that of other academic groups. The distinction between education (especially educational policy and administration) and teacher education is marked in the US, and the latter clearly ranks below the former in the hierarchy. Professors of teacher training in Finland are from a lower social background than most of their academic colleagues in other disciplines. The number of professors of education with a labour or farming social background far exceeds that of other Finnish professors. According to Antikainen and Jolkkonen (1988), the fathers of more than half of the professors of education were blue-collar workers or farmers, whereas in the case of history professors, for example, the proportion was less than one in five. Sakari Ahola (1995) similarly found in his correspondence analysis that the factor typifying professors of education was the blue-collar father: this is partly attributable to the fact that, even today, many of them started their career as (primary school) teachers (Rinne, 1988b). From the Bourdieuan (1984, 1988; cf. Broady, 1990) perspective of capital in the field of higher education, the cultural capital of teacher educators and professors of didactics is considerably lower than that of the average university chair holder. They are less likely to enjoy a cumulative cultural heritage going back several generations, and more likely to resemble ‘parvenus’ in a field in which old mandarins from a social and cultural elite try to exercise the power inherent in their inherited privileges (cf. Ringer, 1969). Their closest neighbours in the field are representatives of the age-old subject disciplines (such as history, languages and mathematics), as well as the rivalling social sciences (philosophy, psychology and sociology) whose positions carry more traditional academic cultural capital than theirs do. In other words, professors in teacher education are almost all first-generation novices in the cultural game played according to the rules determined by academic tradition and its mandarins. The new teacher trainers do not have much economic capital at their disposal either in that they do not have strong connections with the private marketeconomy sector; moreover, most of their students hold lower paid posts in the public sector (Rinne, 1986).

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Their relatively low social background may make it troublesome for educational scientists to work their way up to occupy a strong position related to academic excellence and prestige as so many other professionals in the field do (cf. Bourdieu, 1988). If this is the case with traditional educational scientists, whose discipline provided the first chair of education in Finland as far back as 1852, and who have been organized in their own departments since the 1940s, it must be even worse for teacher educators, as academic newcomers. When education for primary school teachers was transferred to the universities in the early 1970s, virtually all the ‘seminar’ staff became members of the university faculty. Obviously this did not raise the ‘academic credibility’ of teacher education or of teacher educators among the old and honourable academic disciplines. Isolation and the paucity of interdisciplinary relations in teacher education and the educational sciences in general have been criticized in various quarters since the1980s. The establishment of scientifically narrow faculties of education – as ‘teacher-education units’ – has been blamed for this tendency (e.g. Educational Research in Finland, 1990; Numminen, 1987; Päivänsalo, 1980). As the Finnish Academy’s evaluation report on Finnish educational research states: Establishing independent faculties of education [such as teacher-education units] has signified the narrowing of educational sciences, a more central position for teacher education at present as compared with former decades, and a growing gulf between education and its neighbouring academic disciplines. (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 4) There are at least two fronts on which teacher education and didactics have to fight for distinction and the right to academic existence. The first of these is between the new didactics and the old social sciences, and the subdisciplines of education, in other words philosophy, sociology and the history of education.The second front is against the differentiated old subject disciplines of humanities and the natural sciences: in other words, the didactics of mathematics vs. mathematics and the didactics of history vs. history, and so on. Closure appears to be complete on the first front. With regard to the subfields of professorial posts, it is notable that none of the almost 90 professorships dedicated to teacher education in 1995 was defined as a post for sociology, history or the philosophy of education: the majority were assigned explicitly to didactics, including its various branches, and only a few to educational psychology and special education. The same kind of profile clearly emerges in other teaching posts, too. It appears to be unnecessary in Finnish teacher education to have any competence in the social sciences, and there is no need for any kind of scholarship in the socio-cultural context of teaching and learning in school. This phenomenon of isolation is not limited to teacher education. The

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Finnish Academy’s evaluation report on educational research strongly criticizes research in educational psychology as a whole for being isolated from general psychological research, and for falling behind in terms of development (Educational Research in Finland, 1990: 61, 65). An international evaluation group for teacher education made similar remarks, pointing to the minor role of both developmental psychology and the psychology of learning, and the non-existent connections with departments of psychology (Buchberger et al., 1994, 15). In the struggle for domination on the second front, involving the subject disciplines, the decisive move occurred in 1972 when posts were established in the brand-new teacher-education departments, not in the old subject departments. This victory led to the gradual transferring of decision-making power with regard to subject-teacher training to teacher-training departments. One could call this tendency the ‘didacticization of subject-teacher training’. Representatives of subject disciplines have taken an increasingly minor role in teacher-education committees since the 1970s. The committee report of 1989 followed the didacticization tendency so far as to strongly recommended subject teachers to complete their Master’s thesis in ‘Subject Didactics’ rather than in the traditional disciplines of their teaching subject.The committee even proposed creating a separate doctoral programme in didactics (CR, 1989a). However, there are signs in some committee reports (see, for example, CR, 1989b, 1992, 1993) of conflicting interests, and of potential challenges to the monopoly of subject didactics as the only competent and legitimate proponent of school teaching.

Concluding remarks Our point of departure was Labaree’s (1992) notion that the professionalization of school teaching is better understood if it is considered in relation to the professionalization of teacher educators. We have shown how the development of didactics as ‘science of teaching’ in Finland has followed the US model in some respects. This is most clearly evident in its psychology-based background and commitment to empiricism. There are also differences, however. Whereas the science of teaching is still bound up with and dominated by educational psychology in the USA, the increasingly powerful, separate academic discipline of didactics is gaining ground as the sole scientific basis of teacher education in Finland. According to our analysis of official school discourse, Finnish didactics is on the way to becoming an omnipotent monopoly covering both subject and contextual knowledge related to teaching. Two other characteristics of Finnish didactics are worth mentioning here. The first is the strong dependence on and entanglement with the official state curriculum: leading Finnish teacher-training professors define the concept of didactics as analogical with the curriculum or its justification and theoretical explanation. Second, the context of teaching and learning – in other words, the

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school as a socio-historical institution – is of no interest in didactics, which rather seems to pursue models and theories of universal, context-free teaching and learning, focusing clearly on the individual teacher and learner. This individualist and universalist approach veers towards the abstract, unhistorical and decontextualized study of how a human being ought to be taught and how he or she should learn. In a curious way, it has become a kind of school-free pedagogy. Our conclusion here is that there are at least three professionalist drifts in Finnish teacher education that produce and reproduce decontextualized pedagogical discourse. The first is the pursuit of scientific legitimation. A prerequisite for a successful professional project is to arrive at a cognitive consensus and to create a body of knowledge that science legitimizes. Thus, the image of autonomous, genuine and self-satisfied didactics may be very attractive to teacher educators who are struggling to achieve legitimation as newcomers in the field of higher education. This may help to explain why the discipline of didactics rejects help from older neighbouring disciplines such as sociology and history. The second drift could be described in terms of loyalty to state educational reforms. From the professionalist perspective, the clear mission in state service – a strong commitment to educational reforms and the official curriculum – has proved valuable and productive for teacher educators and didactics, as evidenced in the very rapid increase of professorial posts in teacher education and didactics. Although serving professional interests, this close relationship with the state could easily turn teacher educators into loyal and uncritical legitimators of never-ending educational reforms, thereby endangering the field credibility of didactics as a critical, autonomous and genuine academic discipline. The third professionalist drift is the striving for distinction from rival disciplines. It is obvious that teacher education would need cooperation with neighbouring disciplines in creating appropriate theories of school teaching and learning.Therefore, it seems intellectually imprudent to fight for monopoly status in the field instead of seeking mutual understanding and cooperation.We have noticed numerous traces of exclusion and closure, not only against the social sciences, the old humanities and the natural sciences, but also against the very core of didactics – psychology. One should also keep in mind the fact that education for primary school teachers – even in its academic form – has been stuck in its old seminar tradition. Consequently, it has not changed very much in its practical orientation to embrace the academic tradition, academic freedom and university autonomy, but has rather tended to continue with the old school-like practices, putting a lot of weight on the occupational needs of would-be-teachers. Whereas mass higher education as a field has also had its ‘labour-market drift’, tending to be more oriented to occupational training and school-likeness, teacher education still has an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ quality: it still does not quite know how

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to play in the new academic field, and does not really understand the changing rules of the game. The relatively low cultural and social capital and the lower-middle-class habitus may also have helped to determine the isolative strategies used in the struggle. Criticism of the isolation and the paucity of interdisciplinary relations in teacher education, and in the educational sciences in general, dates back to the 1980s. It is clear that isolation cannot be a very good fighting strategy in the field of higher education, at least not in the long run. One might assume that the lower-status social background of academic teacher educators makes it difficult for them to occupy top positions in the academic field in general. More than twenty years ago, Rolf Torstendahl wrote on the relation between the professions and knowledge: The crucial characteristic of the knowledge system of professionals (. . .) is to what extent they really serve problem-solving purpose which in turn give prestige and power to the owners of this capacity, or to what extent the knowledge is a symbolic value that serves the purposes of being something that can be brought forward in other people’s eyes as important but which has no clear relation to the problem-solving capacity of professionals. (Torstendahl, 1990: 3) In the light of our analysis we could conclude that, at least thus far, the development of a science-legitimated knowledge system for teacher education has been a very successful strategy on the battlefield of Finnish higher education but its real problem-solving capacity remains yet to be seen.

Notes 1 Simola, H., Kivinen, O. & Rinne, R. (1997) Didactic closure: professionalization and pedagogic knowledge in Finnish teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(8): 877–91 [lightly edited]. 2 The primary school teacher (luokanopettaja) works mainly in Grades 1–6 in the Finnish comprehensive school. However, due to the opportunity to take a school subject as their Minor, these teachers may have the formal competence to act as a subject teacher (aineenopettaja) in Grades 7–9, too. 3 Here we follow Lundgren in his definition of the curriculum as, first, ‘a selection of contents and goals for social reproduction’ – that is, the selection of knowledge and skills to be transmitted by education; second, as ‘the organisation of knowledge and skills’; and third, as ‘an indication of methods concerning how the selected contents are to be taught; to be sequenced and controlled, for example’ (Lundgren, 1991: 5). A ‘curriculum code’ for Lundgren is a ‘homogenous set’ of ‘principles according to which the selection, the organisation and the methods for transmission are formed’ (ibid.; see also Lundgren, 1979). 4 The fact that Lahdes is often mentioned as ‘the leading representative of educational scientists’ is evidence of the strong position of didactics in Finnish education (see, for example, Numminen, 1987: 257).

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5 Aebli’s main work (Grundformen des Lehrens: ein Beitrag zur psychologischen Grundlegung der Unterrichtsmethode) was translated into Finnish in 1991, although the original was written in 1961. 6 Tyack and Cuban (1995: 85, 165) explain their neologism of the grammar of schooling as follows: ‘Practices such as age-graded classrooms structure schools in a manner analogous to the way grammar organizes meanings in verbal communication. Neither the grammar of schooling nor the grammar of speech needs to be consciously understood to operate smoothly (. . .) Both schools and language are, of course, in flux – for example, as new words or institutional features are added – but we are arguing that changes in the basic structure and rules of each are so gradual that they do not jar. “Grammar” in this sense might be thought of both as descriptive (the way things are) and prescriptive (the way things ought to be).’

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Lahdes, E. (1969) Peruskoulun opetusoppi [Didactics for the Comprehensive School]. Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1977) Peruskoulun uusi opetusoppi [The New Didactics for the Comprehensive School]. Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1986) Peruskoulun didaktiikka [Didactics for the Comprehensive School]. Helsinki: Otava. Lahdes, E. (1987) Akateemisen luokanopettajakoulutuksen ensimmdiset askeleet [First Steps in Academic Primary School Teacher Training]. Kasvatustieteiden tiedekunta, julkaisusarja A: 121. Turku: Turku University. Lanier, J.E. (1986) Research on teacher education, in M. Wittrock (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 527–69). New York: Macmillan. Larson, M.S. (1977) The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Larson, M.S. (1990) In the matter of experts and professionals, or how impossible it is to leave nothing unsaid, in R. Torstendahl & M. Burrage (eds.) The Formation of Professions: Knowledge, State and Strategy (pp. 24–50). London: Sage. Lundgren, U.P. (1979) Att organisera omvarlden: en introduktion till ltiroplansteori [Organising the Environment: An Introduction to Curriculum Theory]. Stockholm: Liber. Lundgren, U. (1991) Between Education and Schooling: Outlines of a Diachronic Curriculum Theory. Geelong,VIC: Deakin University Press. Montane, M. (1994) Professionalisation of teaching: the outcomes of an ATEE seminar. European Journal of Teacher Education, 17(1/2): 119–26. Murphy, R. (1988) Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Noddings, N. (1990) Feminist critiques in the professions, in C.B. Cazden (ed.) Review of Research in Education, Vol. 16 (pp. 393–424).Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Numminen, J. (1987) Yliopistokysymys [The University Question]. Helsinki: Otava. Numminen, J. (1988) Koulutuspoliittinen katsaus [Educational policy review], in Raportti seminaarista Koulu ja tyoeliimii (pp. 18–25). Kansalaiskasvatuksen keskuksen julkaisuja 75. Helsinki: Kansalaiskasvatuksen keskus ry. Päivänsalo, P. (1980) Kasvatuksen tutkimuksen kehityspiirteita ja niiden taustatekijiiista maasamme [Developmental characteristics and background factors of educational research in Finland]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 11: 232–8. Popkewitz, T.S. (ed.) (1987) Critical Studies in Teacher Education: Its Folklore, Theory and Practice. London: Falmer Press. Popkewitz, T.S. (1991) A Political Sociology of Educational Reform: Power/Knowledge in Teaching,Teacher Education, and Research. New York: Teachers College Press. Ringer, F.K. (1969) The Decline of the German Mandarins:The German Academic Community, 1890–1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rinne, R. (1986) Kansanopettaja mallikansalaisena [The People’s Teacher as a Model Citizen]. Kasvatustieteiden tiedekunnan tutkimuksia A:108. Turku: Turku University. Rinne, R. (1988a) Kasvatustieteen tiedetradition vaikutus olemassa olevaan tutkimuskaytiintoon [The impact of the educational-science tradition on existing research practice], in K. Immonen (ed.) Tieteen historia tieteen kritiikki (pp. 119–37). Historian laitos, julkaisuja 19. Turku: Turku University.

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Rinne, R. (1988b) The formation of the popular teacher profession in Finland, in T. Iisalo & R. Rinne (eds.) Historien om liiraren i norden (pp. 106–48). Publications of the Faculty of Education B: 26. Turku: University of Turku. Rinne, R. & Jauhiainen, A. (1988) Koulutus, professionaalistuminen ja valtio. Julkisen sektorin koulutettujen reproduktioammattikuntien muotoutuminen Suomessa [Education, Professionalization, and the State: The Formation of Educated Public-SectorReproduction Professionals in Finland]. Kasvatustieteiden tiedekunnan julkaisusarja A: 128. Turku: Turku University. Simola, H. (1993) Educational science, the state and teachers: Forming the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland, in T.S. Popkewitz (ed.) Changing Patterns of Power: Social Regulation and Teacher Education Reform in Eight Countries (pp. 161–210). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Simola, H. (1995) Paljon vartijat. Suomalainen kansanopettaja valtiollisessa kouludiskurssissa 1860-luvulta 1990-luvulle [The Guards of Plenty: The Finnish Schoolteacher in Educational State Discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s]. Research Report 137. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Simola, H. (1998) Constructing a school-free pedagogy: decontextualization of Finnish state educational discourse. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 30(3): 339–56. Simola, H., Heikkinen, S. & Silvonen, J. (1998) Catalog of possibilities: Foucaultian history of truth and education research, in T.S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (eds.) Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education (pp. 64–90). New York: Teachers College Press. Sykes, C. (1987) Reckoning with the spectre. Educational Researcher, 16(6): 19–21. Torstendahl, R. (1990) Introduction: promotion and strategies of knowledge-based groups, in R. Torstendahl & M. Burrage (eds.) The Formation of Professions: Knowledge, State and Strategy (pp. 1–10). London: Sage. Trow, M. (1974) Problems in the transition from elite to mass higher education, in Policies for Higher Education (pp. 5–101). Research Report. Paris: OECD. Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995) Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weiler, K. (1988) Women Teaching for Change. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.

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Part III

Schooling practices A peculiar marriage of the traditional and the progressive

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Chapter 7

From exclusion to self-selection The examination of behaviour in Finnish primary and comprehensive schools from the 1860s to the 1990s 1

In his inaugural lecture at the Sorbonne in 1902, Emile Durkheim (1956: 126) described compulsory schooling as ‘an initiation ceremony’ that makes of the initiate ‘an entirely new man’, ‘a man and a citizen’. Since Durkheim’s time, this ‘extended initiation rite’, as John Boli (1989: 221) formulated it, has developed into a fundamental societal institution promising to transform children ‘into modern individuals, capable of rational calculation, self-discipline, political astuteness, and religious righteousness required to make the national policy both successful and just’. Mass schooling has become the main gateway to fully authorized citizenship throughout the world. It was Michel Foucault (1977: 170) who focused on the examination as one of the main tools for this specific moulding and shaping work. He saw the modern school as part of a new kind of disciplinary power deriving its historical success from the use of ‘hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it, the examination’. Only by examination is it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish, in a word, to create a new individual. The results of these countless examinations, and the different diplomas, certificates and reports that arise from them, dictate the recognition or denial of access to social success and affluence in today’s ‘credential societies’ (Collins, 1979). This chapter is about one specific form of school examination, that concerning pupils’ behaviour.The aim in the following analysis of changes in Finnish educational discourse from the beginning of mass schooling in the 1860s up to the late 1990s is to shed light on how the examination of behaviour, as one ritual among others, contributed to the construction of citizenship. The concept of examination here covers a wide range of words: evaluation, assessment, grading, marking, testing and measuring. I will narrow down this vast field by focusing on what has been stated about the examination of behaviour in authoritative educational texts and in the reports – in other words, the term and year-end report forms, especially the School Leaving Certificate. The source material mainly comprises texts that could be characterized as ‘official school discourse’: national curricula, governmental committee reports, legislative and administrative texts, semi-official handbooks on primary and

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later comprehensive school, and the relevant teacher training.The following list of attributes that have served over the years as targets in assessing pupils’ behaviour gives a hint as to what the future direction will be: ‘conduct’, ‘neatness’, ‘attentiveness’, ‘inclinations’, ‘character’, ‘diligence’, ‘persistence’, ‘honesty’, ‘attitude’, ‘comprehension’, ‘regularity’, ‘punctuality’, ‘initiative’, ‘enterprise’, ‘tidiness in work’, ‘attitude towards safety considerations’, ‘active participation’, ‘ability and willingness to cooperate’, ‘positive attitude and willingness to act according to the educational goals’, ‘working habits’, ‘independence’, ‘creativity’, ‘critical ability’, ‘responsibility’, ‘consideration of others’. Manifold forms of school examination are seen here as procedures or techniques that are meant to be used in examination practices. This approach emphasizes the consequences or effects of these techniques. All examination is essentially a question of power – although in official school discourse this is a concept that has lately become almost taboo. Two different notions or dimensions of power are considered here: the concept of power as repressive, preventative or negative on the one hand, and as productive, creative and positive on the other (cf. Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998: 3–35). In this sense, the examination of pupil behaviour in Finnish schooling seems to fall into three different categories: first, the many and various pedagogical examinations given during the school year; second, examinations for term and year reports; and third, those that determine the School Leaving Certificate. In terms of effects, virtually all of these examinations are normalizing and individualizing. On the one hand, they mould the soul and the body of the child according to a system of norms, and also produce individuals who are created from various combinations of these norms, whereas on the other hand, they produce unique combinations of features, qualities and variables, in other words individuals. The diploma also has a selective effect. It classifies, categorizes, defines, verbalizes, numerates, makes comparable and objectifies – in short, it tells the ‘truth’ about the pupil.These examining practices are clearly top-down procedures, representing the classic, repressive use of power, and so the effects may also be punitive and exclusive. It is understandable that they produce, at the same time, the good pupil and the poor pupil, the included and the excluded, excellence and failure. The term and year reports fall between pedagogical examination and the diploma. They cannot be selective in the way that diplomas are, but they also normalize and individualize. This supposes new kinds of selective techniques, the effect of which does not work top-down as pupils rather push themselves up or down, in or out. I call this effect self-selective. As stated in the textbook that dominated teacher training for decades: ‘At the age of 9 to 14 (. . .) [t]he pupils increasingly begin to use the yardstick of marks for their own performance’ (Lehtovaara & Koskenniemi, 1966: 265). The 1994 curriculum expressed the same thing as follows:

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To a large extent, the student concretizes the aims of his studies and forms his self-image through evaluation. Evaluation is part of all phases of interaction in school. Some of it is conscious feedback to the student on his studies and progress; some is unconscious communication from the teacher and fellow students. (CUR, 1994: 28) The focus in this chapter is on the appearance, transformation and disappearance of these examining techniques. It is divided chronologically into four sections according to the changes in the Finnish schooling system.2 The first period covers the decades of the ‘old primary school’ (1866–1943), the second the ‘new primary school’ (1943–70), the third the ‘early comprehensive school’ (1970–94), and the fourth the ‘late comprehensive school’ (1994–). In conclusion, I analyse the changing forms of examination in this historical context.

The old primary school (1866–1943) The Finnish primary school institution was established relatively late (1866), and unlike in many European nations schooling became compulsory even later (1921). In fact, only Belgium and Russia were at that time without a compulsory school system (Halila, 1950: 15). In Denmark, for example, compulsory primary education was created as early as 1814, and in Sweden in 1842. Finland was an agriculture-dominated country until the Second World War. In 1945, about 70 per cent of the population lived in rural areas and nearly 60 per cent were employed in agriculture and forestry. Two basic explanations could be put forward for this belated establishment of compulsory schooling. First, the vast majority of the population, country people and the peasantry, actively opposed the establishment of the primary school under the Russian Empire (1809– 1917). Second, after independence and the bloody civil war in 1918, the upper classes also felt deeply disappointed with both the people and the efficiency of the schooling (Halila, 1950). Thus it actually took until the Second World War before primary education was truly universal in Finland (Kivinen, 1988). Although the idea of the ‘Founding Father’, the Rev. Uno Cygnaeus, was to make primary school the obligatory and common basis for all further education, his dream was not realized in his lifetime: it was primarily schooling for the rural population. Even though the school network had been built up in the cities during the nineteenth century, some 20 per cent of urban children still attended private or ‘preparatory’ schools in the 1930s.These were abolished only in the 1950s when a decree declared that four years of primary school were a prerequisite for entering grammar school (Nurmi, 1988: 227). Up until the Second World War, the curriculum was based on the prevailing moral code.3 Although the benefits of mass education for individuals were mentioned, schooling was principally legitimated by the needs of society, of

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the Nation, of the Fatherland. The aim was to educate pupils in the established religious and agrarian way of life where ‘work and faith were the central concepts of the curriculum, and home and fatherland [its] solid ground’, as one Finnish historian of education (Rinne, 1987: 109) phrased it. Still, in 1946 a governmental committee referred to the training of workers explicitly as the basic task of primary school, whereas middle (lower secondary) school was to educate future foremen, and the gymnasium (upper secondary school) the new generation of managers for the Fatherland (CUR, 1946: 17). It was clear from the beginning that the primary school had to have an examination. In 1861, Cygnaeus proposed that the work of the school year should be finished by the spring fête that immediately followed the ‘annual examination’ where ‘the teacher may show his/her skills and (. . .) the children’s advances in knowledge. But first of all, the results of the school year’s work, useful for practical life, will become clear to the parishioners’ (Cygnaeus, 1910: 308). The annual examination thus had three functions, as far as Cygnaeus was concerned. First, it was an official ritual through which the knowledge and skills of the pupil were to be checked. Second, it was a ritual evaluation of the teacher’s competence.Thirdly, and he considered this the most important, it was an excellent opportunity to spread the word about the usefulness and the blessings of primary school among many people who were not at all convinced by it. The emphasis of these functions has changed over the years, but all three still remain in one form or another. The importance of the School Leaving Certificate was recognized only when there was some use for it in society. Military service in the 1880s was much shorter for those with the certificate, and in 1889 the National Board of Education (NBE) announced its official form (Lönnbeck, 1907: 202–3). Pupils’ behaviour and progress in school subjects were to be graded on the French scale from 1 to 10. It is notable that the strong and respected opinion prevailed that the certificate should not include any numbers at all, but should just give a few remarks about the pupil’s behaviour, diligence and progress. It should thus be a certification and guarantee of citizenship, not a list of scholarly achievements. There was, however, a consensus on grading the behaviour of pupils by giving marks for ‘conduct’ and ‘neatness and attentiveness’ (Halila, 1949: 88–93; Salmela, 1948: 11). It is revealing that, in spite of the achievement of national independence and the establishment of the compulsory primary-school system, nothing happened in terms of assessment and reports on an official level between 1889 and 1943. There were sporadic discussions among teachers and inspectors, but no common consensus was reached about when, for example, a pupil should receive a certificate, whether it should include poor marks (1–4), how to use the grading scale, or whether some pupils could repeat the year. According to an authoritative school official (Salmela, 1948: 31–2), the teachers were, up to then, as ‘sovereign as a Great Power’ in their assessment. The basic reason for this inactivity

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was the fear that pupils would leave school if the demands were too rigid (ibid.: 9–21). It is fair to conclude that it was not so important what the certificate was like. What brought the benefits was to possess it. There was one mark in particular that crystallized the symbolic guarantee of citizenship, the mark for conduct, although even that was not standardized by order of the authorities. According to Salmela, it was ‘quite common’ to give the top, excellent mark ‘if the pupil did not possess a serious weakness of character or s/he had not been guilty of some grave misdemeanour’. There were, nevertheless, teachers of the view that ‘nobody’s conduct is excellent and so nobody should actually receive an excellent mark for it’ (Salmela, 1948: 45). A semi-official handbook of pupil assessment describes the significance of the conduct mark as follows: In grading conduct for the Graduation Diploma, the teacher makes a statement about the pupil’s appearance, growth and development during his/her school years. This is a statement to society about what kind of position the individual coming from the school might be placed in, and about his/her value. It is society that needs the assessment in the diploma, and not only for taking a newcomer from school into life, but also for maintaining firm belief that respectability and ability will be prized, and good-for-nothings will be punished. (Salmela, 1948: 46) Even if early criticism of the assessment of scholarly achievement dated back to the late nineteenth century, it did it not take long for the first ambitious applications of it to appear. In 1908, a publishing house owned by the Union of Finnish Primary School Teachers published a booklet called the ‘Pupil’s Book’ (Luoma, 1908).This was a collection of report forms for pupil assessment by month, term and year for the entire upper primary school. Teachers could use the book to assess their pupils on the monthly report page on a dozen dimensions using a four-step scale (good–satisfactory–passable–poor). These dimensions were conduct, diligence, attentiveness, regularity in coming to school and to the classroom, attention to the instruction, care with homework, care with school work, obedience, care with textbooks and notebooks, cleanliness, and general progress. Lateness, absence, punishments and admonitions were also recorded here. Thus, this was no overstatement on the first page: Take care with this book so that you can show it to those who seek information about your capability. This book is the best recommendation you can give when, in the future, you are looking for a job. Therefore, behave yourself at school so that this book is your helper, a certificate of honour. A new version of the ‘Pupil’s Book’ was probably published in the 1910s. Three odd innovations were introduced in this second edition. First, the

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assessments were no longer to be given monthly, and the teacher was allowed to make them less frequently. Second, whereas all the dimensions were external in the first edition, the first genuine psychological dimension – comprehension (käsityskyky in Finnish) – was introduced in the second. Finally, the numeric scale from 1 to 10 replaced the verbal four-step scale. It is not clear how much the teachers used the first sophisticated, monthly examination or the later version. What is known, however, is that these monthly report pages were excluded from the third version onwards, which was probably published in 1923. The Book just became a technical collection of term and year reports. It is fair to say, in summary, that the first period (1866–1943) during which the old primary school became compulsory was dominated by repressive and exclusive examination techniques. The teachers based their conduct marks on common sense or on their own convictions and morals. Salmela gives many examples of arbitrary teacher action. A low mark on the certificate seemed effectively to exclude the pupil from successful citizenship, and in reports it produced behaviour categorized as almost criminal. It is noteworthy, however, that the examination focused mainly on deviating pupils, and its exclusive effect was weakened by the far from complete coverage of compulsory schooling. The curiosity of the old primary school was the ‘Pupil’s Book’ with its monthly and detailed examination of behaviour. However, this was only used for a dozen years, and we do not know how much store teachers set by it in reality.

The new primary school (1943–70) The moral curricular code became a civic code after the Second World War (Rinne, 1987). Only then did the solitary and original individual emerge at the side of Society as the legitimate basis for compulsory schooling. However, the individual was still subordinated to the interests of Society. School was seen as a ‘mini-society’, and as a workplace for children, which led to the idea of moulding the ‘school life’ of pupils into something that was totally educational. The main task of the school was to train ‘individuals for Society’, or more precisely, ‘for our Society’ (CUR, 1952: 13–14; Lahdes, 1961; Simola, 1995: 118). Compulsory primary school was finally universalized in the 1940s. It was only then that there were school buildings in every corner of the country, and virtually every child between seven and 15 went to school in one form or another. At the same time, it was considered necessary to standardize school examinations. Common sense or the teacher’s conviction was not suited to the universalized school. Besides, there was no longer any danger that pupils would leave school because it was now finally institutionalized and also controlled as a part, although not yet a very large or uniform part, of the normal life course of every citizen-to-be. The NBE finally issued guidelines for pupil assessment and reports in 1943 and 1944. Ever since, pupils with two poor marks have had to repeat the year:

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the leaving certificate could not include poor marks. An excellent mark for conduct was given if the pupil had not been guilty of ‘any grave offence, gross neglect or other conduct that indicates obvious and serious weakness of character’. The mark for neatness and attentiveness remained at the side of the conduct mark. The NBE emphasized that the general grading must not be affected by affection for or dislike of the pupil. It was also declared that, ‘the School Leaving Certificate is proof that the behaviour of the pupil is socially acceptable’. The inclusion of two new statements pushed this point home: the teacher had to complete the sentences,‘During his/her school career, the pupil has shown a special inclination for . . . . . . . . . .’ and, ‘The pupil has shown the following traits of character . . . . . . . . . .’ (Mäntyoja, 1951: 290–4; Salmela, 1948: 154). This was not enough for the NBE, however. Alfred Salmela, the longstanding and authoritative head of the General Education Department, continued the standardization work in his semi-official handbook entitled ‘Pupil Assessment in Primary School’. The first cycle in the pursuit of reform had just been set in motion in the 1940s, and Salmela’s vision was related to this. He suggested that in the ‘old’ school it was enough to ‘reject the undersized and roughly-behaved’, but that in modern school reform, ‘pupil assessment is one of its most important but also one of its most difficult problems’ (Salmela, 1948: 5–6). Salmela paid a lot of attention to the assessment of behaviour because he thought it a serious issue for both society and pupils. The function of the conduct mark in the year and term reports was ‘to compel the pupil and his/ her guardians to pay attention to the errors, even the smallest ones, that have occurred’. The certificate was even more serious: society demanded that, in assessing conduct, the teacher should look ‘deep into the pupil’s heart’, and the grading must be ‘incorruptibly and ruthlessly just’, using ‘the scales of Goodness and Justice’ (Salmela, 1948: 46). No wonder Salmela used the metaphor of a court of law here with reference to the NBE directive that the mark for conduct could be lowered only after deliberation by the school board. This resembles a panel or jury representing common opinion and society, and was ‘not as formal as a conscientious and a pedantic teacher may be’ (ibid.: 58–9), All this was necessary because: The character and the behaviour of a human being belong so fundamentally to his/her personality that to show those to be less than the general level is a much more rigorous and injurious assessment than the assessment of knowledge and skills (. . .) Therefore great care is essential because the assessment touches upon the most sensitive feelings of a human being. (Salmela, 1948: 55) What, then, were the crimes that lowered the mark for conduct, according to Salmela? He mentioned only three clear cases: rudeness to and disrespect for

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the teacher, fighting using a dangerous weapon, and pilfering and theft. Thus he stressed that, in legal terms, a poor conduct mark was a case of serious dolus but not of culpa or casus (Salmela, 1948: 47–9). If he is to be believed, such a mark was a real handicap for the pupil in Finnish society. It meant: (. . .) being obliged to remain on the level of an unskilled, manual worker, not because of the mark itself but because of the defective character it implies. A person with a low conduct mark in the School Leaving Certificate does not easily move to a higher level than that of manual work. Further education also closes its doors to him/her. This looks like the Last Judgement indeed. (Salmela, 1948: 55–6) Salmela thus went on to recommend that such a wretch could, after due penitence, receive an exculpatory document from the (same) teacher before the age of 18. He also proposed that a low conduct mark should be given to no more than one in every hundred pupils. Low marks for neatness and attentiveness were not seen as fatal, and could be given more often, but the average marks should be between 9 and 9.5, which meant that, again on average, every third pupil had a poor mark for this in their School Leaving Certificate (Salmela, 1948: 50–1, 59–60). Salmela also outlined the significance and use of the two statements about the inclinations and characteristics of the pupil the teacher had to complete. Recalling that one reason for assessment was to guide the pupil towards a suitable career, he suggested that the marks in the certificate gave a one-sided picture. They indicated very little about the relation between diligence and ability, even though this was of extreme importance in career counselling. Because society offers many jobs needing diligence, persistence and loyalty rather than talent, the pupil with these qualities benefits from positive comments about them in the certificate. Referring to the NBE circular, Salmela emphasized that the remarks on inclinations and character should only be positive, and referred to areas such as sports in the former case and diligence or thoroughness in the latter. He went on to stress the value of systematic observation in the documentation to ensure that assessment was valid. Finally, he referred to the Swedish and US practice of assessing the ‘citizenship’ of the pupil, to which he declared the aim and function of the new assessment of inclinations and characteristics corresponded Salmela, 1948: 138–40). The report of the Curriculum Committee for Elementary School (CUR, 1952) was published in 1952. It became the national model curriculum just as its precursor, the report of the Curriculum Committee for Rural Elementary School (CUR, 1925), was in its time. Both were explicit and extensive (235 and 218 pages, respectively), and both had virtually no word about pupil assessment. The basic reason for this could well have been that the selective function of primary school was still very limited: few pupils aimed at studies in further

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education, and the diploma served only as a certificate of citizenship. As Salmela’s statement above suggests, in the old primary school it was enough to ‘reject those below standard and behaving roughly’, and the job of the 1952 committee was to prepare the primary school curriculum, not to think about general reform. The 1952 curriculum contains one statement referring to the emerging selective function of primary school. On the subject of problems of vocational selection, the report notes that primary school should help here because ‘the teacher knows so much about his/her pupil and his/her abilities’ (CUR, 1952: 22). However, two other statements clearly illustrate the fact that selection was not the recognized job of the primary school. First, the curriculum emphasizes that ‘[t]he main task of the teacher is to guide the studies of the pupil but not to control the results’ (ibid.: 32) Second, on the subject of studies in mathematics, the committee referred to grammar school, where mathematics was ‘one of the most effective tools for pupil selection’, whereas in primary school it ‘has no selective role’ because it is practically oriented: ‘so that the pupil will cope well with life’ (CUR, 1946: 49). Nevertheless, given the subject of this chapter, there was one point that made the 1952 curriculum already seem an interesting precursor: it introduced the idea of a complete archive. The curriculum proposed creating a certain type of ‘Pupil Register’ for the continuous and cumulative documentation of notes and observations about ‘the mental development and particularities of the child’. The idea came from an eminent Finnish psychologist, Arvo Lehtovaara, who had published a rationale for pupil observation, including 95 targets for evaluation. However, it is worth noting that both the ‘Lehtovaara Rationale’ and the pupil register were planned particularly with pupils ‘at risk’ in mind, those whose ‘mental balance and working capacity may easily be disturbed’ (CUR, 1952: 36).The idea of an extensive and exact archive was thus created, but it was not yet the time to concentrate on all pupils – the focus was still on the deviant ones. Nevertheless, a selective function was also put on the primary-school agenda. In the 1950s, four years of primary school became a prerequisite for entering grammar (secondary) school (Nurmi, 1988: 227): this was in response to the increasing grammar-school boom. From then on, primary school teachers had to rank their pupils and evaluate their chances of success at grammar school.The former was based on their average grades, but the latter was a purely subjective assessment of personality and talent. The selection procedures affected not only the pupils who went to grammar school, but also those who continued at primary school. According to the 1958 Primary School Decree, for the purposes of career counselling the teacher must take ‘continuous notes, based on pupil observation’, about ‘pupils’ inclinations, abilities and hobbies’ (Hinkkanen, 1959: 48). A guide to pupil observation was published in 1960, and this included sociometric testing, the evaluation of personality and behaviour, assessment of school success and parental attitudes.

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The detailed questionnaires and observation forms were standardized, and it was clearly stated on the title page that the booklet was for professional use only (Jauhiainen, 1993). If these innovations came essentially from the coincident increasing need for selection and the emergence of the psychology discipline, pedagogy as an academic discipline was also making its contributions to the examination of pupil behaviour. Its leading figure at that time, Professor Matti Koskenniemi (1944: 350), repeatedly proposed that the marks for conduct and for neatness and attentiveness were too narrow: they did not reveal whether the pupil had ‘a constructive mind or only a skill for avoiding reprehensible conduct’. He introduced international examples of the detailed evaluation of pupils’ behaviour, character and personality, and finally proposed a ‘Pupil’s Account’, a model that came from the Jena School headed by Peter Petersen. Koskenniemi openly stated that employers, in particular, would benefit greatly from this kind of detailed description of the pupil’s ‘whole being’, ‘social and ethical attitude’, and ‘personality and its quality’ (cf. Koskenniemi, 1952: 116–28). To my knowledge, however, the Pupil’s Account was never widely used. After the Second World War, the need arose to define criteria for conduct and neatness and attentiveness, which limited the arbitrary freedom of teachers to grade behaviour. The main techniques of behaviour examination were still exclusive and punitive in the new primary school (1943–70), although the statements on inclinations and characteristics in the leaving certificate gave a slight opportunity for positive selection. However, the real innovations were the selective techniques that focused on different groups of pupils: the Lehtovaara Rationale for deviating pupils, success prediction for grammar school candidates, and the observation model for pupils continuing their studies in the upper grades of primary school.4 Although the focus of examination thus started to move from deviating to all pupils, the most ambitious assessment tools proposed by the leading figures in pedagogy and psychology – the Pupil’s Account and the Pupil’s Register – never materialized.

The early comprehensive school (1970–94) Various fundamental reforms were carried out in the 1970s. The most important of them, the Comprehensive School Reform (1972–77), meant replacing the dual-track school system of eight years of compulsory education and a parallel grammar-school option with the single, mixed-ability comprehensive school in which the whole cohort of pupils was educated for nine years, full-time. As noted above, grading and assessment were not included in curricular or committee texts until the 1960s. However, it was clearly stated in all the decrees determining their tasks that teachers shall ‘check and supervise the exercises, carry out the grading and prepare the pupils’ report cards’ (Hinkkanen, 1959: 80). The first mention of ‘the evaluation of learning results

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and pupil assessment’ among the contents of didactics in teacher training was in 1960 (CR, 1960: 77). Nor had the NBE sent new circulars or other instructions about pupil assessment since the 1943–44 circulars mentioned above. It was simply not considered problematic. A dramatic change occurred in the comprehensive-school texts. Examination became a constant and central theme of official school discourse after the 1966 report on school reform (CR, 1966). The report noted the problem that the traditional grading and assessment of pupils gave both quantitatively and qualitatively limited information about how they were progressing in their studies. It was assumed that pupils themselves, as well as parents, teachers, future educational institutes and employers needed, first, comprehensive and individual assessment during the school years, and second, objective and comparative grading in the leaving certificate.There was clearly a need for verbal reports for the former purpose and standardized tests for the latter. The committee made a distinction between ‘pedagogical assessment’ and ‘final assessment’, clearly and explicitly stating that they ‘must be carefully distinguished one from the other’ (CR, 1966: 81). Since then, these two main techniques of assessment in words and grading in marks (numbers) have constituted the basis of the two central aims of schooling: comprehensive evaluation for pedagogical purposes and objective assessment for pupil selection. The 1970 report of the Curriculum Committee for the Comprehensive School marked a break with tradition. It introduced, among many other things, the term ‘evaluation’ into general educational discourse. Valid, objective and comparable pupil evaluation was seen, first of all, as serving society outside the school, as well as parents, and was possible due to ‘the considerable development in techniques for measuring learning achievements’ (CUR, 1970: 161). It was hoped that standardized testing in particular would objectively establish the ‘pupil’s rank in his/her own study group and the level of this study group in relation to other corresponding groups’ (ibid.: 171–2). One of the main innovations was the special education system for those who were excluded from normal classroom routines. Part-time and school or classroom-type, full-time special education was finally available for about 15 per cent of the cohort. Developments in educational sciences and psychology were seen both as legitimating profound intervention in the personality of the pupil, and also as offering the necessary tools. The 1970 committee brought into the arena a whole range of scientific vocabulary, including terms that referred specifically to medicine. Within this ‘diagnostic-didactic’ discourse it became the norm to talk about ability and personality testing, systematic and continuing observation, summative, formative and diagnostic tests, and the teacher’s ability to utilize all this new technology. Accordingly, everything could and had to be evaluated. It might have been enough to assess two dimensions of behaviour and results in studies of different school subjects at primary school, but it certainly was not at comprehensive school. The 1970 committee referred to the need for advanced evaluation

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methods to facilitate goal achievement in religious, social, ethic and aesthetic education, and also in the ‘development of the whole personality’ (CUR, 1970: 162). Every pupil was to be evaluated individually and comprehensively. Whereas the teacher’s knowledge of the pupil was clearly concentrated on deviant pupils at primary school, methods were developed to help the teacher to get to know every pupil at comprehensive school, individually and fundamentally. It was proposed to send parents, two or three times per term, a written description focusing especially on the ‘development of the pupil’s personality and maturation and learning in social skills’ (ibid.: 170). Even ‘poor learning success’ in ‘emotional development and in social skills’ might result in the pupil being ‘moved to special education or to further examinations and possibly into therapeutic procedures’, the committee noted (ibid.: 160). Accompanying this systematic observation and scientific testing, the dream of the complete archive, integrating all bodies of information, now became reality. Schools collected knowledge about their pupils in many forms. From the very beginning (1866), the teacher was obliged to keep a ‘Name Book’ containing details of each pupil’s name, date of birth, parents, address and financial situation. From 1882, the teacher had to mark in the Class Book the content of the teaching and the names of absent pupils (Lönnbeck, 1907: 148–9). Currently, a record of every leaving certificate has to be kept in the school (Kerkkonen, 1923: 75, 13). The fourth field of knowledge was constructed much later, in the 1950s when school healthcare was organized and universalized by the state, and information on pupils was compiled on individual ‘Pupils’ Health Cards’. Finally, in 1985, came the ‘Punishment Book’ in which disciplinary measures taken were to be recorded.These interesting issues of health and punishment go beyond the limits of this chapter, although they have played an extremely important role in constructing citizenship in the school (see, for example, Ojakangas, 1992: 277–93). This fully fledged archive was meant to contain a massive amount of information on ‘gifts, character, family background, hobbies, physical development and school performance’, to be gathered through ‘testing, questionnaires, interviews, home visits, exams, etc.’ (CUR, 1970: 186). The ambitious goal of responding to the learning needs and abilities of every individual pupil was its justification.What was of essential importance here was that this personal ‘pupil information card’ was to be categorized as a ‘confidential document’, and as such closed to the pupil and his or her parents but open to teachers, school officials and researchers (ibid.: 172). However, the 1970 committee’s dream of a complete archive was never realized, not because of its totalitarian character, but on account of the practical problems involved in its construction. The information collected on the card was much more restricted than the committee suggested, and was further restricted in the 1980s when reference to parental occupation was dropped, for example. The real innovation of the 1970s concerned comprehensive verbal assessment. There was, of course, nothing new in verbal evaluation, which has always

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been the main everyday feedback that pupils receive from their teachers. Until then, however, it was mainly informal and implicit. The origins of formal, explicit verbal assessment are to be found in the additional remarks on pupils’ inclinations and characteristics in the School Leaving Certificate, as stated in the NBE directive of 1943. Verbal assessment, in both oral and written form, became the main proposal of the 1973 committee for the reform of pupil assessment (CR, 1973). The committee declared its vision of ‘a gradual shift from comparative assessment to verbal counselling’ (ibid.: 120).The 1973 committee believed it was possible, by developing goals and tests, and through counselling, to ‘abandon predictive assessment models and move to the use of counselling information and remarks about the courses that the pupil had passed’ (ibid.: 118). An NBE circular from 1976 recommended using ‘a verbal information form’ for the three lowest grades. The NBE also supplied model forms that became the basis of verbal assessment in Finnish comprehensive schools up to the 1990s (Koski, 1981: 12–16). The model form consisted of 66 statements that were to be evaluated mainly on a three-step scale (e.g. frequently / sometimes / rarely).The statements dealt with six areas including ‘Working habits’, ‘Adaptation’, ‘Progress in school subjects’, ‘Skills in the mother-tongue’, ‘Skills in foreign languages’ and ‘Skills in mathematics’. The first two areas are of special interest here. Working habits were assessed through statements such as: ‘The pupil is able to concentrate on his/her work’; ‘The pupil is able to cooperate with his/her class-mates’; ‘The pupil is able to work consistently’). The social adaptation of the pupil was described in statements such as: ‘The pupil behaves kindly and politely towards his/her classmates and teacher’; ‘The pupil seems to enjoy his/her time at school’;‘The pupil is able to follow the collectively accepted rules of the school’. It should be remembered that these forms were only recommendations, and there is no evidence of how much they were used in reality. Nevertheless, a new assessment technique had been introduced into the official school discourse. Comprehensive school also brought changes in the traditional numerical assessment of behaviour. By decree, marks for conduct and neatness were not to be included in the leaving certificate after 1970 (Kettunen & Koski, 1972: 327). This supported the argument for using the whole numerical scale in conduct and neatness assessment as well, because it was now restricted to time in school. An NBE circular letter sent in 1978 ordered teachers to use the whole scale in behavioural assessment, emphasizing that ‘the excellent mark may be used often’ (Koski, 1981: 20). Three basic dimensions of conduct assessment were used: ‘honesty’, ‘consideration of other persons’ and ‘attitude towards the environment of work and living’. The dimensions of the neatness assessment were ‘regularity and punctuality’, ‘initiative’, ‘tidiness in work’ and ‘attitude towards safety considerations’ (ibid.: 21–3). The circular further stated that adequate behavioural assessment ‘requires an extensive view of individuality and personality development of the pupil and of the different ways in which the goals of schooling may be achieved’ (CR, 1973: 21–3).

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The next major curricular text, the 1985 Framework Curriculum, realized some basic ideas of the 1973 committee concerning the renewal of pupil assessment. It conceded the possibility of shifting from selection to counselling while orienting pupils towards further education after comprehensive school. This optimism was based, first, on a governmental decision to guarantee enough full-time student places to accommodate every comprehensive-school leaver by the end of the 1980s. Second, the pupil cohorts were continuously shrinking. The curriculum text implied that these trends would give more autonomous space to the comprehensive school because its function would be less and less selective (CUR, 1985: 11). Consequently, the 1985 curriculum introduced a unique model in which traditional relative assessment was explicitly abandoned. The learning results of any one pupil were to be compared not with those of other pupils in the group, but rather with his or her individual learning goals: Thus, given the goals defined by the curriculum (. . .) it must be clarified how far towards the general goals each pupil is able to advance in each specific issue, within the limit of his/her own abilities. Therefore the pupil’s marks will also show how s/he has succeeded in this. This kind of evaluative procedure may be called goal-based evaluation. In giving marks, the teacher does not compare the learning results of one pupil to those of others as in relative assessment. The individualization of learning goals should spur every pupil to capitalize on his/her own abilities as efficiently as possible. (CUR, 1985: 29) However, the curriculum did not abolish numerical assessment, and even defined the general levels of each mark related to the national curriculum (CUR, 1985: 31). To bring more flexibility to the grading and to give weak pupils an opportunity to achieve better than the poorest marks (ibid.: 30), it introduced another radical principle that meant a break with the tradition covering all compulsory schooling. The 1970 curriculum formulated this principle as follows: ‘[T]he assessment carried out by the teacher should be focused on the performance and particular behaviour of the pupil and not on his/ her personality as a whole’ (CUR, 1970: 52). Since 1985, in addition to knowledge and skills, ‘the achievement of general educational goals that are central for the whole development of the pupil’ has also been taken into account in grading school subjects (CUR, 1985: 30). Examples of such criteria include ‘active participation’, ‘the ability and willingness to cooperate’ and ‘a positive attitude and willingness to act according to the educational goals’ (ibid.: 30, 31). These two innovations – goal-based evaluation and considering the achievement of general educational goals in assessing teaching subjects – gave the teacher a totally free hand in pupil assessment, at least in principle. First,

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the teacher had both the right and the duty to define ‘the limits of the pupil’s abilities’ (CUR, 1985: 29), and second, he or she was justified in raising or lowering the pupil’s mark in a school subject, pleading the ‘achievement of the general goals that are important for the overall development of the pupil’ (ibid.: 30). The third innovation in the 1985 curriculum also emphasized the omnipotence of the teacher’s observing eye. Feedback on progress and development was seen to come from two main sources, ‘summative testing’ and ‘observation of continuing proof ’. There is nothing unusual in the former concept, which just refers to traditional examinations, but the latter might indeed have come straight from Foucault’s pen: The teacher realizes observation of continuing proof by controlling the participation of the pupil in the learning situation in all its forms. Both oral and written proof may be the subject of observation. The observation shall be systematized and diversified because then it will develop the teacher’s knowledge of the individual pupil. The knowledge produced from observation will supplement the feedback on the pupil’s progress proved by the tests. In some school subjects, the observation will be the only basis for assessment. Formative tasks are one form of observation of continuing proof, though their basic aim is to give to the teacher immediate feedback on the achievement of learning objectives (. . .) It is not necessary to inform the pupils of the formative tasks in advance, since then they could get some sense of summative testing. (CUR, 1985: 30) There is no evidence that goal-based evaluation affected the everyday routines of assessment in the school in any way. It has been claimed that it resulted in ‘inflating’ comprehensive-school marks and in making them less comparable (Apajalahti, 1996: 5; CR, 1996: 17, 22). If so, the NBE order to change pupil evaluation in 1991 did not weaken this trend because the detailed recommendations concerning assessment levels in the 1985 curriculum were replaced with short descriptions according to which ‘evaluation must be individual and related to the age and abilities of the pupil’ (Apajalahti, 1996: 6). Verbal assessment became possible in the four lowest school grades, and the assessment of behaviour remained similar to what it had been since 1978 – in other words, it was not included in the leaving certificate. The marks for behaviour (now divided between ‘conduct’ and ‘neatness’) were taken out of the certificate during the period of the early comprehensive school (1970–94), and thus the selectivity disappeared. Conduct and neatness were now to be evaluated on the general scale, which heralded the appearance of the standardizing function.The inclusion of verbal assessment in the first four grades also produced a slight standardizing effect as so-called goal-based evaluation because it brought behaviour into the assessment of school subjects.

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Although giving the teacher a free hand to combine behaviour assessment with subject assessment, it also created a new potentially repressive effect. The selective effects of behaviour examination were fully concentrated on the new system of special education: chronic bad behaviour resulted in relegation to the ‘observation class’. The continuity of exclusion is illustrated here because being moved into special education – whether part-time or full-time – certainly had exclusion effects. In sum, the main innovations of the early comprehensive school were the standardizing techniques and the subsequent focus on all pupils. Exclusive and selective techniques were limited to the expanding special education. It is noteworthy, again, that the most ambitious innovations, proposed this time by educational scientists, were not realized.

Late comprehensive school (1994–) The late 1980s saw Finland turning from quite consensual social-democratic politics to a more market-oriented and neo-liberal approach, as happened in other Nordic countries too. This is reflected in one of the changes promoted in the 1994 curriculum that was related to the concept of the pupil. The curricular code was indeed individualist, but there was a qualitative change that could be characterized as a shift from egalitarian individualism to competitive (or market) individualism (Koski & Nummenmaa, 1995; Sulkunen, 1992). The curriculum explicitly took a turn towards values that ‘promote the strengthening of individualism’ (CUR, 1994: 10). It is no wonder, then, that the main justification for all the development, systematization and intensification of evaluation was presented as being entirely in the service of the pupil him/herself: Evaluation should promote the development of sound self-esteem in pupils as well as the formation of realistic awareness of their own knowledge and skills and of the importance of continuous study. Self-esteem is reinforced, and their awareness of themselves, their own aims and potential, are emphasised when freedom of choice and flexibility within the school system are increased. Feedback in the form of evaluation in school that pupils get directs their interests and efforts (. . .) The task of evaluation is to encourage pupils – in a positive way – to set their own aims, to plan their work and to make independent choices (. . .) Pupil and other evaluations are based on the aims of the curriculum. What is important is that the evaluation centres on the individual and takes into consideration his developmental stage and abilities. (CUR, 1994: 29–30) Emphasis on verbal evaluation and the process of learning fitted well with this individual-centred ethos (CUR, 1994: 28). The focus on evaluation in

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general was evident in talk about the importance of reviewing, improving and developing the ‘school’s evaluation system’ as an essential part of both the curriculum and school practice (ibid.: 30). An innovation in the assessment of conduct and neatness was their combination in one mark, but this mark for behaviour was still not included in the leaving certificate. ‘Selfevaluation’, ‘group evaluation’ and ‘evaluation discussion’ were introduced as new examination techniques (ibid.: 29). Evaluation was now justified almost entirely from the perspective of the individual pupil, and verbal assessment could complement numerical grading in all reports. This is echoed in the statement of a secretary of the working group on pupil evaluation appointed by the Ministry of Education: ‘numerical assessment fills only a small part of the needs of pupil evaluation, and it seems to be playing a less and less important role’ (Apajalahti, 1996: 7). Although the emphasis was clearly on verbal rather than numerical assessment, and on the process rather than the learning result, both dimensions were nevertheless present. The Basic Education Act and Statute (Law, 1998; Statute, 1998) confirm the individualistic outlines of the 1994 curriculum. According to the Law (1998: §22), the aims of pupil evaluation are ‘to guide and encourage studies and to develop the pupil’s capacities for self-evaluation. The learning, working and behaviour of the pupil shall be evaluated in a versatile way.’ What is curious here is that ‘self-evaluation’, a novelty just a few years previously, found its way into the legislative text, which had traditionally incorporated only established and settled concepts. The Statute (1998: §10–12) includes one article dedicated to the evaluation and assessment of the pupil, both of which are defined, in separate sections, as moving from class to class during school, ending with a final assessment, in other words graduating evaluation. The statute states that, ‘[a]t the end of every academic year, all pupils shall receive a school report that includes their study plan and an assessment by teaching subject or inter-curricular issues of how they have achieved their set goals, together with an assessment of their behaviour.’ It also stipulates that the Comprehensive School Leaving Certificate shall not include any assessment of the behaviour of pupils. In 1999, a 33-page booklet entitled ‘Guidelines for Pupil Evaluation in Basic Education’ replaced the short section of the Framework Curriculum describing evaluation and the associated reports (CUR, 1999). Self-evaluation is strongly emphasized as ‘a central part of the evaluation system of the school’ (ibid.: 10). The document has separate chapters on the evaluation of behaviour and work. It is considered necessary ‘to state the goals for pupil behaviour, to guide them in their pursuit of these goals and to evaluate the achievement of the goals. The evaluation of behaviour shall be constant, truthful and versatile.’ The evaluation of work is focused on learners’ skills in planning, carrying out and evaluating their own working. This means considering how responsibly, autonomously and cooperatively they act, and especially ‘how the pupil is able

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to connect the specific sectors of working skills into a easy-going and natural learning process where it is the self-evaluation that directs the planning and realisation of work’ (ibid.: 14). The 1994 Framework Curriculum made it possible for schools to create a curriculum of their own, albeit based on the national framework curriculum. The local board of education in many cities and municipalities gave the schools a quite free hand in formatting the reports. Allowing them to use their own forms for both the intermediate (given at least once in the course of the school year) and the yearly (given at the end of the school year) reports. In the following I will describe some of the findings from a study (Simola, 1997) on the verbal assessment of pupil behaviour that appeared in these reports. These assessments were ‘verbal’ in a very limited sense of the word: in fact, they were multiple-choice questions and the teacher’s or the pupil’s agreement with the statement is expressed on a 3–5 point scale. Only a few forms include open questions, or even sentences to be completed. Therefore, it may well be claimed that the ‘Pupils’ Book’ designed by Luoma in 1908 was an early predecessor of this kind of ‘verbal’ assessment. Possibly the most striking innovation was the procedure in which the pupil assesses himself or herself, complemented with parallel teacher assessment. The teacher makes his or her own assessment or comments after the pupil has done his or her self-evaluation. One could easily imagine a situation in which the pupil grades himself or herself by ticking the ‘mostly’ box on the ‘responsibility for his or her own school and home work’ question, while the teacher ticks ‘often’: or when the pupil states that he or she ‘accepts disappointments’ ‘well’, but the teacher indicates ‘poor’ acceptance. In terms of content, the statements fall into two categories. The ‘traditional’ ones refer to the behaviour (or characteristics) of a well-behaved, punctual, painstaking, diligent, adaptable and obedient pupil – in short, of a nice pupil. Such traits are often connected in progressivist child-centred literature to traditional school goodness, to the sphere of the well-known ‘hidden curriculum’. On the other hand, ‘progressive’ statements refer to qualities often emphasized in modern child-centred pedagogy such as sociality, independence, activity, creativity and criticism. The great majority (roughly between 70 and 90 per cent depending on the interpretation) of the statements used in the forms, in both the teacher’s assessment and the pupils’ self-assessment, are traditional. It is curious that many traits emphasized in the reform discourse since the 1960s (such as honesty, truthfulness and justice) do not appear at all in these verbal assessments, or only very rarely (e.g. creativity, criticism and courage). One-fifth of the schools did not use any progressive statements in their forms, and a half used only one. Only a third used more than one among the traditional statements. We are thus witnessing, again, an interesting phenomenon already pointed out in this chapter: the most ambitious reform ideas tend never to be realized on the school level, or if they are, not as intended.

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The 1994 curriculum seemed to herald the fourth period, that of the late comprehensive school. The individualist curricular code turns from egalitarian towards competitive individualism. The most striking novelty is the introduction of ‘self-evaluation’ on the levels of both reporting and pedagogical examination. Self-evaluation seems to function on all levels, and it may have strong self-selective effects in all its forms. Our sample of report forms from some Finnish cities clearly shows that self-assessment may also be having normalizing and even standardizing effects. What is most curious here is the predominant practice in which the teacher assesses the pupil after his or her self-assessment. It is claimed that self-evaluation is used in an increasing number of schools, and in nearly all schools committed to experimentation on pupil evaluation (CR, 1996: 32).

Conclusions The examination of pupils’ behaviour in Finnish schools changed in many ways during the period of over a century discussed above. The old primary school (1866–1943) was dominated by techniques of punishment and exclusion, whereas selective and standardizing techniques were virtually nonexistent. The new primary school (1943–70), while maintaining or even strengthening exclusion and punitive techniques, introduced new selective criteria for behaviour assessment. Nevertheless, not one technique covered all pupils, and various special ones were used for different groups according to the increasing need for selection. Among the innovations in the early comprehensive school (1970–94) was the standardizing of behaviour examination. Even more important was the fact that the selective function was fully concentrated on the new special-education system in which new professional school psychologists cooperated with teachers. The most recent period, late comprehensive school (1994–), has brought back selective techniques, although the role of special education is still essential.The real novelty of the 1990s, however, was the variety of self-selection techniques. Three general conclusions concerning the four periods mentioned above may be drawn. First, virtually all techniques of behaviour examination throughout the years of mass schooling have been individualizing and normalizing. To put it briefly, their main effect has been to mould an individual citizen who has internalized the hegemonic divisions of society between the true and nottrue, the good and not-good, the right and not-right. Second, examination during primary school was focused on deviant pupils or special groups, and not on all pupils. It was the comprehensive school that brought the entire cohort under the scrutinizing eye of the more and more sophisticated and comprehensive examination of behaviour. Finally, the most ambitious techniques, often proposed by academics, were used only for short periods of time, or were never realized, or their implementation deviated essentially from the original intention. All this renders conclusions about the recent period rather vulnerable.

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As has become obvious during this excursion through the term and year reports of some Finnish cities, the innovation seems to have strengthened and particularized traditional behaviour assessment rather than broadening its scope in a more progressive and liberal direction. It is my belief that the new forms of examination contribute to the creation of a new pupil who is willing and able to engage in self-evaluation and selfselection. This means that pupils undergo constant assessment and grading, invest in and are favourably disposed towards the faith of schooling. A new expert teacher and a new ‘portfolio pupil’ are under construction, both willing to take part in continuous and comprehensive, systematic and sophisticated examination, no matter whether carried out by their peers, their superiors or themselves. If the mission of the teacher in the old school was to be a gatekeeper of fully authorized citizenship, the mission of the modern comprehensiveschool teacher could be described, to cite Rinne (1988: 443), as ‘to inscribe into the pupils the sense of “self-selection” and “suitability”, to guide the pupils to the free choices and routes that are fitting and suitable for them’. Are self-evaluation and self-selection, then, not highly functional in our latemodern society that is ruled by doctrines of free but obligatory individual choice, persistent competition, the exchangeable and the replaceable, and the constant assessment of adequacy and sufficiency in others and ourselves? (see, for example, Beck et al., 1994; Rose, 1994, 1999). The school promises, once again, to respond to the ‘requirements’ of ‘Society’. This is a Foucauldian nightmare for some, whereas for others it is exactly what has been needed for a long time. The majority of teachers, I would guess, look upon change as yet more reform rhetoric that will come to nothing on the everyday level of schooling. There is, however, every reason to claim that none of these critical worries, optimistic hopes and cynical prophecies will come true as such. On the evidence of the above historical analysis, it seems fair to suggest that the most ambitious examination reforms systematically remain unrealized in the reality of schooling.The abilities of teachers to evaluate their individual pupils, and the opportunities, seem to be very limited. One Finnish study (Mäensivu, 1995), for example, scrutinized eight primary school teachers as evaluators and describers of their pupils. Although the teachers were working in the lower grades of primary school, and were well motivated, the conclusions were depressing: (. . .) teachers have to evaluate and describe their pupils without knowing them too well. The pupils are described by means of their external behaviour. In the multifaceted and busy school-life, shattered by accidental breaks and outside disturbances, it is not possible for teachers to know the deeper learning processes and motivation of their individual pupils. In these circumstances, the pupils are described practically, sometimes even at random.To put it in a slightly pointed way, one could say that the description of the pupil will be constructed depending on the impressions the teacher happens to receive of the pupil, on which kind of group the pupils happens

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to fall into, on who happens to be his or her teacher, on how his or her parents happen to cooperate with the school and on what kind of support the teacher happens to receive from colleagues and experts. (Mäensivu, 1995: 120–1) A significant proportion of teachers, and most politicians, administrators and scientists in the educational field cannot resist the temptation of telling the ‘truth’ about pupils, and so the introduction of new, promising and ambitious techniques for examining behaviour will continue. I have outlined some potential effects of these techniques in this chapter. What will happen in the schooling reality, however, remains to be revealed in future empirical studies. The 1996 report claims, for example, that ‘[e]xperience has proved that pupils, in general, do not by nature have sufficient ability for self-evaluation but they learn it rather quickly’ (CR, 1996: 32). We do not know what is really being examined when a 7-year-old child deliberates on whether or not he or she allows ‘the others and him/herself to work in peace’, or when a 10-year-old wonders whether he or she ‘accepts disappointments’ – especially when the teacher immediately comments on their choice. We do know, however, on the basis of the historical experience of school reforms (Tyack & Cuban, 1995), that we should ask how schools change the reforms rather than the reverse. The reforms change the school, indeed, but rarely in the intended direction.

Notes 1 Simola, H. (2002) From exclusion to self-selection: an examination of behaviour in Finnish primary and comprehensive schooling from the 1860s to the 1990s. History of Education, 31(3): 207–26 [lightly edited]. 2 Naming the four periods is not, of course, accidental. The basic division between primary and comprehensive schools is based on legislative changes. The further distinctions during the primary-school period between ‘old’ and ‘new’ and in the comprehensive-school period between ‘early’ and ‘late’ are more diffuse. Finland before the Second World War is commonly seen in various cultural contexts as the ‘Old Finland’. Following discussion on school reform after the 1940s, the 1952 primary-school curriculum was widely seen as a response to these demands and thus a manifesto for the ‘new’ primary school. To attribute the comprehensive-school periods as ‘early’ and ‘late’ refers to distinctions between modern and late modern (or even post-modern). 3 Here I am following Lundgren, who defines the curriculum in three ways: (1) ‘a selection of contents and goals for social reproduction, that is a selection of what knowledge and skills are to be transmitted by education’; (2)‘an organization of knowledge and skills’; and (3) ‘an indication of methods concerning how the selected contents are to be taught; to be sequenced and controlled, for example’ (Lundgren, 1991: 5). A ‘curriculum code’ is thus a ‘homogenous set’ of ‘principles according to which the selection, the organization and the methods for transmission are formed’ (ibid.). 4 These classes, 7 and 8, were originally called jatkolouokat (extension classes) and later kansalaiskoulu (Civic School). Since the early 1960s, increasing numbers of pupils with the leaving certificate have continued their studies in vocational colleges.

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References Apajalahti, M. (1996) Peruskoulun oppilasarviointi [Pupil evaluation in comprehensive school]. Memo 7 February 1996. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Beck, U., Giddens, A. & Lash, S. (1994) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press. Boli, J. (1989) New Citizens for a New Society: The Institutional Origins of Mass Schooling in Sweden. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Collins, R. (1979) The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. New York: Academic Press. Committee Report (CR) (1960) Seminaarilainsäädännön uudistamiskomitean mietintö. KM 1960: 7 [The Report of the Committee for the Reform of Seminar Legislation]. Helsinki:Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Committee Report (CR) (1966) Koulunuudistustoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1966: A 12 [The Report of the Committee for School Reform]. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Committee Report (CR) (1973) Oppilasarvostelun uudistamistoimikunnan mietintö. KM 1973: 38 [The Report of the Committee for the Reform of Pupil Assessment]. Mimeograph. Committee Report (CR) (1996) Peruskoulun oppilasarviointityöryhmän muistio [The Memorandum of the Committee for Pupil Evaluation in Comprehensive School]. Opetusminsteriön työryhmän muistioita 4. Helsinki: Opetusminsteriö. Curriculum (CUR) (1925) Maalaiskansakoulun opetussuunnitelmakomitean mietintö. KM 1925 [Report of the Rural Elementary School]. Helsinki:Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Curriculum (CUR) (1946) Kansakoulukomitean mietintö. KM 1946: 2 [The Report of the Committee for the Elementary School Curriculum]. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Curriculum (CUR) (1952) Kansakoulun opetussuunnitelmakomitean mietintö II. KM 1952: 3 [Report of the Committee for the Elementary School Curriculum II]. Helsinki:Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino. Curriculum (CUR) (1970) Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelmatoimikunnan mietintö I. KM 1970: A 4 [Report of the Committee for the Comprehensive School Curriculum I]. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus. Curriculum (CUR) (1985) Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelman perusteet [Framework Curriculum for the Comprehensive School 1985]. National Board of Education. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus. Curriculum (CUR) (1994) Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelman perusteet [Framework Curriculum for the Comprehensive School 1994]. National Board of Education. Helsinki: Painatuskeskus. Curriculum (CUR) (1999) Perusopetuksen oppilaanarvioinnin perusteet [Guidelines for Student Evaluation in Basic Education]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Cygnaeus, U. (1910) Kirjoitukset Suomen kansakoulun perustamisesta ja järjestämisestä [Writings on the Establishment and Organization of the Primary School in Finland]. Helsinki: Kansanvalistusseura. Durkheim, E. (1956) Education and Sociology. New York: Free Press. Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books. Halila, A. (1949) Suomen kansakoululaitoksen historia. II osa: Kansakouluasetuksesta piirijakoon [The History of the Finnish Primary School System II]. Helsinki: WSOY.

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Halila, A. (1950) Suomen kansakoululaitoksen historia. IV osa: Oppivelvollisuuskoulu vuosina 1921–1939 [The History of the Finnish Primary School System IV]. Helsinki: WSOY. Hinkkanen, A. (ed.) (1959) Uusi kansakoululainsäädäntö [The New lLegislation for the Primary School]. Helsinki:Valistus. Jauhiainen, A. (1993) Koulu, oppilaiden huolto ja hyvinvointivaltio. Suomen oppivelvollisuuskoulun oppilashuollon ja sen asiantuntijajärjestelmien muotoutuminen 1800luvuin lopulta 1990-luvulle [School, Student Welfare and the Welfare State: The Formation of the Student-Welfare System in Finnish Compulsory Education and its Network of Experts, from the Late 1800s to the 1990s]. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis C 98. Turku: University of Turku. Kerkkonen, K. (ed.) (1923) Kansakoulukäsikirja lisäyksineen [The Hhandbook of the Primary School]. Porvoo: Werner Söderström osakeyhtiö. Kettunen, A. & Koski, E. (eds.) (1972) Peruskoulun käsikirja [The Handbook for the Comprehensive School]. Helsinki: WSOY. Kivinen, O. (1988) Koulutuksen järjestelmäkehitys. Peruskoulutus ja valtiollinen kouludoktriini Suomessa 1800- ja 1900-luvuilla [The Systematisation of Education: Basic Education and the State School Doctrine in Finland in the 19th and 20th Centuries]. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Scripta Lingua Fennica Edita. C 67.Turku:Turku University. Koskenniemi, M. (1944) Kansakoulun opetusoppi [Didactics for the Primary School]. Helsinki: Otava. Koskenniemi, M. (1952) Miten voisin lisätä todistuksen tehoa [How could we increase the effect of the report], in K. Saarialho & M. Koskenniemi (eds.) Kansakoulun työtapoja II.Yläkoulun menetelmistä (pp. 116–28). Porvoo: Werner Söderström osakeyhtiö. Koski, E. (1981) Peruskoulun ala-asteen oppilasarvostelu. Opas opettajille, koulujen johtajille ja kouluneuvostojen jäsenille [Pupil Assessment in the Lower Stage of Comprehensive Sschool].Vantaa: Kunnallispaino. Koski, L. & Nummenmaa, A.R. (1995) Kilpailu kouludiskurssissa [Competition in school discourse]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 26: 340–9. Lahdes, E. (1961) Uuden kansakoulun vaikutus Suomen kansakouluun [The Influence of the ‘New School’ on the Finnish Primary School]. Keuruu: Otava. Law (1998) Perusopetuslaki 21.8.1998/628 [The Basic Education Act], in H. Ranta (ed.) Opetustoimen lainsäädäntö 1999. Helsinki: Kauppakaari OYJ. Lehtovaara, A. & Koskenniemi, M. (1966) Kasvatuspsykologia [Educational Psychology]. Helsinki: Otava. Lönnbeck, G.F. (ed.) (1907) Kanskoulun Käsikirja [The Handbook for the Primary School]. Helsinki: K.W. Edlundin kustannusosakeyhtiö. Lundgren, U.P. (1991) Between Education and Schooling: Outlines of a Diachronic Curriculum Theory. Geelong,VIC: Deakin University Press. Luoma, S. (1908) Valistuksen oppilaskirja [The Pupil’s Book]. Helsinki:Valistus. Mäensivu, K. (1995) Opettaja oppilaidensa kuvaajana – praktis-konstruktiivinen näkökulma [The teacher as a describer of his or her pupils: A practical-constructivist approach]. Unpublished licentiate thesis in psychology. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Mäntyoja, A. (ed.) (1951) Kansakoulun lainsäädäntö [Primary School Legislation]. Helsinki: Otava. Nurmi, V. (1988) Uno Cygnaeus. Suomalainen koulumies ja kasvattaja [Uno Cygnaeus: A Finnish Schoolmaster and Educator]. Helsinki:Valtion painatuskeskus.

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Ojakangas, M. (1992) ‘Kuri käsittää koulun koko elämän . . .’.Viime vuosisadanvaihteen suomalainen kansakoulupedagogikka ja ruumiin poliittiset teknologiat [Finnish school pedagogy and political technologies of the body at the turn of last century]. Sosiologia, 29: 277–93. Popkewitz, T.S. & Brennan, M. (1998) Restructuring social and political theory in education: Foucault and a social epistemology of school practices, in T.S. Popkewitz & B. Marie (eds.) Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education (pp. 3–35). New York: Teachers College Press. Rinne, R. (1987) Has somebody hidden the curriculum? The curriculum as a point of intersection between the utopia of civic society and the state control, in P. Malinen & P. Kansanen (eds.) Research Frames of the Finnish Curriculum. Research Report 53. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Rinne, R. (1988) Kansan kasvattajasta opetuksen ammattilaiseksi: suomalaisen kansanopettajan tie [From an educator of the people to a teaching professional: the path of the Finnish primary school teacher]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 19: 430–44. Rose, N. (1994) Expertise and the government of conduct. Studies in Law, Politics and Society, 14: 359–97. Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salmela, A. (1948) Kansakoulun oppilasarvostelu [Pupil Assessment in Primary School]. Helsinki: Otava. Simola, H. (1995) Paljon vartijat. Suomalainen kansanopettaja valtiollisessa kouludiskurssissa 1860-luvulta 1990-luvulle [The Guards of Plenty: The Finnish Schoolteacher in Educational State Discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s]. Research Report 137. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Simola, H. (1997) Ulossulkemisesta itsevalikointiin — Opettajuus, kansalaisuus ja käyttäytymisen arvostelu kansa- ja peruskouludokumenteisssa vuosina 1866–1996 [From Exclusion to Self-selection: Teacherhood, Citizenship and the Examination of Behaviour in Finnish Primary and Comprehensive School Documents from 1866 to 1996]. Helsingin kaupungin kouluviraston julkaisusarja A3. Helsinki: Helsingin kaupungin opetusvirasto. Statute (1998) Perusopetusasetus 20.11.1998/852 [The Basic Education Statute], in H. Ranta (ed.) Opetustoimen lainsäädantö 1999. Helsinki: Kauppakaari OYJ. Sulkunen, P. (1992) Introduction: Intellectuals and the great projects of the twentieth century, in N. Kauppi and P. Sulkunen (eds.) Vanguards of Modernity. Publications of the Research Unit for Contemporary Culture 32. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995) Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 8

‘It’s progress but . . .’ Finnish teachers talking about their changing work 1

In this chapter I describe how, in face-to-face interviews, Finnish comprehensive-school teachers talked about their work and how they saw it had changed during the previous ten years or so. Four themes are in focus here. The first concerns the tasks that the teachers considered necessary in their work. The second is about the demands they felt were placed on them by their environment, namely society, the authorities, the media, parents and pupils. The third theme is to do with the competences the interviewees considered necessary for being a successful teacher at the time, and the fourth covers the change they had experienced in their work during the previous decade. The material is taken from two sources. First, during the school year 1999– 2000, I conducted eleven individual and two group interviews for the NOS Project.2 The group interviews included seven teachers, and thus the voices of 18 teachers were heard. Second, in the very same school year, Katariina Hakala and myself interviewed 35 Finnish comprehensive-school teachers for the EGSIE Project3 (Simola & Hakala, 2001).The themes in both sets of interviews were similar, and it seemed more than reasonable to combine these materials.4 The following analysis is therefore based on interviews with 53 teachers of different ages and with varying experience, working in primary and lower secondary schools both in the Helsinki metropolitan area and in various small towns and rural districts.

Tasks As mentioned above, tasks in this context are the activities the teachers considered necessary to carry out their work, meaning that they accepted them as an inherent part of the job: something that was part of their professional practice. When they talked about their tasks they were quite consistent in what they saw as the everyday level of their work. It should be borne in mind, however, that this is not what really happens in classroom life: it is only the teachers’ conceptions and interpretations of their work. To be even more precise, it is based on what these teachers uttered in a very specific situation, an interview.5

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Not surprisingly, these Finnish teachers saw teaching as their main task. This was mentioned very often as a truism, and continued with a ‘but’ sentence reflecting the increased concern with what they called education. By education they meant, first of all, educating pupils in social behaviour: ‘to take others into consideration and these kinds of basic manners so at the same time we try to listen and do our own job’ (G11S6). In fact, it was basically to mould children into traditionally ‘good citizens’. In line with the tradition, too, they often referred to the teacher’s task of maintaining working peace, social order and discipline in the classroom. According to many of them, and this applied not only in primary but also in lower secondary school, education was or was getting to be more important than teaching. Some were already saying, ‘this whole job has changed to education only’ (G11S), and ‘the role of the school has changed more to fulfilling this task of education, and other learning achievements take second place’ (F13P). The basic reason for this, according to the teachers almost without exception, was to be found in the changes in society, especially in the Finnish family. The responsibility for education had shifted from home to school, from parents to teachers. Teachers, apart from teaching, had to play the role of psychiatrist, police officer, social worker, counsellor, and even of the mother/father, all at the same time (e.g. F10P, F2S). What came close to this was the kind of pastoral or service work that was also increasing. As one primary school teacher stated: Let’s say it’s some 30 per cent teaching and the other 70 per cent may be different service procedures, such as relieving pain, clearing up some problem, so all these kinds of practical things we have to do here. (F13P) This change seemed to frustrate many teachers, and not only on the secondary level. Many of them appeared to share the views of the primary school teacher: There is such a feeling of frustration, however, because I’m a teacher and I think I would like to mediate knowledge. So if I’m a history and social studies teacher, I really want to teach and deliver knowledge, too. However, nowadays it sometimes seems as if this isn’t appreciated, that it’s of secondary importance to deliver knowledge about history and society. All other ways of supporting and counselling and educating the pupils are important, I agree, but often I feel that we can’t be pulled in all these directions. And I wouldn’t want to be only a social educator, I also want to be a teacher. (G12P) Nevertheless, this shift seemed to be something that teachers accepted and adapted to, or at least reconciled themselves to: it came from outside, from

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society or the world. The task of the teacher, in any case, was both to teach and to educate pupils. What they were criticizing were the ‘other things’: We’re expected nowadays to do all kinds of other things besides teaching and educating, all this so-called development work that often isn’t very meaningful. We often ask what is their relevance to teaching, all these projects and themes and things that are nowadays demanded from us and that take so much time, it’s time away from our proper work. (G12P) How, then, was this main task, teaching, articulated by our interviewees? Without much exaggeration, we were able to conclude that teaching in Finnish schools indeed seemed to follow quite a traditional path. Most often, the teachers spoke about teaching as a self-evident and taken-for-granted activity, the main problems concerning unmotivated pupils, too few lessons for their own subject and crowded classrooms. Not surprisingly, they were torn between demands for individual treatment and the reality of mass teaching. When there are 32 in a group, there’s a big difference. Pupils from a small group of 16 came into my group and they were surprised, these children, that the teacher had any time for them at all. (F10P) What was new was the emphasis on the responsibility of pupils for their own learning (e.g. M6P). The teachers saw this as a novelty, coming from ‘constructivist pedagogical thinking’ (M17P). As a passing truth, one teacher (M8S) referred to the well-known slogan from the 1970s, ‘Anybody can learn anything’. One may well ask how this notion is to be reconciled with more traditional attitudes to pupils ‘who really do not learn’ (G11S), and to the responsibility of the teacher: ‘If they are not interested, they will see it in their marks. So that’s it, it’s their choice, I won’t go to any trouble if they don’t care’ (G11S). It seems that the burden of learning has been moved back to the pupils. In fact, there were only two exceptions in which this contradiction between the mass form of schooling and the demand for individual pedagogy was dealt with explicitly. An experienced mathematics teacher from lower secondary school (F9S) explained in some detail how she organized her teaching according to the individual differences of her pupils. Nevertheless, she favoured a return to streaming by ability instead of fully mixed grouping. Another case was a monologue from the principal of an experimental school (M18P). He described in some detail their practice of ‘lessons for their independent work’ (oman työn tunnit) in which the children proceeded according to their own plans in different subjects, and the main role of the teacher was to help those in trouble. Curiously enough, he immediately started to speak about ‘individual learning’ when the interviewer asked about ‘individualized teaching’.

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As in many Western countries, there has been public discussion in Finland on the falling levels of learning results. When asked about this problem, most of the lower secondary teachers tended to accept the claims, and welcomed the abilitybased streaming that was applied in Finnish lower secondary schools during the 1970s and the 1980s (F9S, F2S, F14P, M3S). Primary school teachers were much more cautious with regard to the level of learning outcomes: they spoke about the changing quality of learning rather than the quantity (M16P, M8S, M5P). Possibly the clearest change in teachers’ main tasks was the move from classroom- to school-level action. All kinds of meetings, joint planning, and working in pairs and teams have become common practice in Finnish schools. Many teachers saw the increased time allowed for meetings as a positive development, enhancing cooperation and democracy in the school (F9S, M8S).Various teachers nevertheless complained about the increased number of fruitless meetings, and thought that curricular planning limited the time they had to be where they thought they should be – with their pupils (F10P, F2S, M5P, F13P). Interestingly, traces of the solitary tradition in the teacher’s work were evident in the interviews. Although appreciating autonomy and independence in their work, many teachers referred to the possibility of closing the classroom door and doing their teaching exactly how they preferred to do it (e.g. M4S, M8S). Two aspects of the Finnish teacher’s work were less explicit than reported in other Nordic countries (see Chapter 9 in this volume and Simola, 2002). First, the interviewees rarely emphasized the construction and maintenance of close, confidential and individual relations with their pupils. One experienced teacher (F7P) stressed the importance of keeping a professional distance from the problems of their pupils in the interests of survival.This is closely intertwined with the second difference: the teachers rarely mentioned the forging of close relationships with families and parents as a basic task. Although new forms of verbal evaluation and increased choice entailed more frequent communication with families, they seemed to be quite happy with the traditional relations.Without asking for much individual treatment, families are supposed to leave their children at school, which is seen as a legitimate representative of society. Only the principal of an experimental primary school (M18P) spoke enthusiastically about parents visiting and looking for a suitable school for their offspring. Correspondingly, he was the only one capitalizing fully on the rhetoric of clientele in his statements.

Demands ‘Demands’ in this context refers to what the teachers believed their environment imposed on them. They came from the outside in, often from the top down. They thus mainly concerned what the school and the teachers should and ought to do, a step away from what they saw as the reality of schooling. There were curious contradictions in the teachers’ talk about demands. On the one hand, they said that parents and also society demanded about the same as previously, and that these demands were not inordinate.

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The demands from the parents, they have remained the same, I think – that is, a safe learning environment and basic knowledge and skills. There’s no clear change, I think. (F7P) I can’t remember, at least right now, anything that demanding, but of course, there are some individuals who have such utopian ideas about changes at school. (F13P) I think that the demands from home are much the same as they used to be in my school years. The parents want and wish that their children receive good schooling and teaching and such. (M3S) Only a few teachers referred to demands from families for more individual attention to pupils, and such demands were classified as exceptions. At the same time, however, many interviewees complained about parents who had shifted the responsibility for education to the school. You’re supposed to take care of everything, deal with their problems at home, take responsibility for all that (. . .) I don’t know, I don’t know so much about the backgrounds of my pupils, even less about the problematic ones. (F1S) And if you read the letters to the editor in the paper and things, the teacher should do everything possible, should be their mum and dad and even their grandmother, and the pupils should be picked up from home by car and brought to the school where they’re safe, and taken care of on their way to school and while they’re there. So that’s quite far removed from whose children they actually are and who is responsible for them. (M4S) Although not facing more demands, at least from the majority of homes, many teachers thought that the authorities and the media expected too much of the school. This belief seemed to reflect the idea that schools were being encouraged to be more visible and more high profile, promoting themselves as centres of excellence. Some teachers blamed the authorities: It’s clear that this administrative bureaucracy creates competition between municipalities in terms of where there’s the most going on and where there are the best and most opportunities for the pupils. And all that is far removed from the basic task of the school. (F7P)

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Some interviewees were convinced of the validity of this ethos of excellence. The need for visibility and performance was in the ‘spirit of the times’: it was important to raise the profile of the school, to elevate its status and promote a good image.The principal of a large special school in the Helsinki metropolitan area put it like this: It has been said clearly, and encouraged indeed, that the school should raise its profile and should be seen and heard. My personal opinion is that you really can’t do that much. This profile raising and so on, we’re pursuing something that has nothing to do with our everyday work, in fact. Q: What is it to do with, then? R: With the pressure to perform and with the kind of idealism where everything should be great and fine, but the real everyday work with ordinary kids, it’s hard work. (M15P) A further element of the contradictory talk about demands was that, according to the teachers, the pupils were much more demanding than they used to be. Teachers were required to explain and justify why various things had to be done and learned. Pupils were also much more conscious of their rights: All the time you have to give reasons for what you’re supposed to do. The older pupils, they’re asking all the time ‘why must we?’ and ‘why will I need this and what for?’There’s a continuous verbal battle about everything.The pupils question everything. Even all the most self-evident things. So the motivating, it’s the motivation of pupils, it’s the nineties. (G11S) The pupils are very knowledgeable about their own rights and they use this knowledge, and when there’s some trouble they’re the first to insist on their own rights (. . .) This often easily leads to a confrontation between teacher and pupil, and although the problem will be resolved later, they’re very gruff and arrogant at first and that. I don’t think it was like that earlier. (M4S) Various interviewees referred to the general ideal that learning and schooling should be nice and pleasant all the time (G11S). What they seemed to forget is that the learning of many valuable things would always be laborious, too. A typical statement came from a maths teacher: It’s common to think nowadays that learning should be fun and easy, that we should be conjurors and make everybody enjoy themselves (. . .), but

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learning can’t always be fun, there’s a lot of routine, grinding (. . .), that we should be sort of clowns providing fun for everybody (. . .), but it’s also learning to work and work isn’t always fun. (F2S) Behind this questioning many teachers saw the lost authority of the teacher among pupils and parents, and in society in general (M15P, M6P, F7P).

Competence The third theme concerned the competence the teachers thought they needed to be able to carry out their work successfully. The interviewers concentrated on both teacher training and personal qualities, asking about the main attributes of a good teacher, whether there had been any changes during the 1990s, and what kinds of teacher might have problems in their work. In the opinion of the interviewees, a successful teacher had to be, first of all, an extrovert, a performer and an active person who followed the timetable, willingly participated in different kinds of pedagogical experiments and knew how to express himself or herself with parents and in public. In other words, the teacher’s work was no longer restricted to what happened with pupils in classrooms. As far as classroom work was concerned, very traditional qualities were mentioned, with a few exceptions. The teacher had to be sociable, patient, flexible but firm and resolute, with a sense of humour. In other words, he or she had to be an adult (e.g. F10P, G11S, M16P). Many interviewees, especially in lower secondary school, pointed to the growing emphasis on education rather than traditional teaching. Some complained that the time for teaching was being increasingly limited by the pastoral, disciplinary and social work they were required to do. One interpretation was that the work of the teacher seemed to reflect the traditional position of the people’s educator, after a period of being the more democratic ‘knowledge distributor’ (M17P). One overriding quality was the ability to engage in social interaction and cooperation. Logically, too, the biggest problems in the profession were anticipated for teachers who were not able to cooperate. It would seem that the professional role of the teacher had changed from teaching and mediating information to the more comprehensive encompassing of all-inclusive care of the pupil. Only a few teachers referred to traditional competence in terms of content, but one did mention the increasing importance of specialization. In sum, the teacher’s work was seen as a human-relations occupation. The teachers very rarely referred to their educational studies, although there were positive exceptions. Some of the more experienced ones with traditional training referred positively to the new academic training and the new teachers (M6P, M16P). After almost ten years of experience, one female teacher referred strongly to her theoretical studies in education as a useful and important basis for her work:

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There may be great educators, and there really have been fantastic personalities in this school, too, who have no formal training, but I do appreciate my teacher education and the five or six years of moulding (. . .) Maybe I was two or three years in my job when I thought that there was no use for that training and what it actually gave me in my hands, but later, little by little, I realised that it gives something that those without it don’t have, I think (. . .) First there’s the theoretical thinking that will sometimes be needed here, though not so much on the practical level but rather when you have to look more at the whole picture and think about developing your school (. . .), it’s a way of thinking in general. Of course, it comes from other studies, too, but this kind of educational and scientific thinking, it goes into your backbone during those years in training, and I can’t emphasize that enough. (F13P) The old tradition of seeing teachers as model citizens, setting examples for their pupils, still seemed strong. One principal told the story of a male teacher who was dismissed because he used bad language in the classroom. Most of the interviewees fully accepted the demand to be morally acceptable, an adult model for the pupils.

Change On the most general level, the interviewees saw the changes in schools during the 1990s as progress. Nevertheless, as becomes apparent later, inherent in almost all of the comments were questions and points of reservation. The main reforms were carried out at the same time as the economic recession took hold in the early 1990s, which brought not only changes but also considerable cuts in school budgets.The reasons for the upheaval are rarely well argued, but it was clear to the teachers that they came from ‘societal change’, from outside the school. Many school-level actors seemed to have adopted the idea of ‘living in a continuing state of change’. They felt that school ‘should keep up with the rapid pace of change in society’, but that it seemed to be running ‘five years ahead rather than 15 years behind the rest of society’. Phenomena that were most frequently and positively mentioned, almost without any negative undertones, included: • • • • • •

Increasing autonomy in schools Increasing cooperation among teachers, and also with other professionals and agencies Discussions on basic values and the tasks of the school, carried out in teachers’ lounges during the implementation of the school-based curriculum An emphasis on the needs and interests of individual pupils Opening the school to society, and also opening classroom doors, bringing the teacher out of the classroom A broader choice for parents and pupils.

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Two of the interviewees described the changes as follows: Well, firstly, when society changes, the school changes. School became more open in the nineties, that’s for sure. You see, school as an institution has been very, so to say, secure and closed in the past. The teacher has been an authority, and teachers, the principal and the school have had power so that there’s been little interference from outside, despite the presence of the governing authorities. Now school has become more open in a way, so there’s more cooperation with parents and homes, and also with the surrounding society, which means that there’s this multi-professional cooperation and networking with workers from other organizations in this school as well. For example, we have this Bullying Project going on where there are youth social workers, police and church people working together. There’s more of this kind of cooperation and this direction is all right. I think this is the most important change. The school doors are now open, so to say. (F49P) There’s clearly been a strengthening of pupils’ position in terms of influencing their own learning during the nineties. And what’s also increased and even become a quite widely accepted everyday routine is that teachers don’t do their work alone anymore. Anyway, in schools that have been part of the Aquarium Project, for example, the School Development Projects, there’s been working in pairs and teams; this exists now, and it was only a goal in the eighties. And one thing that has clearly changed is that multi-professional groups have come to work in schools. It was very rare before anywhere except in special schools, where there were therapists and school assistants, and now it’s everyday custom in ordinary schools. And of course, what has been the biggest change is that the governance, the management system, has changed so that now we start from the lower level upwards.The management system has been deregulated and the autonomy of schools has increased, and this also means of course that the autonomy of teachers has increased and the autonomy of these working teams has increased. So freedom has increased, but responsibility has also increased. And if we talk about everyday routines, the role of learning materials has been questioned again. A book isn’t the only possibility, and computers have come to the schools, especially in Helsinki where a lot of money has been spent on them, and other materials that you can sort of use to open up classroom working. This has come during the nineties. (F22P) In spite of a general notion of progress, there were many interviewees who saw the changes, especially the main innovation of the 1990s related to the new school-based curriculum, as mainly paying lip service, as

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quasi-innovations that had practically no effect on the everyday level of schooling: And my opinion is that the school-based curriculum is just so much lip service, and it hasn’t changed anything. It was like that from the very start, so when it was created, there were cuts and cuts and cuts. We weren’t able to do anything great. Thus, it was all completely in vain (. . .) I think it was crazy to work out a curriculum that was not practicable. So that’s it, that’s still the situation today. We do have great and fine goals but we aren’t able to work towards them. (M34S) Notwithstanding the predominant feeling of progress, many interviewees continued to talk of change in a rather ambivalent way: there had been positive developments, but they had come at a price, and also had their reverse side. One of the strongest narratives here tells of the increasing time pressure and the more hectic pace in the teacher’s work that characterized the basic change in the 1990s: Q: How have you found the changes during the 1990s in your work? R: It’s hard to say other than that the workload has increased and seems to increase all the time. (F36S) So let’s say that it’s changed, for example, so that there’s much more work and the pace is much more forced. (F30P) One reason given for this increased workload was the moving of planning from national and local bureaucrats to schools and teachers. This was the basis of the criticism that the focus of the teacher’s work had moved from the ‘real’ work in the classroom, benefiting the pupils, to public performance of a kind. There was clear criticism of the constant flow of top-down reforms and demands to develop projects while the everyday work and grassroots action were not valued or emphasized. The school reforms indeed seemed to mean more work: Well, it [work] has changed, we’re in more of a hurry and it’s not enough to work but you should develop all the time, too. Sometimes you feel that development is much more important than doing the work itself. And sometimes you feel that the pupil is no longer important, but that it’s something else (. . .) You sometimes wish to be left in peace to get on with your work, that there weren’t projects and programmes and theme days, one after another, so that you could work. (M26P)

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I think the pace of change is too fast so you don’t notice all that’s good and bad when you’re just running. So the pace of change is too fast. The basic work here in the school, to educate and teach these pupils, should be the first priority, and if the strength and resources of the teacher are used in developing the school and the teaching, then there might be nothing left for the work there in the classroom because all the time goes to the development of the school. (F29P) The steady reduction in resources allocated for education and for public expenditure in general, on both the national and municipal level, was talked about in the interviews as the reverse side of the innovations of the 1990s. The stories are quite pessimistic and sceptical. The cuts were being reflected in the very basic materials used in classrooms: . . . we had this lesson quota system of 40 hours here before, I mean in this special unit, now there are only 30 hours. Then you can’t get any money for buying things, this is really what they always say, there isn’t money. But we have made this up by (. . .) we go to that local recycling centre, we have this recycling principle here. But there are times when you feel completely empty. (F37S) . . . in one school there was even talk about whether they could afford to buy ABC books for first graders. (F49P) Ironically, the cuts of the 1990s were realized at the same time as the discourse on individualization, including pupil choice, and individual study plans and curricula came out into the open. In practice, for example, teaching-group sizes were said to have essentially increased: . . . the groups are bigger now. And it’s quite a strange equation when you should be pupil-centred but you have only a few minutes per pupil. I don’t know if I should use my preparation time more with individual pupils or . . . Resources have been cut off, that’s for sure. (F36S) It is curious that the only big villain in the teachers’ tales resided in the home, in the intertwining of ‘vanishing parenthood’ and the ‘degenerating family’. Not even the municipal authorities in charge of the laying off of teachers were blamed that much – in fact, references to them were quite reasoned.There were various horror stories, typically about the multiple-problem family in which all the misery concentrates and acccumulates. Some talked of families in which

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unemployment was already a cross-generational experience, whereas others referred to families that culturally and sometimes even consciously excluded their offspring from education. Thus, the basic reason for this misery was unemployment, and the major – and most traditional – catalyst for the degeneration was, of course, alcohol. Drugs were also mentioned. One of the most frequent expressions used in this context was that of vanishing parenthood, referring to the general inability of the new generation of mothers and fathers to be ‘models of adults’, to give limits to their children, to guide them in good manners, and so on. Another consistent story painted a picture of increasingly seriously ill and disturbed pupils, again closely linked to vanishing parenthood. One primary-school principal was able to compare the situation at the time and ten years previously, observing that the number of clients for the special teacher had increased from between five and 10 to 70 cases.

Teaching as a job, a profession and a mission In the following, I aim to bring together some elements to build up a picture of Finnish teacherhood as the intertwining of a job, a profession and a mission. Given the limited space, I would just like to remind the reader of the vast literature on teaching as a ‘bricolage’, a profession and a mission.7 To put it plainly and simply, I would say that seeing teaching first as a job emphasizes its pragmatic and practical side, second as a profession focuses on its sciencelegitimated knowledge base and autonomy, and third as a mission points to its moral and ethical basis. Having put forward this tentative distinction, I would like to outline some professional traits of Finnish comprehensive-school teacherhood. The first of these is, naturally, the fully academic, Masters-level training that primary-school teachers have also been required to undergo since the late 1970s. In the light of the interview material discussed above, the stance of Finnish teachers towards their training is indeed ambivalent. They rarely showed appreciation of their academic, educational, science-based training, or even mentioned it, and it was equally rarely explicitly criticized. It seemed to be seen mainly as a vehicle for achieving higher social status, and nothing more.This interpretation is supported to some extent in the apparently rare thirsting for continuing education or even on-the-job guidance among the teachers. On the other hand, they quite often and sharply criticized the short-term training organized by their employers, describing it as fruitless and stupid. One could surmise that the Finnish teacher does not believe very strongly in the usefulness and fruitfulness of contemporary and official teaching knowledge, available through the courses and training organized by authorities and universities. Along with the science-legitimated knowledge base of their work, the teachers frequently referred to autonomy in the context of professionalism. As mentioned above, they tended to see a positive development on this dimension. It is true that since the changes in the mid 1990s there has been virtually no

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formal control system concerning the work of schools, in spite of the rhetoric and expressed intentions in official school discourse. Reference to the lack of any kind of evaluation, assessment or control was strong among the interviewees: Q: How is your work evaluated? Do you get any feedback? R: Very seldom do I get any feedback, the only one who evaluates anything is myself. (M24S) Nobody does the evaluation of our teaching here, I have never met anyone here who has evaluated our standards of teaching. (M44P) It has changed during the last ten years. Things have become more independent; the functioning of the schools has become notably more independent than before. There isn’t any inspection or control. We think there isn’t any. This is not necessarily a good situation. (M33P) Some interviewees were looking forward to new national forms of evaluation and assessment. Interestingly enough, very few of the teachers expressed any fear of or doubts about that, on the contrary. The interview material contains a lot of talk about new forms of cooperation between teachers, the main emphasis being on working in pairs and teams. Again, however, there was criticism of and scepticism towards the realization and conception of teamwork, and a call for ‘real cooperation’. This could be interpreted as implying that, in many senses, developments had been quite sporadic and fragmented, and limited to traditional cooperation among samesubject teachers and those in neighbouring classes. ‘Cross-professional’ cooperation could also be seen as a sign of professionalism. Fairly frequent references were made to multi-professional and inter-agency collaboration between teachers and other social and health sectors. There seemed to be new openings in this context, ‘networking’ being the catchword: through networking, schools could cooperate with other sectors carrying out social and health-related work in the municipality. The new school legislation of 1999 made it necessary to draw up a ‘personal plan for organizing and developing the tuition’ (henkilökohtainen opetuksen järjestämistä koskeva suunnitelma, HOJKS) for every pupil with a special-education status. It was also stated that, alongside the traditional year-grade-based syllabus, the pupil could proceed individually according to his or her own study programme if this could be organized by the school. We interviewed principals and teachers in four experimental and ambitious schools in the Helsinki metropolitan area. All four schools were implementing individualized and integrated/inclusive programmes, even though they were formally ordinary primary schools. All four

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were also referred to by municipal school officials as exemplary experimental institutions fighting for integration and against social exclusion. Three of them were following inclusive pedagogical principles, and the fourth had abolished the year-grade-based syllabus and was applying a version of the individual-study-plan approach. Furthermore, one primary school we visited was, according to its principal, successfully experimenting with a formula known as ‘flexible initial class education’, which meant being able to spend between one and three years in initial education. The principal was convinced that this would be how many primary schools would operate in the future. These ambitious schools were not exceptions in a rhetorical sense, because the great majority of the interviewees utilized ‘politically correct’ rhetoric in the spirit of this individualizing pedagogical ethos: it was at least silently accepted that the subject of the work of teachers was the individual pupil. Just a few interviewees made comments referring to the difficulty or even impossibility of individualized teaching in the crowded classrooms of schooling reality. It is also worth recalling, as mentioned above, that only two of the interviewees dealt in any detail with the practical solutions to the dilemma between the pursuit of individualist teaching/learning and the reality of mass schooling. What should one say, then, about the moral or ethical dimension of Finnish teacherhood based on the interview material at hand? Do Finnish teachers conceptualize their work using words such as calling? According to this material at least, the answer is, ‘No’: all references to a calling were negative. There were nevertheless various signs of strong commitment and even of missionary zeal in the references to the teacher’s work and profession. Furthermore, only a couple of the more than 50 interviewees mentioned moving out of the profession. It would therefore seem fair to conclude that Finnish teachers appear to be reasonably strongly engaged in their work. I would venture to say that their stance could be characterized as institutional engagement in teacherhood. It has been stated elsewhere (Antikainen et al., 1995) that belief in schooling is unusually strong in Finland. Indeed, we found evidence of this in our interviews, in that many interviewees saw education as the main vehicle for social mobility. On the other hand, without an education there are very few opportunities in modern Finnish society. I see it very clearly, so this is indeed a society appreciating education and constructed on education, so you don’t have any place here actually if you lack the comprehensive-school diploma. (F30P) Many interviewees intertwined a belief in schooling with a strong narrative of caring and social responsibility. One prevalent tradition in schools is to work hard to ensure that every pupil receives a valid school leaving certificate. An innovative catchword introduced by the municipal authority reflects this

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tradition: the ‘subsidiarity principle’ (lähivastuuperiaate), which puts the onus on the school to organize its work accordingly. On the other hand, one should bear in mind the above-mentioned shift in responsibility for their own learning to the pupils themselves. Another strong indication of the professional ethos is the way some Finnish teachers place the blame on homes with problems: vanishing parenthood and the degenerating family are the real villains in the piece.

Concluding remarks I will end by outlining the dilemma of Finnish teacherhood. Finnish teachers apparently enjoy some benefits that are rare among their colleagues in advanced liberal countries. They have Masters-level academic training and status. Their work seems to be more appreciated among parents than in most corresponding countries, and one cannot seriously speak about a ‘crisis of public schooling’ in the sense that is conventional in many Western nations. In international comparisons, too, learning achievements have been rather satisfactory.There are no signs of a deteriorating working ethos; on the contrary, teachers in Finland seem to be rather strongly committed to and engaged in their work. Unfortunately, however, a sceptical observer could explain these benefits essentially in historical terms. Finland is among the most recently industrialized nations in Europe. The modern welfare policy is quite young compared with those in the other Nordic countries. The tradition of strong centralization is a peculiarity of Finnish culture. This relation between a strong state and a weak civil society has prevailed for centuries and was also maintained during the later nation- and state-building processes in independent Finland. It left relatively limited space for the development of a ‘free’ civic society. Therefore, Finland could be characterized as having a more authoritarian and corporate culture than the other Nordic countries. This ‘backwardness explanation’ is even stronger if one takes into account one Finnish peculiarity in the globalizing Europe: due to the very small numbers of minority groups, it is still possible to speak about a relatively homogenous national culture in Finland (see Hänninen, 1998; Julkunen, 2001; Kautto et al., 2001). Therefore, the most interesting question for the future might well concern how Finnish schools and their teachers will face the inevitable changes and challenges coming from the (late) modernizing and globalizing world. Despite the evident strengths of the education system, there are alarming traits that emerge from this interview material. There are resounding silences about immigrant pupils, about more cooperative and equal relations with pupils and their parents, about the need for continuing and in-service training. There are tendencies to blame families and pupils for the deep cultural changes that hamper accustomed school practices.There are inclinations to conceal the basic dilemma between individualistic rhetoric and pedagogy for the masses, which will make it difficult to find realistic solutions to the conflict between

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demands and the reality in schools. All in all, there is an impression of a deficient or even non-existent language among teachers when it comes to dealing with the many fundamental and potentially disastrous problems of modern schooling. We should perhaps take these silences seriously and ask what they imply in terms of preconditions so that contemporary pedagogical research could furnish teachers with intellectual tools that will help them to face the challenges and changes of late-modern reality. Many scholars in the 1980s noted that the curriculum theories conveyed in teacher education were simply so poor and far from the reality of everyday schooling that their influence on the practices of teaching was questionable. Such criticism mainly concerned the behaviourist paradigm, however, and these voices have been rarely heard in the 2000s as so-called cognitive constructivism has assumed the position of paradigmatic hegemony in teacher education. It is reasonable to ask if this is related only to the ‘natural’ optimism and omnipotence of novelty in the social field, or if there is evidence of real progress in the relationship between educational theories and the reality of schooling. One might wonder if there is still reason to question the ‘ecological validity’ of what is officially self-evident in education and pedagogy (Simola, 1998).

Notes 1 Simola, H. (2002) ‘It’s progress but . . .’: Finnish teachers talking about their changing work, in K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen & H. Simola (eds.) Restructuring Nordic Teachers: Analyses of Interviews with Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Teachers (pp. 49–70). Report No. 3. Oslo: Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo [shortened and lightly edited]. 2 A four-country project Decentralization and Professionalism:The Construction of the New Teacher in the Nordic Countries (NOS), funded by the Joint Committee of the Nordic Social Science Research Councils (NOS-S). 3 An eight-country research project Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion in Europe (EGSIE), funded by Targeted Socio-Economic Research TSER/ EU, 1998–2000. 4 In the report, the interviewees taking part in the two research projects are identified simply by their code: numbers 1 to 13 refer to the NOS Project, and other numbers refer to the EGSIE Project. 5 We have ventilated elsewhere (Simola & Hakala 2001: 125) the relative satisfaction and rareness of serious criticism to the carried education policy among the Finnish teacher in these interviews. This was because we found statements from the school level actors in other countries (i.e. interviewees from Australia, Denmark, England, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden in these projects) clearly more pessimistic, critical and negative than those of the Finns. To make the Finnish stance less mysterious, we gave one possible explanations. “First we might think about the interview situation that was above characterised as ‘public narrative’ where the interviewees talk as professionals about their work to a researcher of a European Union project. A Finnish sociologist Matti Kortteinen (1982, 1992) used the concepts of the wall of happiness (onnellisuusmuuri) and the ethos of coping (selviytymisen eetos) while trying to understand why his interviewees tended first to

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give a more light and more positive picture of their life situation than appeared during a long series of in-depth interviews later. Kortteinen assumed that these two phenomena are part of the Finnish mental structure: it’s a shame if you don’t cope alone.” 6 In the three-part code, the first letter indicates the gender (M or F) or refers to a group interview (G). The subsequent figure is the number of the interview, and the last letter indicates whether the interviewee(s) work in primary (P) or lower secondary school (S). 7 See, for example, Hatton (1988), Labaree (1992) and Sockett (1993) for an example of each of these approaches.

References Antikainen, A., Houtsonen, J., Huotelin, H. & Kauppila, J. (1995) In search of the meaning of education: the case of Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 39(4): 295–309. Hänninen, S. (ed.) (1998) Displacements of Social Policy. Publications of Social and Political Sciences and Philosophy 19. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Hatton, E.J. (1988) Teachers’ work as bricolage: implications for teacher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 9(3): 337–57. Julkunen, R. (2001) Suunnanmuutos. 1990-luvun sosiaalipoliittinen reformi Suomessa [Change of Policy: Social Policy Reform of the 1990s in Finland].Tampere:Vastapaino. Kautto, M., Fritzell, J., Hvinden, B., Kvist, J. & Uusitalo, H. (eds.) (2001) Nordic Welfare States in the European Context. London: Routledge. Kortteinen, M. (1982) Lähiö – tutkimus elämäntapojen muutoksesta. [Suburb – A research into the change of ways of living]. Helsinki: Otava. Kortteinen, M. (1992) Kunnian kenttä. Suomalainen palkkatyö kulttuurisena muotona. [The field of glory. Finnish wage work as a cultural form]. Helsinki: Hanki ja jää. Labaree, D.F. (1992) Power, knowledge, and the rationalization of teaching: a genealogy of the movement to professionalize teaching. Harvard Educational Review, 62(2): 123–54. Simola, H. (1998) Decontextualizing teachers’ knowledge: Finnish didactics and teacher education curricula during the 1980s and the 1990s. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 42(4): 325–38. Simola, H. (2002) ‘It’s progress but . . .’: Finnish teachers talking about their changing work, in K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen & H. Simola (eds.) Restructuring Nordic Teachers: Analyses of Interviews with Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Teachers (pp. 49–70). Report No. 3. Oslo: Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo. Simola, H. & Hakala, K. (2001) School professionals talk about educational change – interviews with Finnish school level actors on educational governance and social inclusion/exclusion, in S. Lindblad & T.S. Popkewitz (eds.) Listening to Education Actors on Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion. Uppsala Reports on Education 37. Uppsala: Department of Education, University of Uppsala. Sockett, H. (1993) The Moral Base for Teacher Professionalism. New York: Teachers College Press.

Chapter 9

Changes in Nordic teaching practices From individualized teaching to the teaching of individuals 1 with I. Carlgren, K. Klette, S. Myrdal & K. Schnack

Connected comprehensive-school systems were developed and expanded in all Nordic countries during the twentieth century. In the Nordic context, the term refers to unified, un-streamed age-based schools catering for all pupils regardless of academic and socio-economic background and resources. The Nordic comprehensive model further implies both theoretical and practical training and should, in principle, provide pupils with the same structural opportunities for learning in terms of teacher competence, class size, text materials and other sources of support. The school system incorporates primary and lower secondary levels (1–6/7 and 7–9/10) in all five countries. Is it possible to talk about a Nordic dimension in education apart from the 9–10 years of comprehensive schooling? Perhaps the so-called ‘Nordic School Meetings’ from 1870 to the mid twentieth century (in fact they lasted until 1972) expressed such a Nordic tradition or school culture (Stafseng, 1996, 2005). These meetings were quite successful and popular. More than 6,900 participants attended those held in 1905 and 1910 for a week of professional exchange and discussion. The agenda reflected European pedagogical ideas of the time as well as specific Nordic themes. As the protocols show, there was a wish to form a Nordic alternative, and the meetings created an arena for pedagogical discussion. The first decades of the twentieth century seemed to be something of a ‘golden age’ in terms of teachers involved in pedagogical discussions and activities. Many prominent educationalists were active in each country, such as Sigurd Næsgaard, Vilhelm Rasmussen and Sofie Rifbjerg in Denmark, Aukusti Salo in Finland, Halldóra Bjarnadóttir and Guðmundur Finnbogason in Iceland, Anna Sethne and Helga Eng in Norway, and Ellen Key and Otto Salomon in Sweden. Their educational ideas, inspired by European naturalistic educational thinking and at the same time strongly emphasizing the idea of allround education, led to the design of schools for both theoretical and aesthetic/ practical training, and the notion of Heimstadlære (giving space for local knowledge in school curricula). Support for informal youth and liberal adult education (folkbildning) was also strong in all the Nordic countries. There were several notable changes after the Second World War, including a decline in pedagogical discussion among teachers and in research interest. In a

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way, the progressive groups (including many active and engaged teachers) had ‘won’ the educational battle and efforts were now put into building up nineyear comprehensive-school systems. The middle of the twentieth century was then a period of major school reforms and more or less centralized systems. Following the reforms, the teachers had to teach more mixed-ability classes than before, and individualized teaching methods were advocated as a solution. In other words, individualization was seen as the way of achieving differentiation within the un-streamed school. In any case, educational progressivism in terms of pedagogical practices that focus attention on pupils’ engagement and activities played an important role in the Nordic comprehensive-school model. Progressivist thinking was thus very influential with its emphasis on activitybased pedagogy. It was progressivism based on psychological thinking rather than the European Bildung tradition, promoting the ‘child in the centre’ together with individualization.Yet, in terms of organization,‘plenary’ teaching combined with individual seatwork still prevailed for the most part. Psychological thinking as well as positivist research traditions took hold during the 1950s and 1960s. Research projects carried out during the 1950s – in the Nordic as well as in many other countries – assessed the effect of different teaching methods. Although these efforts failed in that it was not possible to demonstrate the superiority of certain methods (Kallòs, 1971), they paved the way for analyses of classroom practices (e.g. Flanders, 1970). Other researchers were able to show the persistence of the IRE/F (initiation–response–evaluation/ follow-up) pattern for classroom communication (Cazden, 1988; Hoetker & Ahlbrand, 1969; Mehan, 1979), and that the teacher was talking for two-thirds of class time (Goodlad, 1984; Leiwo et al., 1987; Lundgren, 1979). There was no weakening of progressivist and individualist educational ideology, however. On the contrary, the notions of ‘the child in the centre’ and ‘the active child’ were strengthened, along with the appearance and expansion of constructivist learning theories. The progressivist discourse was becoming even more ‘psychological’ – and at the same time standing in sharper contrast to existing classroom practices. For a long time, it seemed as if the traditional practices (plenary class teaching connected with a textbook and following the IRE/F pattern) would last forever, but at the same time individualist progressivist educational discourse became even stronger. In what was probably one of the most widely read articles in the Nordic countries, Donald Broady (1980) forecast that progressivist ideas would never be realized because they were not economically feasible. New ways of working, however, based on the individual rather than the class appeared during the last two decades of the century. New ways of organizing school work through the introduction of work plans and project work seemed to challenge traditional class teaching. The changes not only heralded new working methods and practices, they were also framed within a new language of schooling. The impregnation of educational thinking with theories of economics, including themes such as market mechanisms and accountability in

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terms of results, was part and parcel of the transformation of schooling into a private and individualist project rather than a public (societal) endeavour (Englund, 1993).The restructuring of the educational systems that began in the 1990s not only changed the structure but also re-framed the meaning and content of schooling. The educated citizen seems to have been replaced by the separated individual responsible for his or her own life (see, for example, Klette et al., 2000, 2002). In the following, we trace these changes based on case descriptions from each Nordic country in turn. We thereby have a twin focus: on actual changes in classroom practices and how they are discussed on the one hand, and on changes in educational discourse at the policy level on the other. The case descriptions differ depending on the data that are available in each country. Our aim is to illustrate the theme of the individualization of teaching in different ways as a basis for a more nuanced description of what is outlined above.

Sweden The first National Curriculum (Läroplan för grundskolan, 1962) for nine-year comprehensive schooling was launched in 1962. The proportion of pupils in lower secondary school increased from 30 per cent of the population in the 1950s (in grammar schools) to almost 100 per cent after the reform in the 1960s.There was a shortage of teachers for lower secondary school and the new kind of heterogeneous class was a challenge. The National Curriculum of 1962 emphasizes pupil activities as well as the individualization of teaching. It states that the needs of the individual, together with societal demands, should determine the content of the school curriculum. Teaching should be adapted to the individual pupil: ‘the student as a separate individual should be in the centre’ (Läroplan för grundskolan, 1962: 31). ‘The pupil in the centre’ is one of the headings in the next National Curriculum (Läroplan för grundskolan, 1969) under which individualization is advocated in order for the pupil to acquire a certain ‘body of knowledge’. It is further expected to strengthen the pupil’s sense of belonging to different communities and willingness to be actively involved in civic activities. The free choice of optional subjects is similarly motivated. There is a marked change in the next National Curriculum (Läroplan för grundskolan, 1980) in that ‘pupils with special problems’ are singled out as a group/category in need of special attention and care. It also points out that pupils acquire knowledge outside of school as well, and that teaching should reflect that. Furthermore, there is an emphasis on pupil participation in the planning and evaluation of school activities, and also a plea for other activities in school. Pupils are referred to not as individuals, but rather as belonging to groups – in other words, participation is not seen primarily as an individual activity.

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Individualization is much more prominent in the National Curriculums of 1962 and 1969 compared with that of 1980. In the National Curriculums of 1962 and 1969, the students are to be treated and instructed or taught as individuals in relation to an existing body of knowledge (in its broad meaning). The individual is mentioned in relation to the idea of a common, collective body of knowledge as well as social belonging. It is rather the other way round in the National Curriculum of 1980; now the knowledge is to be developed in relation to the interests and experiences of the pupils constructed on the basis of individual activities, interests and efforts. In the National Curriculum of 1994 (Läroplan för det obligatoriska skolväsendet, 1994), a new form and structure for the curriculum text is introduced. It is written in the form of goals for the individual student and one of the goals is: ‘The school must let each individual find his/her unique distinctive character and thereby be able to participate in social life to give his/her best in responsible freedom [ansvarig frihet].’ During the intervening decade, the idea that the pupils should be responsible not only for their own lives but also for their own learning seemed to replace the idea that pupils construct their own knowledge as one of the most common catchphrases. Leaving the policy level for the classroom, what can be said about changes in classroom practices? If we compare the percentages of class teaching, group and individual work in the comprehensive school, a change from class teaching to individual work is observed (Carlgren, 1994; Granström, 2003; Granström & Einarsson, 1995; Lindblad & Sahlström, 2001). Granström (2003) compares the percentage of different teaching forms in lessons from 1960, 1980 and 2000 (Table 9.1).The most obvious changes are from the mid 1990s. Not only is class teaching diminishing but so too group work. It seems as if group methods are weak in Sweden, which is somewhat surprising considering the growth of teamwork in working life, for example. The National Agency for Education has collected information about the Swedish school system (in so-called ‘national evaluations’) since 1992. Students have been asked to estimate the proportion of individual work in relation to the total amount of school work (Table 9.2). On the basis of tape recordings and observations, Lindblad and Sahlström (2001) identified three types of lesson and their respective frequencies,

Table 9.1 The extent of the use of three teaching forms in Swedish schools at three points of time Year

Class teaching

Group work

Individual work

1960 1980 2000

60% 50% 44%

18% 24% 12%

22% 26% 41%

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Table 9.2 National evaluations from the Swedish National Agency for Education Year

Individual work

1992 1995 2003

ca. 25% ca. 25% ca. 50%

Table 9.3 The frequency of different types of lessons in Swedish schools, 1993–95 Plenary lessons Work lessons Mixed lessons

25% (the teacher talks almost all the time during the lesson) 10% (the pupils work almost all the time during the lesson) 65% (a mixture of the two above)

Table 9.4 Occurrence of three different teaching forms in the different stages of Swedish primary schools Stage

The pupil listens to the teacher

Group work

Individual work

Low Middle High

28% 55% 55%

19% 10% 17%

52% 35% 27%

presented in Table 9.3. Mixed lessons are by far the most common, although the percentage of individual work in them varies. Granström and Einarsson (1995) also analysed the differences between the different school stages. The figures (see Table 9.4) are from 1990 and show the frequency of the different teaching forms in the different stages. They confirm the common view that the changes mainly impacted the lower grades, though the higher grades were affected also. During the 1960s and 1970s, Stukát and Engström (1966), Callewaert and Nilsson (1980) and Lundgren (1979) demonstrated the dominance of teachers’ talk in the classroom (two-thirds of class time). In later classroom research (Granström & Einarsson, 1995; Lindblad & Sahlström, 2001), however, new patterns were observed. The teachers still talked – but so did the pupils (almost all the time) (Lindblad & Sahlström, 2001). As the above figures show, the most obvious change was a decrease in the amount of whole-class teaching and an increase in individual working. Not only did class teaching diminish, however, it also changed in focus from lecturing and IRE/F teaching to giving instructions for individual work. Individual work has changed as well. In the 1960s, it was in the form of seatwork in the classroom, following a lecture and mostly in relation to a

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textbook. A lesson usually consisted of lecturing (following the IRE/F pattern) and seatwork. Sometimes the tasks for individual work could be given for several days or a week, so that the fastest students were kept busy while the slowest students finished their tasks. From this a new mode of individualized, self-regulated work – called ‘own work’ – emerged: each pupil plans, carries through and evaluates his or her own work. It is no longer up to the teachers to set the same assignment for all, as pupils now plan their own assignments. Most of these comprise tasks that are decided by the teacher, although the pupils are responsible for when and how they do them.To a lesser or greater extent, ‘own work’ is to be found in some form in most primary schools. ‘Own work’ as a way of working was developed in the 1980s as a solution to two problems in the traditional class teaching model: (1) how to find methods of working in heterogeneous classes so that the pupils could progress at their own pace; and (2) to find ways to release the teacher from having to monitor all pupils’ work all of the time and instead focus on those in need of help. During ‘own work’, pupils work according to their own individual plans, not the teachers’ decisions about what and when things have to be done. In traditional classroom teaching, the teachers tried to find a level where as many pupils as possible could keep up with the work of the class.They were therefore looking for ways to individualize teaching as well as finding ways to make the pupils work on their own and be responsible for carrying through their own work.The solution was to let the pupils plan for their own work and be responsible for carrying it through. In ‘own work’, the pupils have individual timetables where they plan for each subject one or two weeks ahead. After that, they evaluate their own work and make new plans. They are, as it were, monitoring themselves (Carlgren, 1997, 2005; Österlind, 2005). Although ‘own work’ was developed during the 1980s, it was not until the mid 1990s that its explosive spread was evident, following the introduction of the new national curriculum and a new marking system.The reforms made the teachers responsible for each individual’s learning, which created a stronger pressure to develop tools for keeping track of every pupil. ‘Own work’ was a handy tool for these new demands – it fits like a glove with goal steering and standardization. The correspondence between such self-regulatory methods of working and the directions in the latest national curriculum that ‘the pupils develop a growing responsibility for their studies’ and that they ‘develop the ability to evaluate their own results’ is obvious. It was, however, a tool that had evolved within the schools and before the reforms.

Norway Although the comprehensive school system in Norway dates back to the early 1920s, it was during the late 1960s that it grew extensively.The expansion was related to state-driven policy reforms such as including lower secondary

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within a compulsory framework (Government of Norway, 1969), establishing national standards for class size and timetables, as well as specifying standards for required specialized rooms and resources at the school level. Compulsory schooling covered 287,309 pupils in 1945–46, increasing to 535,882 in 1970–71 (Telhaug, 1986).The comprehensive model was revised and adjusted throughout the following three decades: the reforms included bringing in new groups of pupils (Government of Norway, 1975), and setting national standards for timetables (1974), knowledge areas (1987) and ways of working on the classroom level. Compulsory education was extended to ten years in 1997, and currently starts at the age of six.The general part of the National Curriculum Plan further provides the basis for all undergraduate training, including upper secondary as well as adult education. Although efforts for change were to a large extent linked to structural and fiscal elements concerning comprehensive schooling, educational progressivism played an influential part in all reform efforts during the post-war period. All curriculum plans during these decades placed strong emphasis on the individual learner as well as advocating progressivist ideas such as subject integration and active ways of student working (Mønsterplanen for grunnskolen, 1974, 1987; Lærerplanverket for den tiårige grunnskolen, 1996; Kunskapsløfte lærerplan for grunnskolen, 2005). Individualization understood as pedagogic differentiation was a strong theme in all these curriculum plans. Despite the ambition of impregnating Norwegian compulsory training with progressivism, scholars kept reporting how Norwegian schools and classrooms continued to reproduce the widespread pattern of schooling based on plenary teaching, teacher-centred talk and interaction, where the teacher for the most part decided what to do, when and how to do it (Forsøksrådet for skoleverket, 1971; Klette, 1998; Strømnes, 1967; Telhaug, 1986). The development is demonstrated in Table 9.5 using research data from this period. Table 9.5 Reported frequency or estimated time from three research projects conducted 1960–1976 of instructional patterns used in Norwegian compulsory schools (percentages) Year

Type of measure

1960 1

Observed frequent Observed regular Observed infrequent Estimated time Frequency

1971 2 1976 3 Notes: 1

Hove (1960). Forsøkssrådet (1971). 3 Telhaug (1976). 2

Plenary work 52.2 32.2 14.6 52–72 78.0

Group work — — 75.2 7–27 9.8

Individual work 10.6 38.7 40.2 4–16 9.8

Not recorded — — — — 2.4

Changes in Nordic teaching practices 185 Table 9.6 Estimation of instructional patterns across Norwegian primary and lower secondary levels, 2003

Plenary work Group work Individual work

3rd grade

6th grade

9th grade

43.02% 17.52% 23.29%

42.77% 10.61% 24.80%

45.63% 16.44%

Source: Klette (2003).

A huge reform evaluation programme was launched alongside the curriculum reforms of the 1990s, producing, for the first time, extensive data describing activities and interaction in Norwegian classrooms (Haug and Schwandt, 2003; Klette, 2004). In addition to mapping how Norwegian schools and teachers reacted and interacted with the new curriculum, the evaluation projects also yielded data about the instructional format and patterns of interaction across classes, levels and school subjects at the end of the twentieth century. Looking at instructional formats and patterns of interaction, relevant data are presented in Table 9.6. Taken together these figures indicate a change towards a more active and working student role (Klette, 2003). Although the teacher still orchestrates classroom activities, the students are given more executive and actively performing student roles. If we compare this with earlier studies, the amount of individual work has increased and the amount of plenary teaching has been reduced. These changes are more prominent at the primary level (Bjørnestad & Vatne, 2005). Together with these changes in instructional format, there were also changes in interaction patterns. On a structural level, IRF patterns of communication still dominate Norwegian classrooms. These patterns of IRF interactions are, however, more dialogic and interactive and less monologic and hierarchical than indicated in earlier studies (Aukrust, 2003; Klette, 2003). Plenary instruction defined within a monologic and hierarchical IRF pattern is no longer adequate to characterize the dominant practices in Norwegian classrooms. If we distinguish between the different activities across the instructional formats, individual seatwork is the single most frequent activity in almost all of the observed classrooms at the end of the century (Klette, 2003). Teachers at the lower secondary level spend, for example, almost equal amounts of their time between orchestrating plenary instructions and supervising and monitoring the pupils when they are occupied with individual seatwork (Klette, 2003). More recent empirical evidence supports these tendencies even more strongly (Klette & Lie, 2006). The amount of individual work varies across classrooms. In some classrooms, individual and group-related seatwork dominates the school day. These classrooms are ruled by what might be described as work plans or schedules. Work plans or schedules imply that the teachers designate a plan for all types of

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activities and tasks required within the different school subjects for a certain period. A plan could run for a week or for 3 or 4 weeks. In some schools, the plan covers mostly homework, while in others the plan covers all work including schoolwork. Almost all Norwegian classes use in more or less elaborated ways work plans or schedules as primary planning tools (Klette et al., 2006). Classrooms with extensive use of individual work are often organized within a work plan framework. Here the school day is divided into plenary sessions (around 30 minutes) and working sessions (around 90 minutes). Within the working sessions the pupils are free to choose whatever topic or activity to engage in. This means that within a certain class or group different pupils are engaged in different tasks, topics and subjects. The teachers provide support in terms of supervision and surveillance. In addition, to be competent to choose, plan and evaluate their own work for a certain period, the pupils are also free to choose difficulty levels. Mostly the plans are divided into three levels of aspirations. Work plans or schedules can be identified as one of the strongest forces for individualizing pupils’ schoolwork. Classes with a high degree of individual seatwork tend to be more literate than traditional classes. Teachers use literacy documentation as tools for monitoring and checking pupils’ work. This also means that the classroom is reduced as an oral and public communicative space. Since the amount of time for plenary activities is reduced along with multiple activities going on at the same time, classrooms as collective spaces for knowledge formation are further diminished and changed. Knowledge formation is, to a high degree, turned into an individual and privatized activity and is regulated as a relation between the teacher, required texts and individual children. The professional role of the teachers is further changed dramatically in these classrooms. We can see a change towards a monitoring role for teachers where the common instruction is concentrated on task monitoring and management. The teachers’ active engagement with substantial subject matter is reduced to a minimum and as a consequence the learning process is becoming privatized (Klette & Lie, 2006).

Denmark Recent developments in teaching practice in Denmark seem in principle to follow the Swedish and Norwegian cases, even if it is difficult to support this statement by direct empirical evidence.The reports from Denmark have mostly focused on a vast amount of different pedagogical experimental work and school development endeavours, as well as evaluations of teaching and learning related to specific subjects or special needs (see, for example, Danish Evaluation Institute, 2006; Harrit et al., 1993; Jensen et al., 1992; Mehlbye, 2001; Projekt Skolesprog, 1979). Indirectly, of course, these reports say quite a lot about ‘the normal situation’ and they give important hints as to the direction in which the changes are

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going. The following will draw on impressions from these reports, together with more personal knowledge gained from interviewing research fellows and talking to many teachers involved in different kinds of in-service teacher training. The 1993 Act relating to the Danish Folkeskole (primary and lower secondary school), which is still in effect today with just a few minor amendments, may be seen as the culmination of a long journey through the twentieth century towards an increasingly comprehensive school system. Danish school Acts are relatively open and abstract. They set the aims and framework for the Folkeskole, which is financed and steered by the local municipalities. In the same way, the Ministry of Education lays down an overall national curriculum, while the more specific curriculum and the syllabi are the responsibility of the individual schools and municipalities. This way of governing the school system goes hand in hand with a long tradition of agreement among most of the political parties in the Danish Parliament (the Folketing) across ‘the middle ground’. New laws have to a great extent legalized and normalized that which had been emerging during the previous period. The development of the un-streamed comprehensive primary and lower secondary school is on-going. There is a great deal of pedagogical, political and ideological controversy involved in questions concerning ability grouping. That which made it possible once again to achieve a broad political consensus around the School Act in 1993, with all parties involved except the Conservative Party, was to an important degree the idea of ‘teaching differentiation’.To compensate for the lack of structural stratification, the teachers have had to differentiate the teaching in the classroom. This idea, of course, was not a new one, but it had become more and more important and now it became an official expectation and an ‘open sesame’ that could create an opportunity for political compromises. Already in 1969, the explanatory memorandum to the so-called ‘9-point programme’ stated that ‘in the long term such a pedagogical differentiation (individualization) of the teaching inside the classroom should be aimed at in order to restrict ability grouping’. In the early 1970s, it was stated that research had not supported the general opinion that the strongest and the weakest pupils gained from being divided into ability groups (Florander, 1972), and it was argued from the Social Democratic side that the segregation of the pupils was socially unfair and even undemocratic. ‘Differentiation of the teaching’ or simply ‘teaching differentiation’, in contrast to ‘pupil differentiation’, became the key concept. In opposition to pupil differentiation, it was first and foremost understood as an idea about integration. For this reason, among others, there has been an ongoing debate about the balance between individualization and community and solidarity learning (Nielsen, 1995). Certainly, much more individualized work has been seen in the schools. However, in the beginning, individualization was regarded as an extreme interpretation, or as one end of a continuum of interpretations,

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of teaching differentiation. In the classrooms it showed itself more as a variation in the teaching and learning process than as a principle. This is probably changing now due to political pressure, followed by national tests and demands for continuous assessment and revision of learning objectives for each individual pupil. Another variation of the teaching and learning process that contributed to the development of teaching differentiation was project work. Introduced into higher education and adult education in the second half of the 1970s (Berthelsen et al., 1977; Holten-Andersen et al., 1980; Illeris, 1974), it soon became part of the progressive experiments in the Folkeskole too (Daniel et al., 1985). In the 1993 School Act, it officially entered the classroom, rather ironically as a paragraph about assessment: §13, 5 ‘At the 9th and 10th form levels, the pupils shall carry out an obligatory project assignment, for which the assessment shall be given in the form of a written statement and by a mark, if the pupil so wishes’. This helped to legitimize different versions of project work, and it also made it much more widespread even in the lower grades, as exams and assessment forms always influence the teaching. This again may be seen as part of the tendency towards ‘going from teaching to learning’ and the trend of individualization. On the other hand, project work has always been defined as group work, which makes it as much an activity satisfying the demand for competency related to collaboration and teamwork. In the 1970s and 1980s, a relatively strong movement towards student participation was seen, not only as an ingredient of active learning, experiential learning and constructivism, but also in the stronger sense of co-determination. In the 1975 School Act, it was even explicitly stated that the choice of teaching methods, organization and content should be made in close cooperation between the teacher and the students. Although it wouldn’t be correct to say that this became a predominant trait in the classrooms in the Danish Folkeskole, many reports show that students really feel that they can influence the teaching, that they have a say. The background for introducing and stressing this idea of co-determination was double-sided. It was seen as an answer to the widespread problems with motivation. Talking about a crisis was not unusual, and the word ‘school fatigue’ became part of the common language. At the same time, co-determination as genuine student participation was understood as democratization; it was a necessary element in the ideal of ‘education for democracy with democracy’. From this perspective, it might be called individualization as far as democratic processes concern engagement of individual persons. However, in the classrooms a strong focus on the collective aspect has been prevalent: the individuals have had to talk, listen, argue and compromise to reach joint agreements. Opinion leaders such as the Danish (neo-liberal) Prime Minister have referred to this, rather ironically, as ‘circle pedagogy’, meaning something childish and not sufficiently knowledge- and subject-oriented.

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In a way. the statement about cooperation between teachers and students is still valid. In the 1993 Act, it can be found in section 4 of paragraph 18, which characteristically opens with a section saying that ‘the organization of the teaching, including the choice of teaching and working methods, teaching materials and the selection of subject-matter, shall in each subject live up to the aims of the Folkeskole and shall be varied so that it corresponds to the needs and prerequisites of the individual pupil’. This might be read as teaching differentiation as individualization in the strong sense. The parents often react that way. Still, however, the inertia of the school, together with some reasonable awareness of the need for a balance and the practical difficulties of the time-consuming task, seems to delay the development of individualization in the classrooms. Nevertheless, ‘the student(s) in the centre’ has been, and is, a trend in Denmark too, and in recent decades the plural has tended to move towards the singular – or towards additive plural – as an accumulation of individuals in contrast to the collective plural as a community of socially interacting individuals.

Finland Pedagogical individualism reached Finnish educational discourse quite late, compared with its Nordic neighbours. In fact, the principle of individualizing teaching did not belong to the Finnish pedagogical vocabulary before the 1960s. Linked with the moral and civic curriculum codes, keywords even in the Finnish progressive ‘new school’ movement in the 1930s were Die Arbeitschule, workbooks and social education rather than child-centred individualism.The strong Herbartian tradition in Finnish teacher training was phased out only in the late 1940s through the introduction of a new textbook of didactics for teacher training. It was written by Matti Koskenniemi, a leading academic figure in Finnish education throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and was strongly influenced by a social education mission (Simola, 1998). The Finnish curriculum code (Lundgren, 1991; Rinne, 1984) did not turn from a civic to an individualist one until the 1970 curriculum for the new comprehensive school. The education discourse, especially that related to individualism, underwent three changes during the last three decades of the twentieth century and the early 2000s. The period from the 1970s until the late 1980s could be characterized as an era of the egalitarian or Social Democratic interpretation of individualism (Simola, 1995). Then, from the late 1980s until the late 1990s, a kind of contentious or market-liberalist interpretation took hold (Koski & Nummenmaa, 1995; Sulkunen, 1991). The latest phase (from 1996 onwards) could be seen as the return of egalitarianism, albeit a socio-liberal version. An emphasis on individual responsibilities and profitability replaced individual freedom (Gordon et al., 2000; Rinne et al., 2000).

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Individualist rhetoric in education policy documents of the late 1980s and early 1990s was strong. In 1990 an MP from the Coalition Party gave a new interpretation to the concept of educational equality, stating that ‘equality does not mean any more to offer the same dose to everybody but everybody’s right to receive tuition corresponding to his or her talents’ (Ahonen, 2003: 106). These general pursuits materialized as enthusiasm for so-called ‘non-graded tuition’ (vuosiluokkiin sitomaton opetus – VSOP) for the whole education system from pre-school to vocational education.VSOP was officially seen as ‘one stage of development in moving towards non-graded comprehensive schooling’ (Merimaa, 1996;Apajalahti & Kartovaara, 1995). In 1994, extensive experiments organized by the National Board of Education (NBE) were launched for developing VSOP.The experiments consisted of a wide range of individualizing practices from teaching ability groups to extremely individualized ‘own work’ practices. The network included, at its best, projects from nearly 100 lower and upper stages of comprehensive school (Hellström, 2004; Merimaa, 1996). Finally, 26 schools were selected to participate in the development project (Mehtäläinen, 1997). During the late 1990s, however, there was a clear move from ‘free choice’ to ‘prevent exclusion’ rhetoric in education policy. The background is easily to be found in Finnish reality. In 1991, the nation sank into an economic crash comparable only with the Great Depression of the 1930s and increasing social problems were apparent to everybody. The social reality ran over the enthusiasm of individualized and flexible tuition. The focus moved to dangers of exclusion and to the pupils having problems in school. A developmental project under way does capture well the recent emphasis in its title: ‘Different Learners – Common School’ (2004). The social had its comeback as communitarian formulations of learning in the 2004 Curriculum Framework (CUR, 2004) but now, stronger than ever, flavoured with ideas of entrepreneurship. What happened to individualized teaching practices during these years? Interestingly, there is very limited research evidence on what really happened in the Finnish comprehensive school classrooms. The little there is, however, offers no support to a broad prevalence of individualizing practices. From the late 1980s, empirical research (Leiwo et al., 1987) based on videotaped lessons concluded that the model of verbal interaction in classrooms seems to have remained the same during the last 50 years: the teacher talks more than twothirds of the time, and the pupils give short responses.The final characterization of the Finnish comprehensive school classroom was crushing: a ‘wasteland not only of intelligence but also of emotions’. Ten years later, a foreign evaluation team reported another empirical excursion to the Finnish classrooms. The NBE had commissioned an experienced research team from the University of East Anglia in the UK to study how the great comprehensive school curriculum reform had been implemented in Finland.The team visited, observed and interviewed principals,

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teachers and pupils in 50 lower and upper level comprehensive schools that were selected as being pilot schools or otherwise interested in curriculum reform. What is essential here is that these establishments clearly represented so-called good and innovative schools in Finland. The report was a scandal and a disappointment to its subscribers in that it showed how poorly the curriculum reform was being realized at the school level. It could be said, however, that the most interesting notions and observations concerned the pedagogical practices of Finnish comprehensive schools. In the eyes of the researchers, Finnish school teaching and learning seemed to be very traditional, mainly involving frontal teaching of the whole group of pupils. Observations of individualized and pupil-centred forms of instruction were scarce. Given the enormous similarity between the schools, the observers were convinced of the high level of pedagogical discipline and order. Since the mid 1990s, one can only make indirect observations but they tell us with one voice, however, that individualizing practices in Finnish classrooms are not prevalent but rather rare. One could guess that the reality might be close to what was described above in the Norwegian case but there is no empirical evidence for this.The public discussion on pros and cons of non-graded tuition has been scarce. No heavy comments on its problems have appeared in public discussion. Through an Internet search in January 2006, 23 comprehensive schools and three cities were found which referred to VSOP in their web pages. Through the same search, it was found that among the political parties, only the right-wing National Coalition Party referred positively to the non-gradedness. Also the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (Kuntaliitto), headed by the Central Party, made a positive reference to non-gradedness in its education policy programme (AFLRA, 2002). In a study by Simola and Hakala (2001; see also Simola, 2002a, 2002b), the principals of two eminent non-graded schools were interviewed in 1999. One of those schools, the Ilola School, is widely known for its application of individual work. The Ilola School had been struggling for more than a decade with individual work, but according to the principal it had not been supported. After twelve years of fighting, he seemed to be pessimistic, even concerning the capacity of teachers in his own school to internalize and develop the idea. He concluded that the Finnish teachers would not give up their traditional ‘teaching ex cathedra’ unless they had to. Although there are more and more parents and children who do not accept ‘behaviouristic teaching’ and want individual treatment, the great majority still believes in it and buckles down under it. It is somewhat contradictory that, at the same time, the principal sees the approach very simply: ‘For me this [individual work] is a very simple thing, actually. It’s not even a question of resources but just turning the things around, starting to see the things from a different point of view’ (Simola, 2002b: 3–4). A principal from the Roihuvuori School, also with a decade’s experience, sees the reason for applying individualizing pedagogy from the pragmatic point of view: ‘We do have so many challenging pupils here that the need to

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individualise teaching comes straight from the fact that if you try to teach a group of 32 pupils with the same goals, they will climb the walls and you can’t help it’ (Simola, 2002b: 3–4). It could be symptomatic, too, that among the few schools that have applied non-gradedness for a decade, the Ilola School has recently returned to basics and Roihuvuori School is in danger of closing down. Thus it is fair to say that non-gradedness is still alive but definitely not at the forefront of school discussion in Finland. There will be increasing numbers of ‘challenging pupils’, and more and more teachers will feel unable to teach ‘ex cathedra’. The proportion of pupils diagnosed as needing special education (i.e. having the status of a special pupil) doubled between 1995 and 2003 (from 2.9 to 6.3 per cent;Tilastokeskus, 2004), rising to over 7 per cent in 2005 (Opettaja, 2006: 25–6). Until very recently, these pupils have been moved to special classes, but this traditional form of individualized tuition is close to extinction. Within the last five years or so the policy has gradually begun to shift towards full inclusion, meaning that, as far as possible, pupils with a special status are integrated into ‘normal’ classrooms. According to recent statements in the public discussion, especially from the municipalities, there are no financial resources and no pedagogical reasons to increase full-time special education (Opettaja, 2006).Therefore, primary school teachers must find ways of coping with increasingly heterogeneous pupils – and then the idea of non-graded tuition, individual work and other individualized pedagogical practices may begin to have a real ‘professional call’ among Finnish teachers (see Simola, 2005).

Iceland Although the professional role of teachers and classroom practice have changed dramatically in Icelandic schools in recent years, there is modest empirical evidence to demonstrate it. There are close to 250 compulsory and upper secondary schools in Iceland, and they vary considerably in terms of location, size and educational philosophy. Since the beginning of modern schooling in Iceland, individuality has been a prominent idea in formal education. At the outset of the twenty-first century a new discursive theme on individualised education began to emerge in the Icelandic educational discourse. The new theme coined ‘einstaklingsmiðað nám’ (‘individualised learning’) refers to new organising of schooling and instructional methods, emphasising diversity of students’ interests and needs and freedom and responsibility of the individual. This new movement is clearly rooted in local educational policy of the Reykjavík commune where the local educational officer, Gerður Óskarsdóttir (2003), has been a distinctive spokesperson for the new ideology.

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The emphasis on individualism has run through public educational legislation in Iceland, from the first Public Education Act in 1907 to a General Education Act in 1946, when the modern school system was erected in the spirit of the Scandinavian welfare model (Edelstein, 1971; Jóhannesson, 1987; Magnúss, 1939). The Second World War brought paradigmatic changes to the economy, politics and culture – and to education – in Iceland (Mýrdal, 1989; OECD, 1987). A comprehensive school was formally established by the Comprehensive Education Act 1974, which gives clear emphasis to individuality. Compulsory schools shall make an effort to carry out their activities to correspond as fully as possible with the nature and needs of their pupils and encourage the overall development, well-being and education of each individual. (Government of Iceland, 1995: article 2) During this period, individualism in education was characterized by the expansion of the educational system and emphasis on educational equality.This encouraged wide participation of marginal groups of the population in schooling in order to enhance economic advancement (Edelstein, 1987; Pálsson, 1983; Proppé et al., 1993). Various forms of individualized education were of course reported in Icelandic schools in the post-war era – open school, flexible instruction, collaborative learning, and theme teaching – but overall results were limited in scope and time (see Einarsdóttir & Helgadóttir, 2002; Helgadóttir, 1980; Kjartansson, 1982). Unfortunately, empirical research on teaching methods and class activities in Icelandic schools is incomplete. A few cases, however, can be found. Ingvar Sigurgeisson analysed extensive data in 20 primary school classrooms from the school years 1987–88 and found overwhelmingly traditional didactics, ‘dominated by passive individual seatwork, rote-learning, recitation, drill and various forms of textbook teaching’ (Sigurgeirsson, 1998). Only a few instances could be detected of the application of the teaching methods especially proposed by the recent reform. A follow-up survey with teachers in 80 additional schools gave similar results (Sigurgeirsson, 1992). In 1994, the same author mapped out developmental work in Icelandic compulsory schools. Head teachers in 200 Icelandic schools (96.6% of all compulsory schools) were interviewed. Respondents in 28 schools (14%) claimed that alternatives to the traditional teaching methods were frequently applied (thematic studies, topic work, work with various resources) in their classrooms. Other respondents acknowledged the domination of the traditional form of teaching (Sigurgeirsson, 1998). As mentioned above, a strong movement on individualized teaching has been spreading in recent years. The educational officer in Reykjavík and

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her collaborators have developed a concise educational philosophy based on student-centred pedagogy and theme teaching. They also make references to activity theory, self-directed learning methods and collaborative learning, extensive use of information technology, and individualized curriculums.These ideas are being applied in several primary schools in Reykjavík, but they are currently spreading rapidly through in-service education in other communities (Guðjónsson, 2005; Óskarsdóttir, 2004; Sigurgeirsson, 2005). The 2004 Educational Plan for Reykjavík defined ‘individualized learning’ as: Organization of learning that is based on the position of each individual, but not groups of pupils or whole classes. Pupils are not learning the same topics at the same time, but can be dealing with different issues and subject matter individually or in groups. The pupils are responsible for their learning, which is based on individualised curriculums. (Óskarsdóttir, 2004) How far this reform will be extended in the twenty-first century remains to be seen. It relates to a former individualized teaching movement and suggests many features of the multi-grade small school didactics (now in large urban schools), but it has its distinct characteristics. It should also be noted that the 1995 Educational Act proclaimed decentralization of compulsory schools, transferring administration to the municipalities. This gave tailwind to local educational reforms and restructuring of schooling. The rise of ‘individualized learning’ in certain municipalities must be perceived in this context. The proponents of ‘individualized learning’ claim that they are fulfilling the educational philosophy of the 1995 Compulsory School Act (Government of Iceland, 1995), which still contains the rhetoric of the 1974 Comprehensive Education Act and the 1999 National Curriculum, which says: ‘It is the responsibility of each school to adapt their own instruction as best suits the needs of their pupils. Pupils are entitled to work on tasks suited to their academic ability and capacity’ (Icelandic Ministry of Education, 2004: 22). This movement, although noisy in the local educational discourse, must yet be seen as a minority cult within the current context of educational discourse and schooling practice in Iceland. How it will mature in practice still remains to be seen. We have seen that individualism and individual education have been prevailing parts of modern educational discourse in Iceland. At each period they are shaped by the dominant political ideology. At the turn of the twentieth century, the public school took advantage of the ideology of nationalism in its tribute to individualism in education. The issue was: How can the individual contribute to society? The post-war school emphasized the social democratic project: How can society make the best use of every individual? The current school builds on the neo-liberal dogma: How can the individual make the most out of social competition? Today, students are expected to make their own

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destiny through a self-directed curriculum that seems to be the individualized educational project aligned to the Zeitgeist at the turn of the twenty-first century.

From individualized teaching to the teaching of individuals Our ability to make comparisons between the countries is restricted because of the different kinds of data available in the different countries. However, we think that the cases can – from different perspectives – illuminate the theme of individualization within the comprehensive school model. The case of Finland shows the complex and contradictory relations between societal changes, changes in policy discourses and changes at the school level. While Finland at the beginning of the 1990s developed the most neo-liberal individualism at the policy level among the Nordic countries, the change towards a more socio-liberal common school orientation is interesting, as well as the connection in Finland between the success in PISA and the strong position of traditional teaching. The other four countries have experienced something of a PISA shock and now look to Finland for answers. Ironically, Simola (2005) concludes that some culturally and historically based explanations for the Finnish miracle of PISA are as follows: To put it simply, it is still possible to teach in the traditional way in Finland because teachers believe in their traditional role and pupils accept their traditional position. Teachers’ beliefs are supported by social trust and their professional academic status, while pupils’ approval is supported by the authoritarian culture and mentality of obedience. The Finnish ’secret’ of top-ranking may therefore be seen as the curious contingency of traditional and post-traditional tendencies in the context of the modern welfare state and its comprehensive schooling. (Simola, 2005: 465–6) It is clear from the case descriptions that individualization has been a theme for a long time in all Nordic countries. As indicated in the introduction, the theme of individualization draws upon naturalistic romanticism, educational progressivism and child-centred psychology. Neo-liberal educational policy – with the individual self-reliant learner at the centre – together with social constructivist learning theories, seem, however, to be the main forces for individualized teaching and learning today. The language of teaching has been replaced by the language of learning, together with an emphasis on the individual as responsible for himself or herself and his or her own learning. This change of meaning regarding the purpose of school and the relation between society and the individual constitutes the reframing of the meaning of individualization. As is pointed out in the Icelandic case description, the question at

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the beginning of the twentieth century was ‘How can the individual contribute to the nation?’ In other words, individualization was framed in terms of educating the individual for society, as something through which the common cultural heritage would be secured.This meaning later gave way to the idea of individualization as connected to individually constructed knowledge in the education of citizens actively participating in society. Finally, neo-liberal individuality emerged, which set the meaning of individualization in the framework of individual competition and choices in a ‘society for the individual’. Both of these dimensions have been clearly present in Finnish education policy discourse since the late 1990s. Whereas individualization in the first interpretation makes sense in a school with traditional class teaching, neo-liberal individualism does not. There is a correspondence between the new language of the individual and the changes of teaching practices described in the Norwegian and Swedish cases.These selfregulating ways of working (like ‘own work’) are also in accordance with the global discourse on flexible learning (OECD, 2001). In this way, it is possible to talk about a hidden curriculum of late modern schooling symbolized by the development of new teaching practices such as independent work. Jackson (1968), Bauer and Borg (1976) and Broady (1980) show in their studies of the hidden curriculum how the traditional school fostered dutifulness, subordination, patience and punctuality, although it was not explicit in the official documents: it was rather a side-effect of the modes of working. Dutifulness and punctuality are no longer desired virtues in the late modern society. The aim is rather to produce self-mobilizing and flexible learners who are able to put themselves to work and evaluate their results. It is against this backdrop that the rise of independent learning and other new modes becomes interesting. Individual work fosters the capacity to plan one’s own learning within a certain time schedule. The late modern school evolves during a time when the so-called organized modernity (Wagner, 1994) is in a process of erosion (Nowotny et al., 2001). Established institutional structures are breaking up, to be replaced with smaller, more flexible and ‘liquid’ entities (Bauman, 2000). Society requires people actively to shape their lives in a rapidly changing social world. The symbol of the so-called human stereotype is the entrepreneur who is distinctive in self-reliance, purposefulness, action and profit-orientation (Rose, 1992; Wagner 1994). Independent work could be seen as a mechanism in changes of regime (Foucault, 1977) and as a further step in transforming the regulation of people’s actions from external to internal. The capacity to plan is a part of the new normality. The planning log is a hub in the new order (Carlgren, 2004, 2005). The new hidden curriculum is about subordinating oneself to the planning log. One has to make individual choices about what to do, in what order to do it and to what extent, for example. These dispositions can be understood in the context of post-modern virtues in which pupils are treated as entrepreneurs.

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Even if there are many similarities among the Nordic countries in how individualization is being reframed, there are also interesting differences that raise some questions. The transformation of school practices moves at different speeds as well as in different directions in the different countries. The resolution of late-modern issues will differ depending on the national contexts and histories, including the school traditions. The question is not if there will be individualization in pedagogical practices, but what form it will take.

Note 1 Carlgren, I., Klette, K., Myrdal, S., Schnack, K. & Simola, H. (2006) Changes in Nordic teaching practices: from individualized teaching to the teaching of individuals. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3): 301–26 [shortened and lightly edited].

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Stukát, K.-G. & Engström, R. (1966) TV-observationer av lä raraktiviteter i klassrummet [TV Observations of Teacher Activity in the Classroom; in Swedish]. Göteborg: Pedagogiska institutionen, Lärarhögskolan i Göteborg. Strømnes, M. (1967) Klasseromsforskning. Ei metodologisk tilnærming [Classroom Research: A Methodological Approach; in Norwegian]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Sulkunen,P.(1991) Suurten projektien loppu [The end of great projects].Alkoholipolitiikka, 56: 165–77. Telhaug, A.O. (1976) Åpne skoler i Norge [Open Schools in Norway; in Norwegian]. Oslo: Didakta norsk utdanningsforlag. Telhaug, A.O. (1986) Norsk skoleutvikling etter 1945 [Norwegian School Development After 1945; in Norwegian]. Oslo: Didakta Norsk forlag. Tilastokeskus (2004) Erityisopetus 2003 [Special Education in 2003; in Finnish] [http:// www.stat.fi/til/erop/index.html; accessed 21 December 2004]. Wagner, P. (1994) A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline. London: Routledge.

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Part IV

Understanding the Finnish PISA miracle Decent work ethics, reasonable leadership and lucky constellations

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Chapter 10

The Finnish miracle of PISA Historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education 1

The Swedish sociologist of education Donald Broady (1987) opens his book Den Dolda läroplanen (The Hidden Curriculum) as follows: A professional disease among teachers is the tendency to individualize and psychologize problems. In other words, they look for reasons first of all in their own (or their pupils’ or principal’s) personalities, and are thereby blind to the factors that define and limit the action possibilities of teachers (and pupils). (Broady, 1987: 11; my translation) Presumably, other professionals working in the field of education are not strongly differentiated from teachers here – mutatis mutandi – whether they be politicians, officials or academic researchers, nor is this fallacy limited to explanations of problems (cf. Collins, 1990). In accounting for success in education we tend to look to individuals, their psychologies and pedagogies, rather than to phenomena characterized as social, cultural, institutional or historical. This bias assumed new significance in the 2000s when politicians started to use international educational indicators as a common language for global benchmarking. As Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003) critically note, comparative educational studies tend to become a political tool for creating educational policy or a mode of governance, rather than remaining in the research realm of intellectual inquiry.The publicity and effects of the OECDled PISA assessment of political debate was a perfect example of this. It is symptomatic of the problem that scholarly discussion has been most vivid in so-called ‘hero and villain’ countries (see the special issues of the Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 48, 2004 and Zeitschrifr fur Pedagogik, Vol. 49, 2003). It is more than evident that, in the era of internationalization with regard to educational policies, burning problems of comparability incorporate the political and epistemological dimensions alongside more familiar methodological questions (cf. Goldstein, 2004; Popkewitz, 1999; Prais, 2003).

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Finland has been basking in educational glory due to the results of various comparative studies of educational attainments in comprehensive school. The PISA 2000 project, in particular, turned Finnish comprehensive schooling into a success story (OECD, 2001). This was an OECD-led project investigating 15-year-old pupils in 32 countries, one of the findings being that Finnish pupils were among the best in terms of reading, and mathematical and scientific literacy. It should be borne in mind that PISA 2000 does not reflect conventional school-achievement testing: ‘In all cycles, the domains of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy are covered not merely in terms of mastery of the school curriculum, but in terms of important knowledge and skills needed in adult life’ (http://www.pisa.oecd.org/). It is also noted that the scores showing variations in pupil and school performance in Finland were among the lowest in the PISA countries. The conclusion was thus drawn that Finnish comprehensive school combines high-quality performance with a high level of equality in educational outcomes. According to the first indications of the ensuing PISA 2003 assessment (OECD, 2004a, 2004b), the triumphal march of Finnish comprehensive schooling continues. Explanations for and the reasons behind the Finnish success in international comparative assessments have been eagerly sought ever since. According to public discussion, it is unequivocally attributable to the excellent teachers and high-quality Finnish teacher education. These explanations have dominated the discussion in the educational field, too, regardless of the more timorous and extensive explication articulated by the leading researchers in the Finnish PISA team, Jouni Välijärvi and Pirjo Linnakylä. As they conclude in their booklet entitled The Finnish success in PISA and some reasons behind it: Finland’s high achievement seems to be attributable to a whole network of interrelated factors, in which students’ own areas of interest and leisure activities, the learning opportunities provided by schools, parental support and involvement as well as social and cultural contexts of learning and of the entire education system combine with each other. (Välijärvi et al., 2002: 46; see also Lie et al., 2003) Without discounting the relevance of school-, teacher- and home-based activities in contributing to learning, I focus here on a few socio-historical factors that have been totally neglected in the Finnish discussion. Quite simply, it is reasonable to suppose that schooling is not confined to pedagogy, didactics or subject matter, and that it also, or even mainly, incorporates social, cultural, institutional and historical issues. This view supports Nóvoa and Yari-Mashal’s (2003) argument that a comparative study in education purporting to be something more than a mode of educational governance should be a historical journey. By way of a conclusion, I present two paradoxes that could be

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considered meaningful in attempts to understand Finnish comprehensive schooling now and in the near future.

An authoritarian, obedient and collectivist mentality I will start by describing some very general aspects of Finnish history that might prove essential in understanding Finnish schooling. I would suggest, even at the risk of being accused of speculation, that Finnish culture still incorporates a meaningful element of the authoritarian, obedient and collectivist mentality, with its pros and cons. Due to its geographical and geopolitical location, Finland has always been a border country between the West and the East. It is also hard to overestimate the fact that the birth of the Finnish nation-state was realized under the Russian Empire during the nineteenth century. It is not an overstatement to say that Eastern elements are evident in Finland everywhere and in every way, from its administrative traditions to its genetic heredity. The fact that Finnish Social Democracy retains some Eastern authoritarian or even totalitarian flavour compared with versions in other Nordic countries is just one indication of this. At least heuristically, there is nothing strange in finding Finland together with nations such as Korea and Japan in some international comparisons (cf. Lakaniemi et al., 1995; Siikala, 2002). Another historical fact that makes Finland different from its Nordic neighbours is that it has been through wars, including one of the bloodiest civil wars in modern European history. Linked to the Russian revolutionary movements and the First World War, Finland declared independence in 1917. After turbulent political controversies, the radical left achieved ascendancy in the Finnish Social Democratic Party, and in January 1918 the ‘Reds’ seized power in Helsinki and southern Finland. The country was divided into ‘White’ and ‘Red’ camps. After three months of battles the Reds were beaten, and the ‘White General’ Mannerheim rode into Helsinki, accompanied by German troops. The civil war killed almost 40,000 people from a nation of less than 3 million inhabitants. Three-quarters of the dead were Reds, and threequarters of them died not in battle but in prison camps, or were executed or murdered.This is still a ‘collective trauma’ (Ylikangas, 1993: 521) to be overcome, and only recently there have been proposals to establish a Truth Commission for working it through. After only two decades, however, the nation was able to create an astonishingly effective front in the ‘Winter War’ (1939–40) against the Soviet offensive. From a psycho-historical perspective, delving into, first, the sense of being a border country and second, the collective carrying of the trauma of the civil war (and the celebrated consensus during the Winter War) might shed light on the peculiarities of the Finnish drift to social consensus (cf. Alapuro, 1988; Klinge, 1997;Vehviläinen, 2002).

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The third social fact not to be underestimated in the dialogue on schooling in Finland is that the country belongs to the group of European nations that have most recently left behind their agrarian society and lifestyle. The process of industrialization and urbanization was quite sluggish until the Second World War, at least compared with Central Europe and the other Nordic countries: in 1945, 70 per cent of the Finnish population lived in rural areas, and almost 60 per cent were employed in agriculture and forestry. Following the great migration in the 1960s, by 1970 half the population lived in the cities and 32 per cent were employed in industry and construction (cf. Alapuro et al., 1987). The late industrialization and the simultaneous growth of the service sector brought exceptionally rapid structural change to Finnish society. The transition from an agricultural to an industrial society, and further to a post-industrial society, took place within such a short period that one could almost say these societies currently co-exist in a very special way.The Finnish welfare state could be seen as a product of this historical turbulence, industrial and individualist on the one hand, and agrarian and collectivist on the other. In terms of education, too, the Finnish case could be seen as an accelerated, compressed version of the global process of mass schooling (see, for example, Meyer et al., 1992; Simola, 1993). Finland was among the last in Europe to establish compulsory education in 1921.The comprehensive-school system was developed only in the 1970s, but at the same time it was implemented very rapidly and systematically, almost in a totalitarian way. All this is witness to the fact that the Finnish success story in education is historically very recent. Whereas almost 70 per cent of the current younger generation aims to obtain a higher degree, among their grandparents about the same proportion received the full elementary-school certificate. It is not possible here to go further into the cultural and mental differences between the Finnish, Nordic and European peoples. It is enough, and necessary, to state that there is something archaic, authoritarian, and possibly even Eastern, in the Finnish culture and mentality. There is also something collective that, in a distinctive way, permeates the schooling culture.

The relatively high status of teachers The second point of interest is that teachers in Finnish comprehensive schools enjoy a higher status than those in most other advanced liberal countries. What is even more rare is that people at both the lower and higher ends of the social spectrum seem to appreciate and respect the teacher’s work. Hannu Räty, a Finnish researcher, launched a survey research project in 1995 concerning parental attitudes towards comprehensive school (Räty et al., 1995). The results showed that parents of comprehensive-school pupils were quite satisfied: the respondents were most satisfied with the teaching (86 per cent), cooperation (74 per cent) and assessment (71 per cent), although

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over 60 per cent of them also positively assessed issues to do with equality and representation. Even on the subject of individuality, on which attitudes were most negative, more parents were satisfied (48 per cent) than dissatisfied (28 per cent). This conclusion was supported in Nordisk skolbarometer, a Nordic comparative study (Anon, 2001). Respondents comprising a sample of the overall population and of parents with school-aged children in the Nordic countries were asked what they thought about contemporary schooling. The Finns were clearly most satisfied with their schools, especially with how they had been able to provide their offspring with knowledge and skills in different subjects. They were not in agreement with their Nordic neighbours that the knowledge requirements at school were too low, for example. According to the Finnish study referred to above (Räty et al., 1995), Finnish parents felt strongly about equality and equity, and did not support the tenets of market-oriented schooling or the ideology of competition and giftedness. On the contrary, they were worried about the inequality of educational opportunities. It is symptomatic and significant, however, that parents from the upper-level employee strata were more apt to criticize the school system for overlooking differences in giftedness, whereas the attitudes of working-class parents were generally more favourable. A clear indication of the relatively high image of schooling is the popularity of teaching as a profession among Finnish students. Even though there is a shortage of applicants for certain subject-teacher training (especially the teaching of mathematics and the natural sciences), year after year teaching has retained its position as one of the most popular career choices in university entrance examinations (see, for example, Jussila & Saari, 2000; Kansanen, 2003). According to a survey among candidates for the matriculation examination (i.e. final-year pupils in upper secondary school), teaching was clearly the number one choice, and clearly ahead of traditional favourites such as physician, lawyer, psychologist, engineer and journalist (Helsingin Sanomat, 11 February 2004). Finnish teachers apparently enjoy the trust of the general public and also of the political and even economic elite, which is not the case in many countries. The leading business magazine in Finland (Talouselämä, 3/2001) published a cover-page article on comprehensive schools in 2001 advocating the need for more resources to protect the Finnish school system from a serious deterioration in quality. Similarly, one of the leading periodicals in Finland (Suomen kuvalehti, 34/2001) made clear in its cover-page article entitled ‘On the strong pupil’s terms’ that recent market- and competition-oriented school reforms had meant ‘increasing differences, leaving the weak in the shadow of and in competition with the well-off ’. In all probability this would be impossible in Sweden, for example. Although the Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers (CIE) spearheaded the Finnish neo-liberalist education policy (see Ahonen & Rantala, 2001), it has lacked the strictness and aggressiveness of its sister organization in Sweden.

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Identification with the upper social strata One may say that teachers at Finnish comprehensive schools tend to identify with the upper social strata, and their political opinions are rather conservative. The path of the Finnish teacher towards acceptance by both the common people and the elite has been a long one. Ever since they came into existence as a body, Finnish teachers have been fighting a ‘middle-class war on two fronts’ (Rinne, 1988: 440). On the one hand, they have been struggling to convince the general public of the wisdom of bringing their children to school and leaving them there, and to gain the trust of parents that they will take care of their offspring. On the other hand, it has been necessary to convince the establishment of the usefulness and productivity of compulsory schooling. There have been victories and defeats on both of these fronts. The landowning peasantry in four out of five municipalities was initially against schooling, but by the early twentieth century, which was very late in the European and Nordic contexts, almost every municipality finally had a school (Kivirauma & Jauhiainen, 1996).The country descended into civil war in 1918, which brought defeat on both fronts. Elementary-school teachers mainly sided with the Whites, even though some leaders of the Reds had different expectations due to the poor financial and legal position of teachers. During the bloody showdown that followed, only 92 teachers in the whole country were charged with cooperation with the Reds, eight of whom were executed and ten were cleared (Rantala, 2002: 17–19). Following the civil war, at least some people broke away from the universalist idea of civilization, and at least some teachers adopted the ancient idea that the common people were an immoral mass that had to be civilized through missionary schooling. In contrast, the elite lost faith in the outcome of mass schooling, and in people who, in spite of the economic investments made in education, were not civilized enough to resist the message of the political agitators (Rinne, 1988: 440). It was only after the Second World War that the nation-state again began to invest in education of its people, when teachers and ordinary people had proved themselves worthy of the nation’s trust. It is significant that radical labour-union politics, not to mention the extreme Left, have been virtually non-existent in the Finnish teaching profession, which is a point on which teachers differ from their colleagues in various countries. An essential element in the upward movement of Finnish teachers was their exceptionally persistent striving for professionalism. As early as 1890, primary school teachers were claiming that their extension training should be organized at university level. According to a Finnish school historian (Halila, 1950: 296), before the Second World War there were more primary school teachers with an upper secondary school certificate (the matriculation examination) in Finland than in any other country. A significant breakthrough in raising the status and prestige of teaching was the establishment of the University

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College of Education in Jyväskylä in the 1930s, followed after the war by the establishment of three teacher-training colleges in bigger cities. These were the first institutions to offer graduate-based training for primary school teachers, and this clearly ranked above the teacher-training seminars in the educational hierarchy. Starting in the late 1950s, the teachers’ union actively demanded that the training of primary school teachers should be at the same level as that of grammar school teachers, in other words the university level. The focal period in this chapter is the 1970s, when three key reforms were carried out: the Comprehensive School Reform (1972–77), the Teacher Education Reform, and the General Syllabus and Degree Reform in Higher Education (1977–80) (e.g. Simola, 1993; Webb et al., 2004). It is no wonder, then, that the teacher’s middle-class war on both fronts ended in triumph for popular schooling. Risto Rinne sums it up: Popular teachers came to be very highly trained. Except for during the transition period, the relationship between the State and the teachers’ union (OAJ) developed well, especially in international comparison. Strike activities have been scarce, and the Comprehensive School Reform increased the teacher’s status in society and influence on education policy. More than ever, teachers became a trustworthy ally of the state, members of the cultural and economic elite. What is more, people have been awakened to the fact that it is only through education that it is possible to climb the social ladder, or even to keep up one’s position. Teachers have become judges in terms of determining the directions of our children’s future. This right has been handed over to them by the state from above and by parents from below. (Rinne, 1988: 440) In this continuing and successful social advancement, it is no surprise that teachers in Finnish comprehensive schools prefer to identify themselves with the upper middle class. Hannu Räty (Räty et al., 1997), whose survey on parents is referred to above, administered the same questionnaire to teachers in 1997. They clearly shared the opinions of those in the upper-level employee strata on education policy, being more favourable to a market-oriented and competitive school policy than parents in general. A third of them agreed with the statement: ‘The pursuit of equality is no longer a response to the challenges of today’, and also supported the establishment of more private schools and special schools for gifted pupils.

Pedagogical conservatism Teachers at Finnish comprehensive schools also appear to be pedagogically conservative and somewhat reserved or remote in their relations with

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pupils and their families.There is a lack of strong empirical evidence to back up this statement, but what little there is offers some support. The results of a British report from 1996 (Norris et al., 1996) are interesting. The Finnish National Board of Education had commissioned an experienced research team from the University of East Anglia in the UK to find out how the great comprehensive-school curriculum reform had been implemented in Finland.The team visited, observed and interviewed principals, teachers and pupils in 50 lower and upper comprehensive schools that were selected as being pilot schools or otherwise interested in curriculum reform. These establishments clearly represented so-called good and innovative schools in Finland. The report was a scandal and a disappointment to its subscribers in that it showed how poorly the curriculum reform was being realized at the school level. It could be said, however, that the most interesting notions and observations concerned the pedagogical practices of Finnish comprehensive schools. The British group reported: (. . .) whole classes following line by line what is written in the textbook, at a pace determined by the teacher. Rows and rows of children all doing the same thing in the same way whether it be art, mathematics or geography. We have moved from school to school and seen almost identical lessons, you could have swapped the teachers over and the children would never have noticed the difference. (Norris et al., 1996: 29) (. . .) in both the lower and upper comprehensive school, we did not see much evidence of, for example, student-centred learning or independent learning. (Norris et al., 1996: 85) In the eyes of the researchers, Finnish school teaching and learning seemed to be very traditional, mainly involving frontal teaching of the whole group of pupils. Observations of individualized and pupil-centred forms of instruction were scarce. Given the enormous similarity between the schools, the observers were convinced of the high level of pedagogical discipline and order. This testimony of the British evaluation group is in strong contrast with some empirical findings from Sweden, for example. Lindblad (2001: 56) described changes in organization and interaction patterns in Swedish classrooms in the 1970s and 1990s (see Table 10.1). There is some empirical evidence at the school level of a difference between individualization in instruction and learning in Finland and Sweden. In a study involving interviews with teachers from 15 Finnish comprehensive schools (Simola, 2002; Simola & Hakala, 2001), two of the schools appeared to apply a

The Finnish miracle of PISA 215 Table 10.1 Comparisons of teaching in grade 8 in comprehensive school, 1973 and 1995 (Lindblad 2001: 56) Aspects

1973

1995

Organization

Lesson organized around teacher in front of whole class Teacher tells or teacher asks – student responds – teacher evaluates

Short introduction by teacher then students work individually or in groups Short teacher instruction in combination with walking around and helping. Considerable student–student interaction

Interaction

somewhat individualizing approach, and another, the Ilola School, is widely known for its promotion of independent work (oman työn tunnit). This school had been struggling for more than a decade to promote independent work, but according to the principal it had not been supported. After a twelve-year fight, he appeared to be quite pessimistic, even concerning the capacity of the teachers in his own school to internalise and develop it. He concluded that Finnish teachers would not give up their traditional ‘teaching ex cathedra’ as long as they did not have to. The approach is apparently more common and popular in Sweden than in Finland. Österlind claims in her dissertation: [I]n Sweden the method of organizing students’ work, called ‘their own work’ [eget arbete], is gaining ground. It differs from traditional classroom organization in that pupils are allowed a measure of freedom to decide for themselves when to work on the different subjects, for example. In order to check the results and get an overview, many teachers combine this individualized teaching with diaries or ‘planning books’, in other words, small books in which the pupils write down their weekly work. The diary makes it possible for the teacher to control the pace by asking the pupil either to slow down or to work harder. It is an important aspect of individualized teaching; the teachers still know ‘where they are’. (Österlind, 1998: 139) It appears from an interview study of Nordic teachers (Simola, 2002; see also Chapter 8 in this volume) that Finnish teachers differ from their Nordic colleagues in their relations with pupils and their families. Whereas other Nordic teachers almost unanimously emphasized intimate, personal and confidential relations, Finnish teachers spoke to their pupils mostly in the role of adult models and keepers of order and safety in the classroom. Some

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experienced Finnish teachers emphasized how important it was to keep a certain professional distance from their pupils and their homes and problems, rather than encourage intimacy.This kind of top-down distance contradicts the rather strong emphasis on the ethos of caring, which is apparently prevalent among special teachers and primary school teachers.

Relative work satisfaction The fifth and final statement under consideration here is that teachers in Finnish comprehensive schools seem to be relatively satisfied and committed to their work. An unexpected result of the above-mentioned studies (Simola, 2002; Simola & Hakala, 2001), for which more than 50 Finnish teachers were interviewed, was the apparent satisfaction with the educational reforms of the 1990s. Almost all the teachers saw the decade as one of progress in various senses. They gave positive comments on the aims of the reforms, such as increasing school-based decision-making, encouraging cooperation between teachers and other specialists, and emphasizing the individual needs and interests of pupils. Their basic positive stance was even clearer in the light of interviews conducted with teachers in the ten other European countries involved in these research projects (Popkewitz & Lindblad, 2001). Some Finnish studies support this impression of relative satisfaction and commitment. According to a survey study focusing on teacher stress, ‘many teachers are really satisfied with their work and committed to it. They see their work as rewarding, the working atmosphere as being good, and the social support in their work place as positive, too’ (Santavirta et al., 2001). Eighty per cent of the respondents agreed with the two statements: ‘This work is rewarding and I do it because I like it’, and ‘I am very committed to my current work’. The extent of work satisfaction seems strange in the light of other study findings: the general opinion is that teachers are pushed hard in their work. Various studies show evidence of increasing levels of stress among Finnish teachers (e.g. Salo & Kinnunen, 1993; Viinamäki, 1997). In fact, teachers participating in virtually all of the recent interview studies complained about increasing stress, more difficult pupils and a growing workload (see, for example, Simola, 2002; Simola & Hakala, 2001; Syrjäläinen, 2002; Virta & Kurikka, 2001). There was something curious in the Finnish education policy of the 1990s that might explain this co-existence of relative satisfaction and increasing stress. The official school discourse has focused on evaluation as the most essential tool of quality development since the early 1990s. Whereas it was previously believed that the goals of education could be reached by sticking to strict norms, the conviction in the 1990s was that their attainment required the setting of national core targets and the evaluation of achievements in the light

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of subsequent results. In this rhetoric, the Finnish ‘Planning State’ became the ‘Evaluative State’, attempting to practise educational policy through government by results. According to the Secretary General of the Ministry of Education, evaluation was seen as a pivotal element in the new steering system because it ‘replaces the tasks of the old normative steering, control and inspection system’ (Hirvi, 1996: 93; cf. Rinne et al., 2002; Simola et al., 2002). A discourse of evaluation prevailed on the school level during the 1990s, but the practice did not reflect it. Despite the rhetoric, there had been virtually no formal control system governing the work of schools since the changes that were implemented in the early part of the decade. Narrative referring to the total lack of evaluation, assessment and control was quite strong among the above-mentioned interviewees on the school level (Simola & Hakala, 2001). Supervision of the work done in schools and the results achieved is minimal by international standards. All traditional forms of control over the teacher’s work had, for all practical purposes, disappeared by the beginning of the 1990s. The school inspectorate, a detailed national curriculum, officially approved teaching materials, weekly timetables based on subjects taught and a class diary in which the teacher had to record what was taught each hour – all these traditional mechanisms were abandoned. Finland has never had a tradition of nationwide standardized testing at the comprehensive-school level. It was not until 1999 that the obligation to practise evaluation was formalized and the first surrogate control mechanism, the standard scale for giving marks on the comprehensive-school graduation certificate (Opetushallitus, 1999), was introduced.

No longer a miracle In summary of the socio-historical points made above, first, a somewhat archaic, authoritarian but also collective culture prevails; second, there is some social trust and appreciation of teachers; third, there is a tendency towards political and pedagogical conservativeness among teachers; and fourth, teachers are relatively satisfied with and committed to their teaching. It might be worth combining these explanatory elements with some other facts that are rather well known but rarely mentioned. Again for historical reasons, there is a certain cultural homogeneity among pupils in most Finnish classrooms. This came to light during the PISA 2000 project with regard to the proportion of non-native pupils, which was only one-fifth of the OECD average (OECD, 2001). Moreover, a well-organized and effective special education system, run by university-trained teachers, used to ensure a certain level of homogeneity by moving the most ‘difficult’ pupils out of the classroom into special educational units or clinics. It is only in the last five years or so that the policy has begun gradually to shift towards full inclusion, meaning that pupils with a special status

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are, as far as possible, integrated into ‘normal’ classrooms. The proportion of pupils diagnosed as needing special education (i.e. having the status of a special pupil) doubled from 2.9 per cent in 1995 to 6.2 per cent in 2003. What is notable here, however, is that whereas almost all of these 17,000 pupils were taught in full-time special education in 1995, this applied to only 60 per cent (22,000) in 2003. In other words, 40 per cent of pupils with special educational needs were integrated completely or partly into ordinary classroom teaching. During the same period, the proportion of pupils taking advantage of part-time special education increased from about 15 to 20 per cent of the cohort (Tilastokeskus, 2004). The strong ethos of equality and the very idea of comprehensive schooling also lie behind this effectiveness: dedication to the principle that ‘no child is left behind’, especially in primary and special education (see, for example, Kivirauma, 2001; Simola & Hakala, 2001). It is fair to say that the extent of pupil homogeneity and the strong special-education system have the effect of unifying and harmonizing the groups taught by the primary school teacher. It is apparent that some essential aspects of ‘the network of interrelated factors’, referred to above by researchers in the Finnish PISA team, are present. In any case, the Finnish ‘miracle of PISA’ no longer appears to be a miracle. To put it simply, it is still possible to teach in the traditional way in Finland because teachers believe in their traditional role and pupils accept their traditional position. Teachers’ beliefs are supported by social trust and their professional academic status, and pupils’ approval is supported by the authoritarian culture and the mentality of obedience. The Finnish ‘secret’ of attaining top ranking thus could also be seen as the curious contingency of traditional and posttraditional tendencies in the context of the modern welfare state and its comprehensive schooling. It is tempting to think that at least some of the authority of Finnish teachers is based on their relatively strong professional identity, which enables them to season their traditional teaching with the spice of progress. It is also tempting to think that at least some of the obedience of Finnish pupils stems from the natural acceptance of authority, and the ethos of respect for teachers.

Paradoxical conclusions In conclusion, two paradoxes are identifiable in the success story of Finnish schooling. First, the model pupil depicted in the strongly future-oriented PISA 2000 study seems to lean heavily on the passed – or at least the passing – world, on the agrarian and pre-industrialized society, on the ethos of obedience and subjection that may be at its strongest in Finland among late modern European societies. This paradox leads to the question of what will happen to teaching and learning in Finnish schools when teachers no longer believe in their traditional mission to be model citizens and transmitters of knowledge, but rather see themselves as facilitators, tutors and mentors. What will happen to

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teaching and learning in Finnish schools when the pupils no longer accept their position as pupils, but rather ‘climb the walls’, as one urban primary-school principal put it? The second paradox is that the politically and pedagogically progressive Comprehensive School Reform is apparently being implemented in Finland by teachers who are, politically and pedagogically, rather conservative. What is more, the outcomes seem to match the aims better than in a few other countries. This paradox raises the question of whether it is possible to move easily from the older authoritarian to an updated neo-authoritarian pedagogy. Given the lack of a real tradition of pupil-centred teaching legitimised by social policy, it might be rather easy to adopt the new economically legitimized pedagogy. Its pivotal elements are compact and clear: distinctive and discriminative competition, popular constructivist shifting of responsibility for learning to the pupil, and all-pervasive assessment and self-evaluation. How do these PISA-type comparative assessments appear from the perspective of this Finnish ‘historical journey’? (see Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal, 2003). Technically well executed, they undoubtedly gather together interesting information on different educational systems (e.g. Mulford, 2002), and their database will facilitate further sophisticated and fruitful analysis (see, for example, Allmendinger & Leibfried, 2003; Gorard & Smith, 2004; Nash, 2003). The ranking and benchmarking indicators and their combinations might indeed tell us something of ‘how far students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in society’ (What PISA assesses, http://www.pisa.oecd.org/). The case of Finland discussed above demonstrates, however, that this information does not necessarily further understanding of the development and dynamics of a specific educational system. If anything, it appears to contribute to what Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal call processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’ rather than processes of improvement and development. On this basis, it is still easy to agree with Goldstein (2004), an eminent British statistician in the field of education, who argues against the strict and measurable targetsetting advocated by UNESCO in its ambitious ‘Education for All’ (EFA) programme: Each educational system can develop different criteria for assessing quality, enrolment, etc. and instead of monitoring progress towards an essentially artificial set of targets EFA could concentrate the resources that it is able to mobilize towards obtaining the necessary understanding of the dynamics of each system. This would then allow constructive policies to be implemented. The emphasis would be on the local context and culture, within which those with local knowledge can construct their own aims rather than rely upon common yardsticks implemented from a global perspective’ (Goldstein, 2004: 14)

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Note 1 Simola, H. (2005) The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education, 41(4): 455–70 [shortened and lightly edited].

References Ahonen, S. & Rantala, J. (2001) Nordic Lights: Education for Nation and Civic Society in the Nordic Countries, 1850–2000. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Alapuro, R. (1988) State and Revolution in Finland. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Alapuro, R., Liikanen, I., Smeds, K. & Stenius, H. (eds.) (1987) Kansa liikkeessä [The Nation in Movement].Vaasa: Kirjayhtymä. Allmendinger, J. & Leibfried, S. (2003) Education and the welfare state: the four worlds of competence production. Journal of European Social Policy, 13(1): 63–81. Anon (2001) Nordisk skolbarometer – Attityder till skolan år 2000 (Nordic School Barometer – Attitudes toward the School Year 2000). TemaNord 2001: 547. Copenhagen: Nordisk Ministerråd. Broady, D. (1987) Den dolda läroplanen [The Hidden Curriculum]. Stockholm: Symposion. Collins, R. (1990) Changing conceptions in the sociology of the professions, in R. Torstendahl & M. Burrage (eds.) The Formation of Professions: Knowledge, State and Strategy. London: Sage. Goldstein, H. (2004) Education for all: the globalization of learning targets. Comparative Education, 40(1): 7–15. Gorard, S. & Smith, E. (2004) An international comparison of equity in education systems. Comparative Education, 40(1): 15–28. Halila, A. (1950) Suomen kansakoululaitoksen historia. Neljäs osa. Oppivelvollisuuskoulun alkuvaiheet (1921–1939) [History of Finnish Elementary Schooling]. Helsinki: WSOY. Hirvi, V. (1996) Koulutuksen rytminvaihdos. 1990-luvun koulutuspolitiikka Suomessa [The Changing Pace of Education: Education Policy of the1990s in Finland]. Helsinki: Otava. Jussila, J. & Saari, S. (eds.) (2000) Teacher education as a future-moulding factor: international evaluation of teacher education in Finnish universities. Publications of Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council 9: 2000 [http://www.minedu.fi/minedu/education/ finheec/finheec.html]. Kansanen, P. (2003) Teacher education in Finland: current models and new developments, in B. Moon, L. Vlãsceanu & C. Barrows (eds.) Institutional Approaches to Teacher Education within Higher Education in Europe: Current Models and New Developments (pp. 85–108). Bucharest: Unesco – Cepes. Kivirauma, J. (2001) Erityisopetuksen historialliset kehityslinjat Suomessa [The historical lines of development in Finnish special education], in M. Jahnukainen (ed.) Lasten erityishuolto ja -opetus Suomessa [Special Education in Finland], pp. 23–33. Helsinki: Lastensuojelun keskusliitto. Kivirauma, J. & Jauhiainen, A. (1996) Ensimmäisten kansakoulujen perustaminen sivistyneistön suurena projektina [The establishment of the first elementary schools

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as the Great Project of the Elite]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 27(2): 153–63. Klinge, M. (1997) A Brief History of Finland. Helsinki: Otava. Lakaniemi, I., Rotkirch, A. & Stenius, H. (eds.) (1995) ‘Liberalism’: Seminars on Historical and Political Keywords in Northern Europe. Helsinki: Renvall Institute, University of Helsinki. Lie, S., Linnakylä, P. & Roe, A. (2003) Northern Lights on PISA: Unity and Diversity in the Nordic Countries in PISA 2000. Oslo: University of Oslo. Lindblad, S. (2001) Koulutus ja sen muuttuvat merkitykset pohjoismaisessa hyvinvointivaltiossa [Education and its changing meanings in the Nordic welfare state], in A. Jauhiainen, R. Rinne & J. Tähtinen (eds.) Koulutuspolitiikka Suomessa ja ylikansalliset mallit [Finnish Education Policy and Supranational Models], pp. 45–72. Kasvatusalan tutkimuksia 1. Turku: Suomen kasvatustieteellinen seura. Meyer, J.W., Ramirez, F.O. & Soysal, Y.N. (1992) World expansion of mass education, 1870–1980. Sociology of Education, 65(2): 128–49. Mulford, B. (2002) Sorting the wheat from the chaff – knowledge and skills for life: First results from OECD’s PISA 2000. European Journal of Education, 37(2): 211–21. Nash, R. (2003) Is the school composition effect real? A discussion with evidence from the UK PISA data. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 14(4): 441–57. Norris, N., Asplund, R., MacDonald, B., Schostak, J. & Zamorski, B. (1996) An Independent Evaluation of Comprehensive Curriculum Reform in Finland. Helsinki: National Board of Education. Nóvoa, A. & Yariv-Mashal, T. (2003) Comparative research in education: a mode of governance or a historical journey? Comparative Education, 39(4): 423–39. OECD (2001) Knowledge and Skills for Life: First Results from PISA 2000 [http://www. pisa.oecd.org/; accessed 21 December 2004]. OECD (2004a) Learning for Tomorrow’s World: First Results from PISA 2003 [http://www. pisa.oecd.org/; accessed 21 December 2004]. OECD (2004b) Problem Solving for Tomorrow’s World: First Measures of Cross-Curricular Competencies from PISA 2003 [http://www.pisa.oecd.org/; accessed 21 December 2004]. Opetushallitus (1999) Perusopetuksen päättöarvioinnin kriteerit. Arvosanan hyvä (8) kriteerit yhteisissä oppiaineissa [The Criteria for Graduating Evaluation in Basic Education: The Criteria for the Mark ‘Good’ (8) in the Commonly Taught Subjects]. Helsinki: Opetushallitus. Österlind, E. (1998) Disciplinering via frihet: elevers planering av sitt eget arbete [Discipline through Freedom]. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 75. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Popkewitz, T.S. (1999) A social epistemology of educational research, in T.S. Popkewitz & L. Fendler (eds.) Critical Theories in Education: Changing Terrains of Knowledge and Politics (pp. 17–42). New York: Routledge. Popkewitz,T.S. & Lindblad, S. (eds.) (2001) Listening to Education Actors on Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion: A Report from the EGSIE Project. Uppsala: Department of Education, Uppsala University. Prais, S.J. (2003) Cautions on OECD’s recent educational survey (PISA). Oxford Review of Education, 29(2): 139–63. Rantala, J. (2002) Kansakoulunopettajat ja kapina. Vuoden 1918 punaisuusyytökset ja opettajan asema paikallisyhteisössä [Teachers and the Revolt]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

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Räty, H., Snellman, L., Kontio, M. & Kähkönen, H. (1997) Opettajat ja peruskoulun uudistaminen [Teachers and the comprehensive school reforms]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 28(5): 429–38. Räty, H., Snellman, L., Mäntysaari-Hetekorpi, H. & Vornanen, A. (1995) Vanhempien tyytyväisyys peruskoulun toimintaan ja koulunuudistuksia koskevat asenteet [Satisfaction of parents with comprehensive school and attitudes towards reforms]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 26(3): 250–60. Rinne, R. (1988) Kansan kasvattajasta opetuksen ammattilaiseksi: suomalaisen kansanopettajan tie [From educator of the people to professional of teaching: the path of the Finnish primary school teacher]. The Finnish Journal of Education: Kasvatus, 19: 430–44. Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J. & Simola, H. (2002) Shoots of revisionist education policy or just slow readjustment? The Finnish case of educational reconstruction. Journal of Education Policy, 17(6): 643–58. Salo, K. & Kinnunen, U. (1993) Opettajien työstressi: Työn, stressin ja terveyden seurantatutkimus 1983–1991 [Teacher Stress: A Seven-year Follow-up Study of Teachers’ Work, Stress and Health]. Jyväskylän yliopistoin työtutkimusyksikön julkaisuja 7. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Santavirta, N., Aittola, E., Niskanen, P., Pasanen, I., Tuominen, K. & Solovieva, S. (2001) Nyt riittää. Raportti peruskoulun ja lukion opettajien työympäristöstä, työtyytyväisyydestä ja työssä jaksamisesta [Enough! A Report on the Work Environment, Satisfaction and Stress of Teachers at Comprehensive and Upper Secondary School). Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Siikala, A. (ed.) (2002) Myth and Mentality: Studies in Folklore and Popular Thought. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Simola, H. (1993) Educational science, the state and teachers: Forming the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland, in T.S. Popkewitz (ed.) Changing Patterns of Power: Social Regulation and Teacher Education Reform in Eight Countries (pp. 161–210). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Simola, H. (2002) Finnish teachers talking about their changing work, in K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen & H. Simola (eds.) Restructuring Nordic Teachers: Analyses of Interviews with Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Teachers, pp. 49–70. Report No. 3. Oslo: Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo. Simola, H. & Hakala, K. (2001) School professionals talk about educational change – interviews with Finnish school level actors on educational governance and social inclusion/exclusion, in S. Lindblad & T.S. Popkewitz (eds.) Listening to Education Actors on Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion, pp. 103–32. Uppsala Reports on Education 37. Uppsala: Department of Education, Uppsala University. Simola, H., Rinne, R. & Kivirauma, J. (2002) Abdication of the education state or just shifting responsibilities? The appearance of a new system of reason in constructing educational governance and social exclusion/inclusion in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 46(3): 237–46. Syrjäläinen, E. (2002) Eikö opettaja saisi jo opettaa? Koulun kehittämisen paradoksi ja opettajan työuupumus [Couldn’t the Teacher Teach? The Paradox of School Development and Teacher Stress]. Tampere: Tampere University. Tilastokeskus (2004) Erityisopetus 2003 [Special Education in 2003] [http://www.stat. fi/til/erop/index.html]. Välijärvi, J., Linnakylä, P., Kupari, P., Reinikainen, P. & Arffman, I. (2002) The Finnish Success in PISA – and Some Reasons Behind It. Jyväskylä: Koulutuksen tutkimuslaitos.

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Vehviläinen, O. (2002) Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Viinamäki, T. (1997) Opettajien ja sosiaalityöntekijöiden psyykkinen rasittuneisuus [Psychic Distress Among Teachers and Social Workers]. Kuopion yliopiston julkaisuja E.Yhteiskuntatieteet 50. Kuopio: Kuopio University. Virta, A. & Kurikka, T. (2001) Peruskoulu opettajien kokemana, in E. Olkinuora & E. Mattila (eds.) Miten menee peruskoulussa? Kasvatuksen ja oppimisen edellytysten tarkastelua Turun kouluissa [How are Things in the Comprehensive School?], pp. 55–86. Turun ylioipiston kasvatustieteiden tiedkunnan julkaisuja A: 195. Turku: Turku University. Webb, R.,Vulliamy, G., Hämäläinen, S., Sarja, A., Kimonen, E. & Nevalainen, R. (2004) A comparative analysis of primary teacher professionalism in England and Finland. Comparative Education, 40(1): 83–108. Ylikangas, H. (1993) Tie Tampereelle [The Road to Tampere]. Helsinki: WSOY.

Chapter 11

Against the flow Path dependence, convergence and contingency in understanding the Finnish QAE model 1 with J.Varjo & R. Rinne

Media visibility and the political use of global rankings have highlighted the topicality and relevance of comparative studies in education. This popularity has not entailed the development of theoretical instruments in the field, however. Conversely, non-historical and de-contextualized concepts such as efficiency, accountability and quality are colonizing the educational world undisputed and uncontested, largely due to the fact that they have been internationally advocated. Comparative education is still suffering from certain methodological deficits and serious under-theorization (Simola, 2009). One trend is to consider ‘comparative’ a synonym for ‘international’, which refers to a descriptive collection of educational issues from different countries. It is evident that global interconnectedness and a nascent global educational community, mediated, translated and re-contextualized within national and local education structures is creating a certain resemblance among educational policies across nations (see, for example, Lingard, 2000). Waves of global policy reforms (‘travelling policies’) have a tendency to diffuse worldwide, and reshape socially and politically different societies with dissimilar histories.What is just as clear is that these transnational trends and tendencies do not simply shape regional, national or local policies, but rather collide and intertwine with the ‘embedded policies’ to be found in ‘local’ spaces (national, provincial or local) in which global policy agendas come up against existing practices and priorities (see, for example, Ozga & Jones, 2006). This narrowness of the national view easily creates a blind spot in terms of how interactions and comparisons reconstruct the national or the local: how transnational interactions and crossings constitute the national parties of these relationships. Here we come to the crucial role of comparative practices as a mode of reflexivity that (re)shapes individual and collective agency (Grek et al., 2009). In pursuance of an understanding of a complex phenomenon such as the relationship between the global, the regional, the national and the local in education policy formation, it is vital to consider the theoretical conceptualizations from a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ perspective. A good and illuminating example here is the controversy among researchers of nationalism and the frequently observed confrontation between understanding nationalism as ‘the

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invention of traditions’ by the elite (e.g. Hobsbawm, 1990) or as creating prerequisites and limits for ethnic identities (e.g. Smith, 1995). From the perspective of comparative research, nationalism as an elite strategy and nationalism as a socio-cultural frame are both of the essence. It is thus necessary to analyse comparative actions both as economic, political and cultural practices and as international exhibitions of national competitiveness in the global educational marketplace. One of the most interesting questions referred to in recent discussions2 concerns the relationship between path dependence, convergence and contingency.3 The first two are among the most conventional conceptualizations of transnational and national policy relations, whereas the third derives from more recent social theorization. Path dependence and convergence tend to be seen as a simplistic dualism in comparative studies: the former covers major national specificities and the latter refers to international tendencies. The approach essentially underestimates both the insecurity and openness of the horizon of expectations and the relative freedom of more or less conscious and informed actors. This deficit is even more assuredly fatal, possibly even more so in these global and late-modern times characterized as the ‘Era of Contingency’ ( Joas, 2008; Joas & Knöbl, 2009), in which the difference between the ‘already-done’ and the ‘yet-to-be-done’ is vital and things are increasingly not necessary, or impossible. Contingency is one essential element in creating a Spielraum for ‘politicking’ (Palonen, 1993). Pauli Kettunen (2008: 21; 2011) proposes that in crossing these two dimensions – path dependence and contingency on the one hand, and path dependence and convergence on the other – we might find histories and comparisons as forms of reflexivity in social practices. Relating the past, the present and the future, or experience and expectation, and recognizing and interpreting differences and similarities are inherent aspects of human agency. Our aim in this chapter is to experiment with the very idea of combining path dependence, convergence and contingency while trying to understand the Finnish distinctiveness in education policy and politics since the early 1990s. Our focus is on quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in comprehensive schooling. We will elaborate on and contextualize the Finnish QAE model by analysing the peculiar and somewhat ambiguous ways in which QAE practices have – or have not – been received and mediated in Finland. We explore these questions through the analysis of a set of data that includes Finnish governmental documents (laws, decrees, education-development plans, national reports to the OECD and the European Union, among others) and reports, as well as material on evaluation commissioned or published by national authorities, mainly the National Board of Education (NBE) and the Ministry of Education (ME). Further material for this article was gathered in interviews (Nos. 1–13) conducted in 20074 with key Finnish actors in education policy, including heads and major actors from the NBE, the Ministry of

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Education, the Finnish Education Evaluation Council (FEEC, Koulutuksen arviointineuvosto), the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA, Kuntaliitto) and the Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (CIE, Elinkeinoelämän keskusliitto).

Convergence and path dependence Despite increasing international interdependence, which seems to generate pressure towards convergence, advanced industrial societies continue to exhibit differences in their institutional practices. As Andy Green (1999: 56) points out: As regards education, there is very little evidence across the globe that nation states are losing control over their education systems or ceasing to press them into service for national economic and social ends, whatever the recent accretions of internationalism. In fact the opposite may be true. As governments lose control over various levers on their national economies and cede absolute sovereignty in foreign affairs and defence, they frequently turn to education and training as two areas where they do still maintain control. The argument in relation to educational convergence is, however, more complex, for whilst education systems remain essentially national they may nevertheless be experiencing a degree of convergence under the impact of international forces. According to Green (1999: 69), there is evidence of policy convergence within Europe around a range of broad themes, including decentralization in regulation and governance and the increasing use of quality assurance and evaluation mechanisms. However, this does not appear to have led to convergence in structures and processes. If convergence is strongly controversial and disputed as an analytical concept, path dependence is somewhat stronger. According to Paul Pierson (2000: 251), the whole notion of path dependence is generally used to support a few key claims: (i) specific patterns of timing and sequence matter; (ii) starting from similar conditions, a wide range of social outcomes may be possible; (iii) serious consequences may result from relatively ‘small’ or contingent events; (iv) particular courses of action, once introduced, can be most difficult to reverse; (v) consequently, political development is often punctuated by critical moments (junctures) that shape the basic contours of social life. It is noteworthy that these features stand in contrast to general modes of argument and explanation that attribute ‘large’ outcomes to ‘large’ causes and emphasize the prevalence of unique and predictable outcomes, the irrelevance of timing and sequence, and the capacity of rational actors to design and implement optimal solutions (by their resources and constraints) to the problems that confront them (Pierson, 2000: 251).

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There is, naturally, no single definition of path dependence. William Sewell (1996: 262–3) refers to the causal relevance of preceding stages in a temporal sequence, and suggests in a very broad sense that path dependence means ‘that what happened at an earlier point in time will affect the possible outcomes of a sequence of events at a later point in time’. Margaret Levi’s (1997: 28) definition is narrower, and highlights the difficulty to exit from the once chosen path: Path dependence has to mean, if it has to mean anything, that once a country or a region has started down a track, the costs of reversal are very high. There will be other choice points, but the entrenchments of certain institutional arrangements obstruct an easy reversal of the initial choice. Perhaps the better metaphor is a tree, rather than a path. From the same trunk, there are many different branches and smaller branches. Although it is possible to turn around or to clamber from one to the other – and essential if the chosen branch dies – the branch on which a climber begins is the one she tends to follow.

Contingency The German sociologist Hans Joas (2008) characterizes our time as an ‘Age of Contingency’. It seems plausible that the concept of contingency is able to capture something essential in our society in that it carries attributes such as post-traditional (Giddens), postmodern (Bauman) and risk (Beck). Following Niklas Luhmann’s definition, Joas describes contingency as follows: A fact is contingent if it is neither necessary nor impossible – something that is but does not have to be. I think this definition is useful because it makes clear at the outset that the best way to understand the meaning of contingency is to see it as a counter-notion to another idea, namely ‘necessity’.Thus the precise meaning of the term ‘contingency’ depends on the precise meaning of the term ‘necessity’ that it presupposes. If ‘necessity’ referred, as in pre-modern philosophy, to the idea of a ‘well-ordered cosmos’, ‘contingency’ referred to the incompleteness and imperfection of the merely sensual and material world on the one hand, and to the liberty and creativity of God’s unrestrained will on the other. (Joas, 2004: 394) The concept of contingency thus carries a double meaning: on the one hand it signifies coincidence or conjunction, and on the other it is free will or volition (Joas, 2008: 209). In the former sense, it refers to uncertainty and ambivalence, and in the latter sense to possibilities and the Spielraum of the actor.

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The former dimension, the uncertainty side of contingency say, emphasizes the fact that our history and living are essentially haphazard and random: things often happen by accident. Nevertheless, as US sociologist, Howard S. Becker, states: (. . .) social science theory looks for determinate causal relationships, which do not give an adequate account of this thing that ‘everyone knows’. If we take the idea of ‘it happened by chance’ seriously, we need a quite different kind of research and theory than we are accustomed to. (Becker, 1994: 183) In this latter sense, the freedom side of contingency could be seen as an ability to handle and face the contingent characteristics of reality: as ‘the art of playing with the contingency’ as characterized by an eminent Finnish political scientist Kari Palonen: Polity and policy refer to attempts to regiment (polity) or to regulate (policy) the contingency characteristic of politics as action. As opposed to them, politicization refers to opening new aspects of contingency in the situation and thus expanding the presence of the political in it. Politicking may be interpreted as the art of playing with the contingency, using it both as an inescapable moment of the situation to be considered in any case and as an instrument against opponents less ready to tolerate or make use of the presence of the contingency. (Palonen, 1993: 13) Next, we introduce four tenets of QAE in comprehensive education, essential in elaborating distinctive Finnish national characteristics. These standpoints are ‘truths’ (see, Chapter 5 in this volume, and for example, Heikkinen et al., 1999; Simola, 1998; Simola et al., 1998) that are widely accepted and shared, even though there is not that much empirical evidence behind them. Nevertheless, they are definitely the constituent parts of the national selfunderstanding in terms of QAE in education. As Pierson (2000: 251) suggests, they could also be seen as significant junctures – curious combinations of path dependence, convergent and contingent factors, constituted by numerous crossing factors and trajectories. Therefore, it also seems evident that the unity these practices constitute is rather fragile. Here we address the question of why these beliefs exist rather than whether or not they hold.

The Finnish trajectory in QAE policy The beginning of the Third Republic in Finland is often located in the late 1980s (see, for example, Alasuutari, 1996: 263; Simola, 2004). Prime Minister Harri Holkeri’s 1987 right-left coalition cabinet aimed to bring about an

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essential change in Finnish politics. For the first time since the Second World War, the conservative National Coalition Party held the post of Prime Minister and its two decades in opposition were over. As far as education was concerned, this marked the end of the deal between the Central and Social Democratic parties in the Ministry of Education and the NBE, and the right wing was set to dominate official school discourse for more than a decade. The post of Minister of Education also fell to right-wing ministers. The changes in education were part of a general wave of decentralization and deregulation in Finland. The process started in the late 1980s with the Experiment of Free Municipality (Law 718/1988), which gave local authorities in experimental municipalities more freedom to make independent decisions about their own organization. The Act on Central Government Transfers to Local Government (Law 707/1992) and the Local Government Act (Law 365/1995) radically increased local autonomy and strengthened the judicial position of the municipalities. The new state subsidy system granted funding according to annual calculations per pupil, lesson or other unit, and liberated the municipalities from the former detailed ‘ear-marked-money’ budgeting towards the allocation of lump sums, which the municipalities could freely use according to their priorities. In general, the municipal practices of budgeting, accounting and auditing the administration and finances were changed to accord with the new public management (NPM) doctrine (see Haveri, 2002: 36–8). The essential role of evaluation was legitimized in the Basic Education Act of 1999 (Law 628/1998). A statutory system was considered necessary in the move from norm steering to the control and evaluation of outcomes. The new purpose of evaluation was said to be ‘to support the development of education and improve conditions of learning’. Guided by the Ministry of Education, the NBE decided on the means by which to accomplish the evaluation procedures.The organizers (mainly the municipalities) are obligated to evaluate the education they provide and to submit to the external evaluation of their operations. Moreover, as a common but vaguely articulated norm, the results should be public: ‘The main results of the evaluations shall be published’ (Law 628/1998: §21). Despite the vast quantity of evaluation activities, the question of whether ‘the quality assurance and evaluation – besides the traditional pupil assessment – [has been] rooted as an essential part of everyday schoolwork in Finland’ (Rinne et al., 2011) remains open. Reports on the state of evaluation at the local level reveal that the practices are various, at the very least (Lapiolahti, 2007; Löfström et al., 2005; Rajanen, 2000). There seems to be no resolution of this clearly unsatisfactory situation in sight: on the contrary, the establishment of the Finnish Education Evaluation Council (FEEC) in 2003 brought one more actor to the field of QAE. What is noteworthy is the lack of real initiatives to solve the problems concerning the authority and coordination of the Finnish QAE network.

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Four doctrines in the Finnish QAE model We argue in this chapter for a particular Finnish Model of Quality Assurance and Evaluation (QAE) in Basic Education, which seems to differ from the mainstream of international and global evaluation policies. Four doctrines characterize Finnish Basic Education QAE, which should be understood in Finnish practices in terms of their context and history (see also, Chapter 3 in this volume). These special characteristics or policy outlines are national doctrines of a kind that are commonly accepted and shared: 1. QAE information is primarily meant for use in administration and decision-making on the national and municipal levels – and only secondarily for other interest groups such as pupils and their parents 2. The purpose of QAE in education is to develop – not to control, sanction or allocate resources 3. Sample-based learning-result assessments are favoured over the mandatory national testing of the whole age cohort 4. There is no basis or need to publish school-based ranking lists. QAE information for administration

New education legislation was drafted in 1993–96 in two consecutive working parties. The latter, a parliamentary committee headed by Director General of the NBE Vilho Hirvi, articulated a significant definition of policy: the purpose of evaluation is to produce information addressed ‘primarily’ to the educational authorities. Families needing evaluative knowledge in order to make their school choices are referred to only incidentally ‘besides’: families and students have appeared as an afterthought since the mid 1990s. The purpose of the evaluation system is to produce the information needed in local, regional and national development work and educational decision-making. Besides this, the evaluations should produce information on which students and their families can base their choices. (ME, 1996: 85) Neither the Basic Education Act (Law 628/1998) nor the Decree on the Evaluation of Education (A 150/2003) make reference to families, parents or customers among those interested in the evaluation of knowledge beyond the school achievements of their own children. According to the decree (A 150/2003, §2), the aims for the evaluation of education are: (1) to provide and analyse information to support national decisionmaking and developmental activities;

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(2) to provide and analyse information to support local developmental activities and decision-making; and (3) to promote pupils’ learning, teachers’ work and developmental activities in schools. In toto, the legislative documents contain all sorts of statements concerning the value of evaluation results but make no reference to pupils and their families making personal decisions on educational issues. It is obvious that the legislator places a lower value on citizens than on administration as a target group for the production of information. A reading of the recent memorandum on the development of the Finnish national evaluation system only strengthens this interpretation. It first recapitulates the aims of evaluation as articulated in the decree, and only then notes: ‘It is considered important that the evaluations also produce information for students and their guardians on which to base their educational choices’ (ME 2007a: 12–13) The developmental purpose of QAE

The second truth concerns the non-sanctioning feature of the Finnish QAE doctrine. The Ministry of Education Working Party that deliberated on the framework for evaluating educational outcomes in Finland in 1990 emphasized the developmental characteristics of evaluation. Accordingly, the aim was to ‘set a solid foundation for the intentional and open development of education’ (ME, 1990: 30) as a categorical counterpoint for administrative surveillance. Since the middle of the 1990s, official texts have repeatedly stated that the evaluation is ‘for developing educational services and not an instrument of administrative control’ (e.g. ME, 1995: 55; ME, 1996: 85). Finally, the Basic Education Act of 1999 (Law 628/1998, §21) states: ‘[t]he purpose of the evaluation of education is to ensure the realisation of the purpose of this law and to support the development of education and improve the prerequisites of learning’. Since then, this definition of policy has been absorbed into educational legislation with prominent political support. As the Committee for Education and Culture at the Parliament of Finland stated: ‘The evaluation system is a vital component in the development of education, not a tool for administrative surveillance’ (CEC, 3/1998). This emphasis on the developmental function requires that the interpretation of evaluation results be divorced from the allocation of resources – or any other kind of administrative reward or sanction. For instance, the national Evaluation Strategy (ME, 1997) outlines the options in terms of linking evaluation results with the allocation of resources by distinguishing additional profitability grants (based on evaluation reports) from the statutory Central Government Transfer System.

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(. . .) the financing of education is based on the Central Government Transfer System, which takes account of the special municipal features, and as the funds are not earmarked, the education providers can use them at their discretion. Due to the structure of the system, the results of evaluations do not have an effect on the primary financing of education. In order to exhort the education providers, municipalities and schools can be rewarded based on current evaluation criteria. Due to the small quantity of rewards, they will not be linked to the Central Government Transfer System, and they will not influence the principles concerning the allocation of resources. (ME, 1997: 9) The Administration Committee at the Parliament of Finland concluded that the evaluation of basic services implemented by the Regional State Administrative Agencies was not an instrument for administrative control (AC, 8/2000: 2). Moreover, since its formation in 2003 the Finnish Educational Evaluation Council has highlighted the developmental character of evaluation: Educational evaluation promotes the social effectiveness of education by providing policy-makers, developers, practitioners and interest groups in the field with reliable information, which clarifies the underlying values and supports the qualitative development of education. (FEEC, 2005: 17) One of our interviewees, a key actor in Finnish QAE in both higher education and later in comprehensive schooling, concluded that, although Finnish QAE was created for higher education: ‘what was actually a sacred issue for us was that we were not creating a control system, and that the information we produce will be for development work’ (Interview 2) Others were, according to the interviewee, that ‘we will never create ranking lists. We will not produce information that makes it possible to build ranking lists (. . .) the next principle was independence (. . .) and one is this principle of publicity’ (ibid.) Developmental features include requiring autonomy in evaluation. In practice, this means assuming that evaluations and administrative decisions are the responsibility of entirely separate organs: A key point in safeguarding independence is that administration and decision-makers have no authority over the evaluation organisation and its resources, programme or evaluation processes. Independence is better secured when the parties and experts involved in educational development have no active role in external evaluation. (FEEC, 2005: 16)

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The principle of ‘evaluational independence’ became a major political issue when the new legislation came into force in the latter half of the 1990s. The National Board of Education’s double role as a central agency in charge of various executive duties, and as an evaluator of education was fiercely criticized in 1996. Independence has been a salient argument since then, and the distribution of work and mandates between the different actors was outlined in the 2000s. No national testing

There has been consensus among politicians and state-level officials that thematic, focused and sample-based research would be enough for monitoring school performance. Carrying out national testing was unanimously seen as too expensive, apart from the negative side-effects, identified in the Anglo-American research literature. The central employers’ organization, the Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (CIE), found a new gear for its education-policy activities at the beginning of the 1980s. Pamphlets published throughout the 1980s and 1990s contained demands by the industrialist lobby to make basic education into a real asset in international economic competition. The Productivity of Education (CIE, 1990) questions the cost-effectiveness of different types of educational establishment. Schools should be regularly and extensively measured in terms of productivity. The pamphlet also advocates the measurability of learning outcomes, optimal resource allocation and consumer satisfaction. The general idea and belief was that the productivity of comprehensive education would improve through measurement. The CIE also supported final national examinations, such as the Matriculation Examination in upper secondary school (Purhonen, 2005: 63). While working on the first draft of the 1999 legislation, the Ministry of Education Working Party headed by Secretary General Jaakko Numminen raised the idea of national achievement tests in compulsory education: It has been considered that there would be uniform nation-wide achievement tests conducted annually in various subjects. Based on the results of these exams, the level of teaching and the accomplishment of educational aims in municipalities and schools would be evaluated. (Numminen, 1994: 105–6) The idea of national achievement tests was placed on the agenda for establishing a Finnish comprehensive-education policy at the beginning of the 1990s. However, Finland has not followed the Anglo-Saxon accountability movement requiring schools and teachers to become more accountable for learning results. The evaluation of student outcomes has traditionally been the task of each teacher and school. The only standardized high-stakes assessment is the matriculation examination at the end of upper secondary school before

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enrolment in tertiary education. Prior to this, no external national tests or examinations are required (Aho et al., 2006: 12). The consensus has been that thematic, focused and sample-based tests would suffice for monitoring school performance. A Framework for Evaluating Educational Outcomes in Finland published by the National Board of Education (NBE, 1995: 36) outlines a policy that has been consistent thus far: it defines sample-based national examinations as the Finnish equivalent of general achievement tests. They are understood as a categorical counterpoint to final exams – in other words, placement tests for the whole age cohort, of which it is stated that ‘implementation is problematic in many ways, so they will not be used in the comprehensive school’ (NBE, 1995: 37). The NBE Framework does not acknowledge final examinations as a way of gathering data about the whole age cohort and all relevant schools, and thus an opportunity to devise school-specific evaluation results and league tables. It is noteworthy that the current state of affairs in Finland (i.e. sample-based national examinations) is taken for granted, and no explicit reason for opposing final examinations is given. Indeed, since the mid 1990s there has been consensus among politicians and state-level officials regarding the adequacy of thematic, focused and sample-based research for monitoring school performance. National testing was unanimously considered too expensive, quite apart from the negative side effects mentioned above. No ranking lists

Practically no education official or politician has supported the provision of ranking lists or making schools transparent in competition by comparing them in terms of average performance indicators. Paradoxically, what may have strengthened this antipathy to ranking is the Finnish bureaucratic tradition (see, for example, Pekonen, 2005;Tiihonen, 2004), according to which administrative innovations are intended to support the system and its development rather than to open it up or inform citizens about it. The Committee for Education and Culture at the Parliament of Finland stated first in 1998 and then again in 2004: The publicity concerns only the main results of evaluations. The purpose of the new Basic Education Act is not to publish information directly linked to an individual school or teacher. Publishing the evaluation results cannot in any case lead to the ranking of schools or the categorisation of schools, teachers or pupils as weak or good on unfair grounds. (CEC, 3/1998) The Finnish Education Evaluation Council also highlighted the developmental features of evaluation and the anonymity of schools in its evaluation strategy:

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In publicising evaluation results schools will not be ranked, nor will schools or teachers be labelled as of high or low standard on the basis of one-sided evidence. When reporting upon an analysis based on a nationwide sample, no data identifying individual schools will be given, but in cases concerning only a small group of schools, a national evaluation report may also include information on a single school. A prerequisite for so doing is that the evaluation takes place in co-operation with the school and is made for expressly developmental purposes. (FEEC, 2005: 36) Obviously there has been clearly articulated antipathy towards ranking lists, at both central and local administrative level.

Attempts to break the consensus Naturally, the Finnish trajectory of QAE policy as administrative, developmental, non-testing and non-ranking has also been questioned and challenged. With regard to the first doctrine, we refer above to how the need to inform parents of their school choices is incorporated into the administrativebureaucratic structure and legitimation of QAE.The economic recession of the early 1990s changed the course of educational policy, and a committee presented a Bill (ME, 1996) emphasizing the ‘viewpoint of social solidarity’. The new Basic Education Act (Law 628/1998) confirmed parental free choice throughout the country, but the municipalities retained the right to restrict the free choice of school in requiring that such a choice must not supersede the right of other children to attend the school designated by the municipal authorities. This right was formulated in the Parliamentary Education Commission as the right to attend one’s neighbourhood school (ME, 1996: 172–3, 175), meaning that schools are able to enrol ‘outsiders’ only if there is room after accommodating the ‘local’ pupils. The parental need for schoolbased QAE information has thus filtered down to the municipalities that offer a real school choice, whereas in some big cities, most smaller towns and all rural municipalities there is no real choice, and presumably as a result, no burning need for school-based QAE information (cf. Seppänen, 2003, 2006). With reference to the second doctrine, in other words QAE for development rather than control, the regional County Administrative Boards (e.g. ME, 1996: 98) and the Ministry of Finance (e.g. AFLRA & MoF, 1998: 13) were against the developmental emphasis. AFLRA, as a municipal interest group comprising all Finnish municipalities, also challenged it after the late 1990s, claiming that it had been wrongly promoted to schools and teachers primarily as a developmental instrument. According to AFLRA, all evaluation implemented in municipal organizations is included in municipal evaluation, which means that it is a tool for municipal management and control (e.g. AFLRA, 2002: 23; Granö-Suomalainen & Lovio, 2002: 7).

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The early 2000s was a rather busy period in the saga of school-based ranking. Before that the Education Committee of the Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (CIE, Elinkeinoelämän keskusliitto) was virtually the only body to openly back English-type league tables and national testing (CIE, 1990: 1991). The stand taken by virtually all education authorities on the publication of evaluation reports was tested in court in two separate appeals made in 2000 and 2003 to regional administrative courts against municipal education authorities’ decisions not to publish school-specific information on comprehensive schools. In both cases, the focus of the appeals was on schoolspecific performance indicators that, it was argued, were essential for parents to make their school-choice decisions. Both cases concerned large Finnish cities (Turku and Vantaa), and in both cases big media corporations backed the appealing party (Simola, 2006). In the first of these cases, the Turku Administrative Court took the side of the municipal education authorities and refused to require them to hand over the evaluation results of individual schools for publication. In the latter case, the Helsinki Administrative Court decided the opposite, ordering Vantaa educational authorities to hand over the school-specific evaluation results to the appealing party. The municipality of Vantaa took the case to the Supreme Administrative Court and asked for the appeal to be dismissed. In its final decision the Supreme Administrative Court ordered Vantaa to hand over the school-specific evaluation results to the appealing party (Simola, 2006). Our interviews featured some vivid descriptions of the shock, on both the central and the municipal level (Interviewees 10 and 3), this ‘horrifying decision’ produced. Despite the 2005 court order, only a couple of provincial newspapers have published school-specific evaluation results or taken any actions in that direction. The silence here is very meaningful, and indicates something about the Finnish ethos concerning league tables and school-specific evaluation results in general. In informal conversation, we learned that the municipalities were in strong agreement not to evaluate schools in such a way that the results could be used to produce ranking lists. Apart from in the media, there have also been discussions within the body of civil servants about the possibility of more extensive testing. The future of national sample-based learning-result assessment has proved to be less assured and taken as given. As the Special Administrator (selvitysmies) Timo Lankinen stated in his one-man disquisition report just six months before he was appointed to the post of the Director General of the NBE: The follow-up of learning results will be carried out as web-based examinations in all schools. These exams would assess what learning goals have been attained and give an overall diagnosis of the state of education.The

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aim is to give up the sample-based learning result assessments and produce evaluation information and feedback for the whole age cohort and all appropriate teachers. (ME, 2007b: 194) Later Lankinen also stated ex cathedra that there was a need to develop and publish wider and more multifaceted information about the results of schoolbased learning, but this did not mean laying the foundation for building ranking lists while school-based results remained unpublished.5 Symptomatically, the latest Green Paper on Basic Education 2020 – The National General Objectives and Distribution of Lesson Hours, chaired by Lankinen, emphasized the criteria for learning results so strongly that the representative of the leading opposition party (the Social Democrats) stated that the implementation of the Green Paper would bring ranking lists to Finland, too (MEC, 2010: 207). In this light, the Finnish consensus on the evaluation of education does not look as solid as it used to. According to one of our interviewees, the internationalization of Finland and its people is obviously challenging the old ways. But, if you listen to well-educated parents, you will notice that is it quite commonly understood that there are good schools and there are bad schools. And that we have the right to know. And there should be the means to find out that difference. It might not be that frequent yet, but it does exist much more than in the 1990s. It might be crucial, because these kinds of parents have a great deal of power in our society. And this also concerns globalisation, because they are well aware of what is happening in other countries. Under these circumstances, they don’t perceive the situation of their children in the context of Finnish education policy and its traditions. In their view, if it is allowed elsewhere, why not here in Finland. (Interview 11) What is noteworthy in the doctrines we elaborated on above is that only national sample-based learning-result assessment (as an alternative to national testing) and developmental evaluation (in contrast to tasks related to control and resource allocation) are based on conscious and articulated decisions. The other two simply oppose a given phenomenon without giving explicit policy alternatives. One could conclude that the QAE consensus outlined above does not comprise a systematic or intentional agenda, but could rather be characterized as silent or mute consensus, based on antipathy and resistance against something Benjamin Levin (1998) characterizes as an ‘epidemic of education policy’, involving the replacement of monopolistic forms of generic state provision

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with competitive individual alternatives, for instance. According to Temmes and his colleagues (2002: 71–2): Our assessment indicates that market-type steering-mechanisms are not known of, and even if they were they would not be used for political or professional reasons, or would not be depended on as much as other forms of action. In the same spirit, our interviewee from the NBE compared the reception of market discourse in schools and other public services: The schools and other educational institutions were clearly the stickiest of all. And the discussion was about this terminology, for example this issue of customership: who is the customer of the school? And that was very foreign to the school people. (Interview 5) On the one hand, the Finnish trajectory of the evaluation of education is manifest as a combination of unarticulated consensus on the direction of advancement, the endogenous origins of the reform, and passive but persistent resistance to global models of educational restructuring.The firmness of Finnish path dependence is a different question, however; despite the few national definitions of policy, it is difficult to see the trajectory as a functional entity, coordinated and directed normatively.

Conflicting convergence and path dependence We are justified in emphasizing the extraordinarily strong contradiction between convergence and path dependence in Finnish education policy since the early 1990s. After the decades of Finlandisierung, there was an extremely strong push towards convergence: to be accepted as a genuine Western advanced liberal society. On the other hand, there was strong path dependence on social and educational decisions based on traditional social-democratic and agrarian values of equality. Finland’s position between the East and the West framed most of the international cooperation in which the country engaged until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of ‘Real Socialism’ in Europe in the 1990s. Openness to influence from the OECD and the West came late, and openness to neoliberal system redesign even later. The political context in 1990s Finland was rapidly changing. Conservative governments allied with employers in promoting the market-liberal values of effectiveness, marketization, parental choice and management by results. More weight was given to international comparisons and cooperation, as well as to the recommendations of supranational organizations, and the collective narrative of education as a

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national enterprise and comprehensive provision weakened. According to a representative declaration of the era, the Proposal of the NBE for a Structural Programme of Education (NBE, 1992), developments in Finnish comprehensive schooling would be characterized by concepts such as ‘decentralized and consumer-based accountability’, ‘result-based public funding’ and ‘selfresponsible individual learning’. To mark the beginning of the new era after almost fifty years of ‘Red-Soil’ (punamulta) hegemony, Prime Minister Holkeri (National Coalition Party) gave an epoch-making address in 1987 in which he redefined the very concept of Finnish education policy thus far. His message was that people were different in terms of capacity, and equality meant the right of every pupil to receive education that corresponded to his or her prerequisites and expectations rather than the delivery of universal Bildung for everybody regardless of sociocultural background. It is clear that this new definition referred to equity rather than equality. Finland became the OECD’s ‘model pupil’ in applying neoliberal innovations in education (Rinne, 2007; Rinne et al., 2004), but through technical and incremental policy rather than strong neoliberal declarations. A leading ex-politician characterized it as a ‘tiptoeing education policy change’ (Rinne et al., 2001). The OECD’s own account stated: ‘Finland has a record of heeding the advice of past OECD education reviews’ (OECD, 2003, cited in Rinne et al., 2004). The titles of some publications (published only in Finnish) of the National Board of Education (NBE) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) reveal the ultra-positive and highly respectful attitude to the OECD: Learning from OECD Analyses (Laukkanen and Kyrö, 2000); OECD – A Firm Base for Decision-Making (1999); OECD – Directions for Policymaking in the 21st Century (2001); OECD Resources for Decision Making in the Era of Globalisation (2005). Various commentators note the exceptionally receptive stance of the elite in Finnish education policy towards the OECD. Interviewees in Niukko’s (2006) study, for example, refer to mutual respect, especially following the flood of attention given to Finland after its national PISA success. (Grek et al., 2009). Among other things, PISA taught Finnish education politicians and officials the ‘market value’ of international comparisons. Interview data make it apparent that the OECD was seen as a transcendent carrier of reason (see also Niukko, 2006: 112); as creating a consensual community (Weber, 1981), a discourse of truth (Foucault, 1989), a style of reasoning (Hacking, 1990). Interviewees used words and phrases such as the following to describe the importance and meaning of OECD meetings and texts: ‘OECD doctrine’ (Niukko, 2006: 122, 126), ‘up-dated themes’ (ibid.: 111); ‘numbers magic’ (ibid.: 117); ‘the only table around which Finland can sit with the G8 countries’ (ibid.: 130); ‘a council of sages’ (ibid.: 131);‘guiding member states in the same direction’,‘peer and moral pressure’ (ibid.: 143); ‘moral commitment’, ‘indirect effect’ (ibid.: 144);

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‘economics as the primary nature of education’ (ibid.: 161–4);‘tuning sentiment and sympathy’ (interview 10, April 2007); and ‘modernization’ (Finnish policy actor 3). Some interviewees refer to the OECD as ‘the instrument, catalyst and certain framework for comparison’ for Finnish education policy (Niukko, 2006: 130) and admit that Education at a Glance and PISA rankings ‘have clear effects on policy, especially if you are ranked below average’ (ibid.: 141). Decision-makers and civil servants interviewed for Niukko’s (2006) study considered the OECD’s most important function to be its role ‘as a neutral tool of the national education policy’. Some of them criticized it for acting as ‘a judge’, and others characterized it as a ‘doctor’ or ‘psychiatrist’ (Grek et al., 2009: 15–16) On the path-dependence side, however, Finland was strongly bound to the traditional social-democratic and agrarian values of equality that made the call of neoliberalism extremely contentious. One cannot over-emphasize the fact that Finland was among the last countries in Europe to establish compulsory education. Six-year elementary education was made compulsory by law only in 1921, the same year as in Thailand, whereas the corresponding legislation in Denmark dates back to 1814, in Sweden to 1842 and in Norway to 1848. In addition, primary school was slow to expand despite the law, and compulsory education was not fully functional in terms of taking in all children across the whole country and among all social groups until just before the Second World War (Ramirez & Boli-Bennett, 1982; Rinne, 1984; Rinne & Salmi, 1998: 27). The comprehensive-school system was developed only in the 1970s, and still in 2001 only about half of Finnish 55–65 year olds (51%) had the secondaryeducation certificate, compared with between 65 and 72 per cent in other Nordic countries. The differences were still significant at well over 10 per cent in 2005, compared with the other Nordic countries. Because of the historically late formation and widening of the educational system, the gaps in educational level between older and younger generations are among the widest in Europe (Chapter 12 in this volume). All this is witness to the fact that the Finnish success story in education is very recent in historical terms: whereas nowadays almost 70 per cent of the younger generation aspire to obtain a highereducation degree, among their grandparents about the same proportion received the full elementary-school certificate. The same holds for the modernization of the occupational structure. Finland belongs to the group of European nations that have most recently left behind their agrarian society and lifestyle. The process of industrialization and urbanization was sluggish until the Second World War, compared with Central Europe and the other Nordic countries. Therefore, the comprehensive-school reform of the 1970s relied on cooperation with the Left and the Agrarian Party, which still form part of the rare trident Party constellation of Finnish policymaking: the Right (National Coalition Party), the Left (Social Democrat Party)

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and the Centre (Agrarian Party). Finnish culture may therefore emphasize the traditional understanding of egalitarianism more than is the case in other Western countries. A symptom of the symbolic power of traditional social democraticagrarian equality tasa-arvo in the official school discourse is the fact that there is no analogous concept for equity, even though it would be easy to find one (oikeus, oikeudenmukaisuus). The concept of equality is used in two contrasting ways, connected in a curious both–and formulation in a major document published by the Educational Evaluation Council (FEEC, 2004: 15): The economic and social welfare of Finnish society is based on an egalitarian public system of schooling. Its mission is to guarantee for every citizen both educational opportunities of good quality regardless of his/her sex, dwelling place, age, mother tongue and economic position and the right to tuition accordant with his/her capabilities and special needs and his/her self-development. (my emphasis) The implementation of this new reading of the sacred equality concept appeared to be a much more complicated mission than Prime Minister Holkeri and his party colleagues could ever have imagined (Simola et al., 2009).

Embedded egalitarianism, travelling market-liberalism and Finnish contingency How is one to understand the power and strength of an almost silent or mute national consensus based on antipathy and resistance rather than on any articulated policy programme? In an attempt to do so, we will follow Kettunen’s proposal referred to above to revitalize the standard conceptualizations of comparativism, in other words path dependence and contingency. Something unexpected and dramatic happened in Finland in the early 1990s. The recession of 1991–93 heralded the deepest crisis in the economy since the Second World War. According to many indicators, the Finnish crisis was the sharpest and deepest among the industrialized countries facing economic problems during the 1990s, comparable only with the Great Recession of the 1930s (Kiander & Virtanen, 2002; Rinne et al., 2002; Simola et al., 2002). It is widely accepted among the political and economic elite that without shifting decision-making to the local level, the municipalities could not have been required to cut spending as much as they did during the recession. Thus the new decentralized and deregulated mode of governance was moulded around the economic principles of savings and cutbacks. The process started in the late 1980s, but in the thick of the recession the new legislation radically increased local autonomy and strengthened the judicial position of the municipalities.6 The new state subsidy system granted funding according to annual

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calculations per pupil, lesson or other unit, and liberated the municipalities from the former detailed ‘ear-marked-money’ budgeting towards free lump-sum budgeting for schooling (Simola et al., 2009). The recession of the 1990s thus radicalized the move towards decentralization and deregulation in that the decentralization of educational administration was greater in Finland than in most other countries of Europe, according to OECD information (Temmes et al., 2002, 92): ‘One of the most serious institutional issues in our educational system is the unsatisfactory relation between the State and the municipalities . . .’ According to a European Commission study on the evaluation of schools providing compulsory education in Europe, Finland is one of the few countries in which there is no direct control from the national to the school level (Eurydice, 2004). The new policy created a space in which the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA) could take its place as a distinguished actor in restructuring the Finnish nation–municipality relationship, and in education policy. In cooperating with governmental organs, AFLRA contributes both as a lobbyist and an expert to major decision-making processes concerning education. On the local level, the association produces indicators, reference values and best practices for municipal councils and officials. According to AFLRA (2001), the municipalities are no longer mere providers of education executing top-down, national-level decisions, but are true political actors with their own intent – and thus a vast amount of Spielraum in this peculiar twofold system in which the nation-state and the municipalities are the main actors in education policy (Kauko & Varjo, 2008; Sarjala, 2002). The radical decentralization and deregulation spawned two competing coalitions in the national QAE field of compulsory schooling, neither of which has real normative power over municipalities and schools. On the one hand, the Ministry of Education and the NBE consider QAE from the perspective of the education system and the associated legislation, while on the other, AFLRA and the Ministry of the Interior – often accompanied by the Ministry of Finance – see it in terms of municipal service production and legislation. Both of these coalitions have attempted to assume the leading role in determining the discourse of evaluation in the context of education (Simola et al., 2009; see also Chapter 3 in this volume). The frustration seemed to be most evident among our interviewees from the NBE, while there appeared to be a certain complacent acceptance of the predominant situation in AFLRA. One high-ranking NBE official explains his or her feelings: ‘we have no jurisdiction to touch anything, we have no legislation about it, we have no mechanisms, we have nothing. This, in a nutshell, is our biggest weakness’ (Simola et al., 2009: 171). A report of the Working Party for the Development of Educational Evaluation (ME, 2007a), set up by the Ministry of Education, reflects this stagnation. Virtually the only concrete proposal is to move the FEEC office to Helsinki.

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There are also serious political projects on the agenda of both main coalitions: on the state level, the role of the NBE in the evaluation process is an open question, and AFLRA is currently engaged in a project aimed at restructuring local government and services in Finland (PARAS), the aim of which is essentially to reduce the number of municipalities (Simola et al., 2009). It is thus obvious that the radical process of municipal autonomy, which was spurred on and deepened by the recession of the 1990s, was one of the factors buffering the implementation and technical development of an effective QAE system in Finnish comprehensive schooling. Even if the process has inhibited certain convergent tendencies, there are other contingent factors that support egalitarian path dependency, including the revalorization of the comprehensive idea and the ‘Finnish PISA miracle’. The 1990s recession not only speeded up the change, but also strengthened the Nordic egalitarian ethos in that even the comprehensive idea survived. Sirkka Ahonen (2003), for example, argues that the recession changed the political atmosphere in favour of market liberalism back to traditional Nordic welfare values, thus defending common comprehensive schooling. Ahonen’s argument is plausible in the context of the then current national plan to restructure the education system. The deep economic recession made the value of the safety nets visible even to the middle classes. No political actors in the late 1990s were willing to question the rhetoric of the ‘equality in education’ discourse (Grek et al., 2009: 12; see also Kallo & Rinne, 2006; Rinne et al., 2002; Simola et al., 2002). Similarly, no political actors among our interviewees in the late 1990s and early 2000s were willing to accept neoliberalism as an emblematic concept for Finnish policy-making (Rinne et al., 2002; Simola et al., 2002). Another totally unexpected event was the Finnish success in the PISA studies. Finland used to do well in traditional school-performance assessments such as IEA, but was never a top performer. It was symptomatic but also ironic that just a few weeks before the first PISA results were published in December 2001, the Education Committee of the Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (CIE) organized an autumn seminar during which the Finnish comprehensive school was strongly criticized (Uusikylä, 2003). Even since then, nobody has been acknowledged as a predictor of the Finnish PISA success. It is self-evident that this success has fuelled the call for change in municipal and school autonomy on the one hand, and has buffered other (market-liberalist) innovations in Finnish comprehensive schooling on the other: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ In sum, we conclude that the Finnish comprehensive QAE model complies with travelling market-liberalist steering policies and embedded egalitarianism.The concept of contingency appeared to facilitate understanding of who wins this sharp confrontation. It seems clear that contingent factors or events such as radical municipal autonomy and the revalorization of comprehensive education (both consequences of the 1990s recession), and the

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Finnish PISA success – rather than convergent market liberalism – favoured path-dependent egalitarianism.

Concluding remarks The aims in this chapter were twofold. First and explicitly it was to make Finnish QAE policy more comprehensible by capitalizing on three theoretically informed conceptualizations: convergence, path dependence and contingency. We believe that the former traditional comparativist concepts needed to be assimilated with the more recent and challenging concept of contingency. Second and perhaps indirectly, we expressed dissatisfaction with traditional functionalist and rationalist explanations of comparative research in education: the field is in serious need of theoretical concepts in response to the global call for a better understanding of what it means to be part of the ‘comparative global enterprise’. It seems evident that our assessment was positive in the sense that these concepts, and above all their combination, shed some light on the Finnish case. It appeared, first, that an extremely strong contradiction emerged between the converging pursuit of international acceptance as a consenting adult in the Western advanced liberal family on the one hand, and the deeply rooted path dependence on traditional social-democratic and agrarian egalitarianism on the other, which made Finnish QAE policy noticeably double-layered. Neoliberalist reform discourse has been in a hegemonic position in the official school rhetoric, whereas there is silent consensus with regard to its implementation and on the local level, based on antipathy and resistance to some fundamental neoliberal doctrines, primarily ranking lists. Briefly, certain contingent factors supported embedded egalitarianism and embanked market liberalism. Second, bringing the concepts of path dependence and contingency together helps, at least to some extent, in understanding the persistence and toughness of this poorly articulated, silent national consensus that has shown its stubborn power when the municipalities refrained from implementing studies that could be used to create school-based ranking lists. Here we acknowledge that this treatment does not underestimate the importance of agency. Accepting certain randomness in life does not lead to the abandonment of a certain amount of freedom, rather the contrary. This would be the focus of another study (see, for example, Chapter 12 in this volume). Our analysis does not, of course, fully explain the Finnish case. However, although we do not suggest that we offer an exhaustive explanation, we have outlined some other historical factors elsewhere (Rinne et al., 2002; Simola, 1995, 2005; Simola & Rinne, 2011; Simola et al., 2002). What is more important, however, is that our experiment seems to support a conceptualization that might be useful in other cases, too. If so, we are one small step further towards finding theoretical concepts to enhance comparative understanding of the social and political trajectories of different cultures and contexts. Even this small step, we dare to think, goes in the direction Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003)

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describe in their brilliant article of a few years ago: ‘by definition, the facts (events, countries, systems, etc.) are incomparable. It is possible to highlight differences and similarities, but it is hard to go further.’ Only theoretical conceptualizations can constitute a basis for complex comparisons.

Notes 1 Simola, H., Varjo, J. & Rinne, R. (n.d.) Against the flow – path dependence, convergence and contingency in understanding the Finnish QAE model. Unpublished manuscript. Early versions published in Finnish (Simola et. al., 2010), in Spanish (Simola et. al., 2011a) and in French (Simola et. al., 2011b). 2 See the Journal of Education Policy,Vol. 24(2) (March 2009) and Kettunen (2008), for example. 3 Franz Josef Wetz (1998) has presented seven different readings of contingency. 4 The interviews were carried out as part of the Fabricating Quality in European Education research project (FabQ), funded by the European Science Foundation. 5 According to the leading Finnish newspaper (Helsingin Sanomat, 25 October 2007, 27 May 2009 and 28 May 2009), the Minister of Education, Henna Virkkunen, like D.G. Lankinen also from the right-wing Coalition Party, was more strongly and explicitly against ranking lists than he was, even on the upper secondary level. 6 The process of decentralization and deregulation was launched in the 1980s with the Free Municipality Experiment (Law 718/1988), which gave local authorities in experimental municipalities more freedom to make independent decisions about their own organization and administration. Eventually, the Act on Central Government Transfers to Local Government (Law 707/1992) and the Local Government Act (Law 365/1995) radically increased local autonomy and strengthened the judicial position of the municipalities.

References A 150/2003.Valtioneuvoston asetus koulutuksen arvioinnista [Decree on the Evaluation of Education]. AC 8/2000. Hallintovaliokunnan mietinnön HaVM 8/2000 vp. [Memorandum from the Administrative Committee]. Hallituksen esitys laiksi lääninhallituslain 2 ja 4 §:n muuttamisesta. AFLRA (2001) Sivistystoimen arviointi on osa valtuustotason arviointia [The Evaluation of Education and Culture is the Municipal Council’s Duty]. Yleiskirje 13/80/2001. Helsinki: Suomen Kuntaliitto. AFLRA (2002) Mihin me pyrimme? Miksi arvioida kunnan koulutus- ja kirjastopalveluja? [Where Are We Aiming For? Why Assess Education and Library Services?] Helsinki: Suomen Kuntaliitto. AFLRA & MoF (1998) Julkisten palveluiden laatustrategia [The Quality Strategy of Public Services]. Helsinki: Suomen Kuntaliitto,Valtiovarainministeriö. Aho, E., Pitkänen, K. and Sahlberg, P. (2006) Policy development and reform principles of basic and secondary education in Finland since 1968. The World Bank Education: Working Paper Series No. 2. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Ahonen, S. (2003) Yhteinen koulu: tasa-arvoa vai tasapäisyyttä? Koulutuksellinen tasa-arvo Suomessa Snellmanista tähän päivään [The Common School: Educational Equality in Finland from Snellman until Today]. Tampere:Vastapaino.

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Välijärvi, J., Linnakylä, P. & Kupari, P. (2005) Kansalliset arviointitutkimukset [National learning tests], in K. Hämäläinen, A. Lindström & J. Puhakka (eds.) Yhtenäisen peruskoulun menestystarina [The Success Story of Common Comprehensive School]. Helsinki:Yliopistopaino Kustannus. Weber, M. (1981) General Economic History. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Wetz, F.J. (1998) Kontingenz der Welt – Ein Anachronismus, in G. v. Graevenitz & O. Marquard (eds.) Kontingenz (pp. 81–106). Poetik und Hermeneutik XVII. München: Fink.

Chapter 12

Education politics and contingency Belief, status and trust behind the Finnish PISA miracle 1 with R. Rinne

The theoretical tradition in comparative education research is not particularly strong, which may be one reason for the success of the ahistorical and decontextualized conceptualizations in the field. Similarly, functionalist comparisons based on different system models have become the mainstream among transnational organizations such as the World Bank, the OECD and the EU. This rather mechanistic kind of paradigm has been the bane of comparative research in the past. There has also been heavy criticism of the solely quantitative comparative type of research, and case-study methodology has found its place. One of the pioneers in this context was Charles Ragin (1987, 1989, 1992), who tried to put right the antinomies of quantitative and qualitative methods through socalled ‘analytic induction’, taking into account the diversity of the causes and the reasons for social change in different nations. One of the most interesting approaches in comparative research is the ‘patterned mess’, which Michael Mann (1986, 1993), among others, refers to in his comparative analysis of sources of social power. All these approaches are very well suited to comparisons of higher education (HE) politics in different countries, for instance, because HE institutions tend to operate in a state of ‘organized anarchy’ (Clark, 1993; see Kivinen & Rinne, 1995: 231, 241). António Nóvoa and Tali Yariv-Mashal’s observation of a few years ago remains valid: The problem is that the term comparison is being mainly used as a flag of convenience, intended to attract international interest and money and to entail the need to assess national policies with reference to world scales and hierarchies. The result is a ‘soft comparison’ lacking any solid theoretical or methodological grounds. (Nóvoa & Yariv-Mashal, 2003: 425) The problem is not restricted to the field of comparative education, of course. Susan Strange (1997), a prominent representative of the approach known as international political economy, sharply criticized ‘neo-institutionalists’ and

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‘comparativists’ for reiterating policy agendas aimed at national success in the global struggle for competitiveness.This ‘unbearable narrowness of the national view’ (Kettunen, 2008) could be seen as a professional illness emanating from the comparative policy studies of our times. Roger Dale (2009: 123; cf. Beck, 2006) refers to three fundamental problems in comparative studies in education: methodological nationalism, methodological statism and methodological educationalism. The nation and the nation-state are still seen as the only real and final policy unit, and the very concept of education is taken for granted. Instead of ‘models’ and convergence or divergence among them, we should be more interested ‘in the webs of structural power operating throughout the world system than in comparative analysis of discrete parts of it, bounded by territorial frontiers dividing states’ (Strange, 1997: 182). Education is still generally seen only as a question of acquiring competences and qualifications among nation-state citizens in the face of global competition among knowledge-based economies. Decades ago, John W. Meyer (1986: 345–6) warned us about ‘functional blinders’ that permit us to take schooling as a self-evident rational system and create a moralist discourse – among not only educationalists but also sociologists of education. This narrowness of the national view easily creates a blind spot in terms of how interactions and comparisons reconstruct the national or the local, and how transnational interactions and crossings constitute the national parties of these relationships: here we come to the crucial role of comparative practices as a mode of reflexivity that (re)shapes individual and collective agency (Strange, 1997). In pursuance of an understanding of a complex phenomenon such as the relationship between the global, the regional, the national and the local in education policy formation, it is vital to consider the theoretical conceptualizations from a both/and rather than an either/or point of view. Pauli Kettunen (2011), an eminent Finnish researcher of modern history, emphasizes that criticism of the nation-state-centred view of globalization should not merely declare it outdated, but should rather take it seriously as an influential mode of thought and action, and recognize how it is embedded in the structures of globalized economic competition. Such a critical ambition means going beyond the train of thought that contrasts the profound internal permanence of national agency with the drastic change in the external environment. Historicity means the temporal multi-layeredness of institutions and discourses that constrain and enable agency. It also means the contingency of each action situation, in which the actors must handle the tension between experiences and expectations. Making comparisons and making histories are crucial modes of reflexivity in social action, and this also applies to constructions of collective agency, not least those evolving in the framework of the nation-state society and influencing the making of the welfare state.

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Promising theoretical concepts for comparison One of the most promising remedies for the theoretical deficit in research appears to lie in emphasizing historicity (cf. Kettunen, 2011) or the sociohistorical analysis of complexity (Charle et al., 2004; Schriewer, 2006, 2009a, 2009b).This rich domain of knowledge could also be characterized as a history of the transnational (transnationale Geschichte; Conrad, 2006) or entangled history (historie croisée;Werner & Zimmermann, 2006).To put it simply, the point is that it is not enough to study dependencies and interactions among national states, or the border-crossing transfer of ideas and concepts. What, then, are the most promising theoretical concepts from the perspective outlined above? In what follows we briefly outline three promising analytical dimensions: first, bringing the theoretical concepts of path dependency, convergence and contingency together; second, tracing the history of problématiques or asking what is the problem the new education policy is meant to solve; and finally, analysing national and local interpretations and translations as hybrids. First, path dependency and convergence are often seen as a simplistic dualism in comparative studies: the former covers major national specificities and the latter refers to international tendencies.The approach essentially underestimates both the insecurity and openness of the horizon of expectations and the relative freedom of more or less conscious and informed actors. This deficit is even more assuredly fatal in these global and late-modern times characterized as the ‘Era of Contingency’ (Joas, 2008; Joas & Knöbl, 2009), in which the difference between the already-done and the yet-to-be-done is vital and things are increasingly not necessary, or impossible.At the crossing of these two dimensions – path dependency and contingency on the one hand, and path dependency and convergence on the other – we might find histories and comparisons as forms of reflexivity in social practices. Contingency is one essential element in creating a Spielraum for ‘politicking’ (Palonen, 1993; see also Palonen, 2003). Relating the past, the present and the future, or experience and expectation, and recognizing and interpreting differences and similarities are inherent aspects of human agency (Kettunen, 2011). Second, Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003: 436–7) propose in their seminal paper that the very focus of comparative research in education should be on problématiques rather than ‘facts’ and ‘realities’ that, by definition, are incomparable in a strong sense. They can be contrasted in order to highlight differences and similarities,but it is hard to go further.Therefore,they claim,only problematizations can constitute the basis for complex comparison. Problems are anchored in the present but possess a history and anticipate different possible futures. They are also located and relocated in places and times, through processes of transfer, circulation and appropriation. Furthermore, they can only be elucidated through the adoption of new zones of observation that are inscribed in a space delimited by frontiers of meaning, and not only by physical boundaries.

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Finally, the concept of hybridization covers different, more and less conscious interpretations and translations of travelling, borrowed and learned policies in education. It is used here as introduced by two eminent US historians of educational reform, David Tyack and Larry Cuban (1995). They emphasized the underrated influence of teachers, or as they put it of ‘street-level bureaucrats’, in educational reforms. In this sense, they concluded that there should be much more research on how schools change reforms rather than vice versa. Another conclusion was that school reforms in the US have always brought about change, but rarely the change that was intended. This fits well with Stephen J. Ball’s eminent semi-classic characterization of the distance and controversies between policy writing and its implementation: National policy-making is inevitably a process of bricolage; a matter of borrowing and copying bits and pieces of ideas from elsewhere, drawing upon and amending locally tried-and-tested approaches, cannibalising theories, research, trends and fashions, and not infrequently a flailing around for anything at all that looks as though it might work. Most policies are ramshackle, compromise, hit and miss affairs that are reworked, tinkered with, nuanced and inflected through complex processes of influence, text production, dissemination and ultimately recreation in contexts of practice (. . .) In short, national policies need to be understood as the product of a nexus of influences and interdependencies, resulting in ‘interconnectedness, multiplexity and hybridisation’ (. . .) that is, ‘the intermingling of global, distant and local logics’. (Ball, 2001a, 2001b) In the very same spirit, Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak (2008: 112) felicitously characterize the processes to be studied as: (. . .) a complex and interrelated series of relationships between strategies and their contingent implementation in structures, imaginaries and their contingent operationalization in practices and institutions, and implemented/operationalised strategies/imaginaries and ideologies and legitimations. By way of simplification one could state that path dependency, convergence and contingency belong to the structural dimension of action, whereas problematization and hybridization are connected to its agency/strategic and actor/tactical dimensions. Along this trident distinction one could argue for connecting theory-rich discoveries such as travelling and embedded policies, vernacular or indigenous globalization (Ozga & Jones, 2006; Ozga & Lingard, 2007) and commonality within difference and exogenous trends (Marques Cardoso, 1998; Sweeting & Morris, 1993) as structural, whereas level-specific policy technologies, techniques and mechanisms (Simola, 2009) could be seen

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from the agency/strategic perspective, and externalizations (Schriewer & Martinez, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004) and indigenous foreigners (Popkewitz, 2009) as part of the actor/tactical dimension. Here we concentrate on contingency as one promising conceptualisation of the historical approach to comparative studies in education.

Contingency as uncertainty and freedom, coincidence and Spielraum The German sociologist Hans Joas (2008) characterizes our time as an ‘Age of Contingency’. It seems plausible that the concept of contingency is able to capture something essential in our society in that it carries attributes such as post-traditional (Giddens), postmodern (Bauman) and the risk society (Beck). (See Chapter 11 in this volume.) The concept of contingency is put forward in a few Finnish texts as an explanation for the Finnish PISA success. Simola (2005: 465–6), for example, concluded his historical and sociological remarks on this success as follows: ‘The Finnish “secret” of top-ranking may (. . .) be seen as the curious contingency of traditional and post-traditional tendencies in the context of the modern welfare state and its comprehensive schooling.’ Similarly, Jarkko Hautamäki, the head of the Finnish PISA 2006 Team, stated: ‘The major point to know [for understanding the Finnish comprehensive school] is that the new system was indeed comprehensive. This was both a necessity (. . .) and a chance encounter, a lucky constellation of political, economical and social conditions’ (Hautamäki et al., 2008: 197; cf. Kupiainen et al., 2009). We elaborate the analysis a little further in this chapter. What might be that ‘curious contingency of traditional and post-traditional tendencies’, or the ‘chance encounter, a lucky constellation’ that would make the Finnish PISA success understandable, at least to some extent? Our aim here is to develop and even to test contingency as a theoretical instrument for comparative understanding. As outlined above, only theoretical conceptualizations can constitute a basis for complex comparisons. Therefore, our main objective is to see whether the concept of contingency could shed new light on and promote a deeper as well as a broader understanding of the national phenomenon known as the ‘Finnish PISA success’, rather than to try to explain it in conventional comparative terms. In fact, what we are trying to illustrate are three rather common beliefs emanating from the recent national discussion in Finland. All of these beliefs appear rather distinctive compared with other nations’ beliefs and discussions, and they certainly have at least some generative roots in Finnish national history. The first is that the Finns share a strong belief in schooling, the second that teaching is rather highly appreciated as a profession in Finland, and the third that the Finnish comprehensive school enjoys rather high trust on the part of

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parents, authorities and politicians. All three are national ‘truths’ in a way (e.g. Heikkinen et al., 1999; Simola, 1998; Simola et al., 1998), widely accepted even though there is not too much empirical research evidence behind them. They are definitely constituent parts of the national self-understanding in terms of education. In this chapter, we address the question of why these beliefs exist rather than whether or not they hold. Finally, we also impugn traditional functionalist and rationalist explanations of comparative research in education.

A high belief in schooling There are astonishingly few comparative studies on Finnish education, even related to the other Nordic countries. Nevertheless, there is a strong national consensus that, on the international level, Finns really do appreciate education, or schooling to be more precise.Therefore, the belief in schooling as an agent for social equality and as a cornerstone of continuity and consensus in education policy has remained stronger in Finland than in many other Western countries. Our hypothesis is that the high belief in schooling is an outgrowth from the contingent conjunction of three social changes that came exceptionally late in Finland: the expansion of schooling, the modernization of the occupational structure and the construction of the welfare state. Finland was among the last countries in Europe to establish compulsory education. Six-year elementary education was made compulsory by law only in 1921, in the same year as in Thailand, whereas the relevant legislation was in force in Denmark in 1814, in Sweden in 1842 and in Norway in 1848. Moreover, primary-school expansion was slow even after the law came into force, and compulsory education was not fully functional and did not cover all children across the whole country and among all social groups until just before the Second World War (Ramirez & Boli-Bennett, 1982; Rinne, 1984; Rinne & Salmi, 1998: 27). All this is indicative of the fact that the Finnish success story in education is historically very recent: whereas almost 70 per cent of the younger generation nowadays aspire to a higher-education degree, among their grandparents about the same proportion obtained the full elementaryschool certificate. Figure 12.1 clearly illustrates the late blooming of Finnish education. The late development of the educational system at the secondary level in Finland and the low percentage of participation in secondary education compared with the other Nordic countries are clearly visible in Figure 12.2. In 2001, only about half of 55–65 year olds had a certificate of secondary education (51%), compared with 65–72 per cent in the other Nordic countries. The differences were still remarkable – well over 10 per cent – in 2005. Because of the late historical formation and widening of the educational system, the gaps

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Figure 12.2 Two Nordic population cohorts aged 55–64 with at least an upper secondary education Source: OECD (2002: 37), OECD (2007: 37)

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in educational level between the older and younger generations are among the widest in Europe. The same is also true of the modernization of the occupational structure. Finland belongs to the group of European nations that has most recently left behind their agrarian society and lifestyle. The process of industrialization and urbanization was sluggish until the Second World War, compared with Central Europe and the other Nordic countries. In 1945, 70 per cent of the Finnish population lived in rural areas, and almost 60 per cent were employed in agriculture and forestry. Following the great migration in the 1960s, by 1970 half were living in cities and 32 per cent were employed in industry and construction (cf. Alapuro et al., 1987). Figures 12.3 and 12.4 contrast the late but rapid change in the Finnish occupational structure with the changes in other Nordic countries. Whereas the demise of agrarian labour took place over 80 years in Norway, and over 50 years in Sweden, it happened in Finland within 20 years. No wonder, then, that the construction of the welfare state began a decade later than in the other Nordic countries. Figure 12.5 provides a compressed view of the different lengths and timing of the changes. The expansion of the welfare state after the Second World War meant an upheaval in the Nordic labour markets. Public-sector employment in Finland grew from 20 per cent to over 30 per cent between 1970 and 1985. Typical of the Finnish model was that the growth began later but also continued somewhat longer than in the other Nordic countries (Figures 12.6 and 12.7).

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We might therefore conclude that the high belief in schooling resulted from the contingent conjunction of its late expansion, the late modernization of the occupational structure and the late construction of the welfare state. These social changes happened in most countries successively rather than contemporarily. It may be that this rare conjunction created a strong collective experience of causality between progress in formal education and simultaneous social advancement. In fact, the eminent Finnish sociologist of education Ari Antikainen (1990) referred to the very same phenomenon when he wrote that

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the overall rise in student enrolment brought increasing numbers of students from the lower classes, even though their proportion of the total number remained low. This might be ‘a shared experience among the common people’, who also have their own experience of education as a real resource in the rapid transformation of Finnish society, not least as a channel of migration from rural areas and agriculture to the cities in the period of the ‘Great Migration’ of 1960–75.

The high status of teachers in comprehensive schools Whether the belief in schooling is not well documented, the popularity of the teaching profession among Finnish students is clear. Year after year teaching has retained its position as one of the most popular careers in terms of university entrance examinations (see, for example, Jussila & Saari, 2000; Kansanen, 2003). According to a survey among candidates for the matriculation examination (i.e. final-year pupils in upper secondary school), teaching was clearly the number one career choice over traditionally favourite professions such as medicine, law, psychology, engineering and journalism (Helsingin Sanomat, 11 February, 2004). It is also clear that teaching in primary schools is the most popular choice: the rate of acceptance for training is around 10 per cent. Figure 12.8 shows clearly and more concretely that Finland has no shortage of students wanting to become teachers, and there are plenty of applicants for university places. During the 2000s, only about one in seven aspiring teachers were admitted to the university teacher-training programme. In fact, it has clearly become more popular than university studies in general, and consequently it has become more difficult to get into university for teacher training than to take almost any other academic course of study. This situation is quite unique in the world. One major reason for the popularity of primary-school teaching as a profession is the Master’s-level qualification required of all teachers,2 which is still unique in international terms. The teacher’s career in Finland, even at primary-school level, is no cul-de-sac or second-class honour, but is on a par with all other professions requiring higher university degrees, which on an international basis corresponds to the MA.This qualifies graduates academically for doctoral studies, and has also made teaching in primary school an accepted profession and a standard career choice among the offspring of those in the upper social strata. Although the high level of teacher education is lauded as one of the main reasons behind the Finnish PISA success, no one has thus far and in this connection referred to the contingent coincidence and conjunction of its establishment on the Master’s level.

Education politics and contingency 263

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Our second hypothesis is that Master’s-level teacher education was realized based on the coincidence of teacher-education reform and the General Degree Reform of Higher Education3. The reform in teacher education was planned in close connection with the Comprehensive School Reform of the 1970s. The 1971 Act on Teacher Education transferred primary-school teaching to the universities. However, the degree programme was still on a three-year basis and on the Bachelor’s level, i.e. at the level of a lower university degree. It is remarkable that there were no state-committee or other authoritative texts proposing the elevation of training for primary-school teaching to the Master’s level before 1978. On the contrary, a late-stage teacher-education committee (KM, 1974, 1975) headed by an influential professor of education suggested in 1975 that even the four-year degree model should not incorporate Master’s-level studies in education. It was only the coincidence with the General Degree Reform of Higher Education launched in 1977–80 that brought teacher education up to the Master’s level, and this was also a coincidental consequence of the abolition of the Bachelor’s level,4 with a few exceptions, from Finnish universities. Since

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1979, primary school teachers have completed their MA studies in four to five years, with educational science as their major. What is remarkable here is that the final decision was made as part of the General Degree Reform of Higher Education, and the thousands of pages of committee reports and memoranda written since the late 1960s by specialists in teacher education were ignored (Simola, 1993; Simola, 1995: 184–5). This gives us reason to conclude that this clearly essential decision behind the popularity and status of the Finnish teaching profession was apparently realized based on the contingent coincidence of the General Degree Reform of Higher Education with the implementation of the reforms in teacher education (Simola, 1993; Simola et al., 1997).

High-trust culture The former social-democratic head of the National Board of Education, Erkki Aho, the main driver of the comprehensive-school reform between 1973 and 1991, stated that it was during his period of office, in the 1980s, that the belief and high trust in schooling became widespread in Finland: The gradual shift toward trusting schools and teachers began in the 1980s, when the major phases of the initial [comprehensive school] reform agenda were completely implemented and consolidated in the education system. In the early 1990s, the era of a trust-based culture formally began in Finland. (Aho et al., 2006: 12, 132) To anyone familiar with Finnish schooling, this definitely sounds too lofty and too smug to be true. There is clear counter-evidence, too. Perusal of the thousands of pages of state-committee and memoranda material between the 1860s and the 1990s, and since the implementation of the Comprehensive School Reform in the 1970s, revealed only one exception in which primary school teachers were not seen as the very obstacles to developing education, and thus as the objects par excellence of the reform (Simola, 1995). It is true, however, that the supervision of work done in Finnish schools is minimal by international standards. All traditional forms of control over the teacher’s work had disappeared by the beginning of the 1990s. The school inspectorate, a detailed national curriculum, officially approved teaching materials, weekly timetables based on the subjects taught and a class diary in which the teacher had to record what was taught each hour – all these traditional mechanisms were abandoned. Furthermore, Finland has never had a tradition of nationwide standardized testing at the comprehensive-school level. Indeed, according to a Eurydice report (2004), Finnish teachers at comprehensive schools seem to have the most freedom from evaluative control among their European colleagues. All this can be interpreted as very high trust in the

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work of teachers and the culture of schools, which may legitimate the rare, rather autonomous position of teachers and school welfare institutions (Rinne et al., 2011). One should nevertheless keep in mind that the aim of the reform in the 1990s was not to free teachers but rather to restructure the steering of education. Traditional means of normative control were to be replaced with evaluation, realized by the municipal and national authorities.This was clearly expressed by the then Secretary General of the NBE: evaluation is a pivotal element in the new steering system since it ‘replaces the tasks of the old normative steering, control and inspection system’ (Hirvi, 1996: 93). Then something unexpected and stunning happened. The recession of 1991–93 heralded the deepest peacetime economic crisis in Finland. It is widely accepted that without shifting decision-making to the local level, the municipalities could not have been required to cut spending as much as they did during the recession. Thus the new decentralized and deregulated mode of governance was moulded around the economic principles of savings and cutbacks.The process of decentralization and deregulation started in the late 1980s, but in the thick of the recession the new legislation radically increased local autonomy and strengthened the judicial position of the municipalities (Law 707/1992; Law 365/1995). The decentralization of educational administration was greater in Finland than in most other countries of Europe (Temmes et al., 2002). This radical decentralization and deregulation spawned two competing coalitions in the national Quality Assurance and Evaluation (QAE) field of compulsory schooling, neither of which has real normative power over municipalities and schools. On the one hand, the Ministry of Education and the National Board of Education (NBE) considered QAE from the perspective of the education system and the associated legislation, while on the other, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA) and the Ministry of the Interior – often accompanied by the Ministry of Finance – saw it in terms of municipal service production and legislation. Both of these coalitions have attempted to assume the leading role in determining the discourse of evaluation in the context of education. Given that all these proposals were directive rather than obligatory, it is no wonder that their implementation on the municipal level varies widely. The Finnish Parliamentary Committee for Education and Culture concluded in 2002: The evaluation work done has had very small effects at the level of municipalities and schools. Nation-level evaluations have been implemented to a creditable extent, but there is no follow-up on how these evaluations affect the actions of the evaluated and the development of the schools [. . .] Many municipalities are at the very beginning in the evaluation of education. (CEC, 2002)

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We thus venture to suggest a dimension of contingency here, too, although different from before. In this case, an intervening conjunction – the deep economic recession and the radical municipal autonomy linked to it – circumvented and extinguished the reform intentions. Ironically, it seemed to create unintended side-effects: trust and freedom.

Contingency as freedom and Spielraum We have outlined the uncertainty side of contingency as coincidence and conjunction. As mentioned above, there is also a freedom dimension: contingency as free will and Spielraum. The first version of this chapter was presented in Finnish in the spring of 2009 at a seminar involving the most eminent policy-makers in Finnish education from the 1970s to the 1990s. It was a surprise that, with one exception,5 they sharply rejected all reference to coincidence and conjunction: in their eyes, it was all part of the purposeful, hard-headed, rational and successful struggle to implement a consciously and carefully planned educational policy. There was no room for accident or coincidence. It seemed to me that the policy-makers found it hard to understand that accepting some randomness in life would not necessarily lead to the abandonment of a certain amount of freedom for the actors, rather the contrary . . . or these senior policy-makers simply may represent the generation that never became familiar with the ‘organized uncertainties’ of risk management in the present-day world (see, for example, Power, 2007). By way of illustration, one might ask, for example, what the freedom or Spielraum of the policy-makers was and how they capitalized on it in these three historical cases. Let us just sketch out two notions. First, there were different levels of conjunction. In the first case, three historical processes (change in the occupational structure, the expansion of mass education and the construction of the welfare state), which ‘normally’ occur sequentially, were crammed into a very short period. In the second case, two relatively separate reforms in the different educational sectors (Teacher Education Reform and the General Degree Reform in Higher Education) coincided. In the third case, three reforms in different policy sectors (comprehensive-school governance, municipal autonomy and tightness in the economy) were concurrent. What is common to them all is the fact that they were not planned or foreseen by the contemporary actors, and the consequences were unexpected. Second, the policy-makers reacted differently in all these cases. The ‘great conjunction’ in post-war Finland was considered by many contemporary politicians to be a state of emergency (Kettunen et al., 2012: 25–28): in a poor, semi-agrarian society it was to find a place for the ‘Big Age Groups’ born after the Second World War. The scale of the problem was huge. It was seen as an even bigger task than the recent settling of 450,000 refugees, more than 15 per cent of the population, from the part of Karelia that was lost to the Soviet

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Union in the Second World War.The storage function of schooling, its capacity to keep part of the age group away from the labour market, was actualized in Finland in a drastic way. The policy-makers reacted decisively and the late but quick expansion of the education system began. In the second case of Master’slevel teachers, the policy-makers (in particular the high education administration and the professors of education involved to the committees) were rather passive and finally agreed to the decision made by the higher decision-makers as part of a bigger higher-education reform. The third case, the implementation of evaluation-based governance in comprehensive schooling was quite similar. The policy-makers concerned did not see any alternatives as long as the decision on municipal autonomy was beyond their jurisdiction. What is similar in all these cases, however, is that there was a certain freedom or Spielraum for the policy actors.

Concluding remarks Our aims in this chapter were twofold: first, to emphasize the importance of ‘truths’, or consensual taking for granted and self-evidence, in understanding the political history of education; and secondly to highlight the concept of contingency as fruitful theorization for analysing the emergence of these truths. We have argued, first, for an interpretation according to which no understanding of Finnish comprehensive schooling is possible without taking into account at least three deep-rooted national beliefs: the belief in schooling as an essential source of welfare, the belief in teachers as rather solid and stable suppliers of this common good, and the belief in schools as institutions that deserve a certain level of autonomy, trust and industrial peace free from trendy quality-assurance and evaluation systems. Second, we tried to show that these beliefs have been constructed through historical processes in which both rational actors and coincidental factors have met, converged and intertwined. What can we say, then, about the concept of contingency in relation to its Siamese twin comparative education research – under-theorization and the unbearable narrowness of the national view – outlined at the beginning of this chapter? We could conclude that linear and causal explanations are not enough to enhance understanding of deviant trajectories in policy and politics, for example, not even in the case of one single nation-state. Operating through functionalist and system models only, whether emphasizing transnational or national trends and efforts or focusing solely on rational decisions and choices, does not provide theoretically adequate instruments for comparative research. Are the contingent events and conjunctions not exactly the facts and realities that, by definition, are incomparable in the strong sense implied at the beginning of this chapter? Yes, indeed! Therefore, contingency shall not be seen as an explanation but rather as a concept that should always be taken into account: there may always be an element of coincidence and freedom in human action. Elsewhere (see Chapter 11 in this volume) we have tried to

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vitalize standard conceptions of comparative study such as path dependency and convergence by bringing in contingency. It seems that contingency may really have a certain analytical power in linking and bonding the dimensions of structure and agency in particular.This might not be as radical as it appears. It may merely be reminiscent of Bismarck’s words, ‘Politics is the art of the possible’, or the slogan of an ice-hockey coach, ‘Only good teams are lucky’.

Notes 1 Simola, H. & Rinne, R. (2011) Education politics and contingency: belief, status and trust behind the Finnish PISA miracle, in M.M. Pereyra, H.-G. Kotthoff & R. Cowen (eds.) PISA under Examination: Changing Knowledge, Changing Tests, and Changing Schools (pp. 225–44). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers [lightly edited]. 2 The only exception relates to kindergarten teachers, whose training was elevated to the Bachelor’s level in the early 1990s. 3 We developed this hypothesis in more details in the Finnish Journal of Education Kasvatus (Simola & Rinne, 2010: 320-321). It induced some discussion among contemporaries that confirmed our thesis. No counter evidence has appeared ever since. 4 The Bachelor’s degree was reintroduced in Finnish universities in the late 1990s because of the Bologna process but, understandably, there was no real discussion on lowering the qualification demands on teachers at that time, although the whole idea behind the Bologna process was in that direction. 5 In the case of Master’s-level teacher education, only Jaakko Numminen, Secretary General at the Ministry of Education between 1973 and 1995, conceded that,‘Simola was perhaps right’.

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OPM (2010) Kota-tietokanta [The Kota Database]. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö [https:// kotaplus.csc.fi/online/Etusivu.do; accessed 8 April 2010]. Ozga, J. & Jones, R. (2006) Travelling and embedded policy: the case of knowledge transfer. Journal of Education Policy, 21(1): 1–17. Ozga, J. & Lingard, B. (2007) Globalisation, education policy and politics, in B. Lingard & J. Ozga (eds.) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education Policy and Politics. Abingdon: Routledge. Palonen, K. (1993) Introduction: from policy and polity to politicking and politicization, in K. Palonen & T. Parvikko (eds.) Reading the Political: Exploring the Margins of Politics (pp. 6–16). Helsinki: The Finnish Political Science Association. Palonen, K. (2003) Four times of politics: policy, polity, politicking, and politicization. Alternatives, 28(2): 171–86. Pöntinen, S. (1983) Social Mobility and Social Structure: A Comparison of Scandinavian Countries. Helsinki: Societas scientiarum Fennica. Popkewitz, T.S. (2009) National imagineries, the indigenous foreigner, and power: comparative educational research, in J. Schriewer (ed.) Discourse Formation in Comparative Education, 3rd rev. edn. (pp. 261–94). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Power, M. (2007) Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ragin, C. (1987) The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies. Berekeley, CA: University of California Press. Ragin, C. (1989) New directions of comparative research, in M.L. Kohn (ed.) CrossNational Research in Sociology (pp. 57–76). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Ragin, C. (1992) ‘Casing’ and the process of social inquiry, in C. Ragin & H. Becker (eds.) What is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ramirez, F. & Boli-Bennett, J. (1982) Global pattern of educational institutionalization, in P.G. Altbach, R.F. Arnove & G.P. Kelly (eds.) Comparative Education. New York: Macmillan. Rinne, R. (1984) Suomen oppivelvollisuuskoulun opetussuunnitelman muutokset vuosina 1916–1970 [The Changes in Curricula of Finnish Obligatory School from 1916 to 1970]. Turun yliopiston julkaisuja C44. Turku: Turku University. Rinne, R. & Salmi, E. (1998) Oppimisen uusi järjestys. Tampere:Vastapaino. Rinne, R., Simola, H., Mäkinen-Streng, M., Silmäri-Salo, S. & Varjo, J. (2011) Arvioinin arvo. Suomalaisen perusopetuksen laadunarviointi rehtoreiden ja opettajien kokemana [The Value of Evaluation: Principals’ and Teachers’Views on QAE in Basic Schooling in Finland]. Kasvatustieteellisiä tutkimuksia 56. Suomen kasvatustieteellinen seura. Research in Educational Sciences. Helsinki: Finnish Educational Research Association. Schriewer, J. (2006) Comparative social science: characteristic problems and changing problem solutions. Comparative Education, 42(3): 299–336. Schriewer, J. (2009a) Preface to the third edition, in J. Schriewer (ed.) Discourse Formation in Comparative Education, 3rd rev. edn. (pp. vii–xii). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Schriewer, J. (ed.). (2009b) Discourse Formation in Comparative Education, 3rd rev. edn. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Schriewer, J. & Martinez, C. (2004) Constructions of internationality in education, in G. Steiner-Khamsi (ed.) The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending (pp. 29–53). New York: Teachers College Press. Simola, H. (1993) Educational science, the state and teachers: Forming the corporate regulation of teacher education in Finland, in T.S. Popkewitz (ed.) Changing Patterns

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of Power: Social Regulation and Teacher Education Reform in Eight Countries (pp. 161–210). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Simola, H. (1995) Paljon vartijat. Suomalainen kansanopettaja valtiollisessa kouludiskurssissa 1860-luvulta 1990-luvulle [The Guards of Plenty: The Finnish Schoolteacher in Educational State Discourse from the 1860s to the 1990s]. Research Report 137. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Simola, H. (1998) Firmly blted into the air: wishful rationalism as a discursive basis for educational reforms? Teachers College Record, 99(4): 731–57. Reprinted in Ball, S.J. (ed.) (2000) Sociology of Education: Major Themes, Vol. IV (pp. 2112–38). London: RoutledgeFalmer. Simola, H. (2005) The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education, 41(4): 455–70. Simola, H. (2009) Trans-national technologies, national techniques and local mechanisms in Finnish university governance: a journey through the layers. Nordic Educational Research, 29(1): 6–17. Simola, H., & Rinne, R. (2010) Kontingenssi ja koulutuspolitiikka: vertailevan tutkimuksen teoreettisia edellytyksiä etsimässä. [Contingency and education politics]. The Finnish Journal of Education Kasvatus 41(4), 316–330 Simola, H., Heikkinen, S., & Silvonen, J. (1998) Catalog of possibilities: Foucaultian history of truth and education research, in T.S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (eds.) Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education (pp. 64–90). New York: Teachers College Press. Simola, H., Kivinen, O., & Rinne, R. (1997) Didactic closure: professionalization and pedagogic knowledge in Finnish teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(8): 877–891. Simola, H., Rinne, R., Varjo, J., Kauko, J. & Pitkänen, H. (2009) Quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in Finnish comprehensive schooling – a national model or just unintended effects of radical decentralisation? Journal of Education Policy, 24(2): 163–78. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (ed.) (2004) The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. New York: Teachers College Press. Strange, S. (1997) The future of global capitalism; or, will divergence persist forever?, in C. Crouch & W. Streeck (eds.) Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: Mapping, Convergence and Diversity. London: Sage. Sweeting, A.E. & Morris, P. (1993) Educational reform in post-war Hong Kong: planning and crisis intervention. International Journal of Educational Development, 13(3): 201–16. Temmes, M., Ahonen, P. & Ojala, T. (2002) Suomen koulutusjärjestelmän hallinnon arviointi [Evaluation of the Finnish Education Administration]. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö. Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995) Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Werner, M. & Zimmermann, B. (2006) Beyond comparison: ‘histoire croisée’ and the challenge of reflexivity. History and Theory, 45(1): 30–50.

Aftermath

These final words have a dual purpose, as is usual in academic writing: to draw conclusions from the anthology and to offer suggestions for further research. Understandably enough, conclusions drawn today from a collection of papers written between 1993 and 2011 are based on recent understandings of the author, so to say on studies in progress. As I was reading my own texts spanning the period in question, I came to twofold conclusions, leaning both backwards and forwards. First, I am a ‘discourse man’ through and through. I still believe that discursive formations, practices and principles are powerful theoretical instruments in analysing ‘the order of things’1 in the social world. I stated in my dissertation from 1995 that the world is constructed discursively, too, accepting that not everything is discursive or semantically covered, just to mention, for example, certain dimensions of institutions and habits. Therefore, I can see in my writings a somewhat smooth move from Foucauldian abstraction towards Bourdieuan concretization. I suspect a similar shift has distanced me slightly from Thomas S. Popkewitz’s ‘systems of reason’ towards John W. Meyer’s ‘world systems’. Nevertheless, I contend that all of these legacies are evident in the chapters comprising this anthology: it is just that the emphasis has shifted. Second, as I see it, all social science is comparative at heart. This is so simply because the subjects of our studies exist only in their relations: all is relational in a fundamental sense. Therefore, everything written on Finnish schooling in this volume was written with other education systems in mind, related to something that has recently been called ‘trans-national’. I first became aware of this in John W. Meyer’s theorization of educational world culture. His idea of a global educational system has, indeed, been influential, but even more fundamental, in my view, was his insistence that serious comparison requires theoretically well-developed instruments. Without them we can endlessly list similarities and differences but find it hard to go further. As António Nóvoa, an eminent Portuguese comparativist pointed out, ‘facts’ and ‘realities’ are, by definition, incomparable, whereas theorizations such as problématiques (what constitute the problems in a Foucauldian sense) potentially enable more complex and strong comparison.

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Comparative dynamics in education politics To make what follows comprehensible, I will describe in more detail what I have been doing since writing the most recent text in this anthology. A few years ago, we became convinced in my research group Politics, Governance and Interaction in Education (KUPOLI) that there was an urgent need for a fresh theoretical approach to overcoming the problems we faced in the area of comparison.2 We formulated four main problems. First, there is a lack of theoretical ambitiousness in the field of comparative education, and as a consequence, politically motivated investigative practices determine the state of the art. Second, the focus of the studies tends to be on end products rather than processes, which makes it possible to create countless rankings but reveals little about specific and shared developmental processes in educational systems.Third, although complexity and contingency in the social world are widely accepted on the general level, they appear seldom to reach empirical studies. The vast majority of standard approaches still advocate simple explanatory models. Finally, and paradoxically enough, there is a form of intellectual nationalism that inhibits the conceptualization and understanding of the relationship between trans-national processes and nation-states, as British comparativist Roger Dale states. Methodological nationalism, methodological ‘statism’ and methodological ‘educationism’ make it difficult to go beyond the ‘unbearable narrowness of the national view’, citing Pauli Kettunen, a Finnish political historian. The main point here is that in order to reach the level of political importance, comparative education needs a strong and ambitious theory-based framework with the potential to incorporate the socio-historical complexity, relationality and contingency of the research subject under examination. Without a strong theory-driven approach, it is hard to go beyond merely listing the similarities and differences that facilitate the rankings but blur the processes. The new conceptualization was first formulated in 2011 in the PhD thesis of one of my students, Jaakko Kauko, and in the very same year we devised an ambitious research plan we called Comparative Analytics of Dynamics in Education Politics (CADEP).3 Our thesis was that in order to progress beyond the state of the art and arrive at a comparative understanding of educational systems, we had to focus on dynamics with a view to grasping the fluid and mobile nature of the subject. Our heuristic starting point echoed relativistic dynamics in physics, characterized as a combination of relativistic and quantum theories to describe the relationships between the principal elements of a relativistic system and the forces acting on it. It is curious that, although on the conceptual level the dynamics of a system are constantly referred to as being among its key attributes – as in various texts in this anthology – there has been little progress on the analytical level in social sciences since the seminal work of Pitirim Sorokin in the 1950s. We apply the theoretical concept of dynamics to re-submit a specific social field of education to scrutiny by analysing the relations between the main actors and institutions

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and essential discursive formations and practices. We assumed that, given its connection with relations and movement, the concept of dynamics would not reduce a mobile and fluid subject of study to a stagnant and inanimate object. Just recently and tentatively we have been able to verify four constitutive dynamics that make the Finnish educational success story understandable. Our hypothesis is that success and failure in basic education are relative, and reflect the intertwinement of the dynamics in policy-making, governance, educational family strategies and classroom cultures in an essentially transnational context. After this rather long but necessary introduction, I will now outline a conclusion of the chapters comprising this anthology from the perspective of discursive dynamics. The texts provide material only for a tentative analysis of three of the above foci: policy-making, governance and classroom culture.4 As noted above, the emphasis is on the discursive dimension, leaving actors and institutions with a minor role.

Dynamics in policy-making: equality and equity Dynamics at the policy-making level operate between the social-democraticagrarian tradition of equality and the market-liberalist version of equity that emerged in the late 1980s in Finland. The former emphasizes the similarity of students and everybody’s right to receive decent schooling, and is based on the belief that it is possible to run schooling that is ‘good enough’ for everybody. Here it is an absolute value to have common compulsory schooling for the offspring of people from every socio-cultural stratum of society. The latter emphasizes the differences among students and everybody’s right to receive schooling that fits his or her capacities, needs and individuality. It is no longer assumed that one and the same school is good for everybody. This discourse dates back to the pre-comprehensive era when the distinction of parallel schools was based on the same idea. Although there are basic conflicts between the two policy threads, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive but rather exist in a kind of balance, which in Finland is fairly heavily weighted towards egalitarianism, even in the twenty-first century. Three special Finnish features should be taken into account in explaining this kind of embedded egalitarianism. First, three modernizing trends that took hold successively in most countries overlapped in Finland, and also came very late on the European scale, during the 1960s: the expansion of popular education, industrialization and the construction of the welfare state. This rare conjunction created a strong collective experience of causality between progress in formal education and simultaneous social advancement, which clearly lies behind the exceptionally strong Finnish belief in schooling as the very vehicle for social ascent. Second, the late but rapid move from an agricultural society may explain the exceptional strength of social-democratic-agrarian egalitarianism. It seems

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plausible, however, that this egalitarianism would not have withstood the challenge of market liberalism if two contingent events had not provided a buffer: the revival of trust in the egalitarian Peruskoulu among the middle classes due to the deep recession of 1991–93, and the PISA success since 2001 that no Finnish educationalists predicted. Third, even though Finnish educationalists have been very open to pedagogical influences, especially from the Anglo-American world, there is still ample evidence of a stubborn sense of national exclusivity, especially in the context of egalitarianism. One could also say that Peruskoulu took pleasure in its self-confident and visionary but sustainable leadership from the 1960s until the mid 1990s. Until now, embedded egalitarianism has had the edge over travelling market-liberalism, largely due to its contingent buffering not least from the PISA success. Nearly two decades without ‘sustainable leadership’ has been corroding its buoyancy, however. To sum up, the dynamics on the policy-making level have spiralled between the social-democratic-agrarian tradition of equality and the market-liberal equity that emerged in the late 1980s in Finland. This development led to a reformulation in the politics of education. Governance policy was pushed into friction dynamics after the introduction of New Public Management. Gridlock dynamics emerged when the idea of regional equality institutionally embedded in the regionally elected parliament paralysed the centralizing reforms that more market-liberal equity-oriented officers had been politicizing since the 1990s. Another factor was the radical municipal autonomy that, from the perspective of the National Board of Education, resulted in a lack of control over municipal education policy following the radical decentralization of local governance.The pouring in of market-liberalist reforms was supported through making the national institutions more receptive to influences. The equality tradition has blocked efforts to construct standardized tests and provide public rankings. The dynamics that are created in interaction between these two discursive formations could be characterized as embedded egalitarianism buffering against the travelling policies of market liberalism.

Dynamics in governance: teacher professionalism and radical change in steering Dynamics on the governance level operate between teacher professionalism and radical change in steering. The former refers to the long pursuit among primary school teachers of the ‘light of university’ dating back to the late nineteenth century. This aim was achieved in the early 1970s when teaching was moved to the university level. Finally, and again supported by a contingent event, the full Master’s level was achieved in 1977, as a unique case in the educational world. This professionalism came up against the radical change in the steering ideology of Finnish public administration in the 1990s. The extremely detailed and centralized governance by norms culminated in the mid

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1980s and succumbed to the New Public Management wave in the 1990s. The recession of 1991–93 stirred up the discussion, and in the mid 1990s Finland moved from extreme centralism and regulation to the opposite. All the ante norm mechanisms were abolished in the early 1990s to be replaced with post quality assurance and evaluation (QAE). However, in the mid 1990s radical municipal autonomy led unexpectedly to the conclusion that nobody on the national level had the legal right to prescribe norms on how the municipalities should run their schools. Deregulation and decentralization reduced governance to parliamentary legislation covering basic education and the distribution of classroom hours, and the NBE’s national Curriculum Framework. Even though there was a conscious preference among policy-makers for a soft and developing QAE model instead of a hard and controlling system, this kind of freedom was nobody’s conscious aim, but was rather a contingent result of the three coincidences referred to above – the radicalizing great recession, the revival of trust in Peruskoulu and the PISA success – all of which politically buffered the decisions made. All in all, this provoked the call for a culture of trust between national and local policymakers, between administration and schools, and between office and streetlevel bureaucrats, which seemed to be exceptional. There is a Finnish saying: ‘If you cannot control, you had better trust.’ Accordingly, the constitutive dynamics in governance could be characterized as solicited trust. As a result, the Finnish school system became one of the most decentralized and deregulated in Europe. This provoked a call for a unique culture of trust in basic schooling. Despite the New Public Management rhetoric, however, the effects of the QAE practices on the local level have been only moderate. The new balance in central–local relations and the overall constitutive dynamics in governance could also be characterized as solicited trust, which gave a strong empowering impetus to municipal school authorities and teachers – not just to survive the budget cuts and reductions of the 1990s recession, but also to capitalize on the new freedom to develop distinctive local policies and practices in terms of both pedagogy and the provision of basic education.

Dynamics in classroom cultures: paternalistic pedagogical tradition and child-centred progressivism Dynamics on the level of classroom cultures combine two discoursive practices: a strong Finnish paternalistic pedagogical tradition, and child-centred progressivism that has mainly been a top-down process, emanating from the national curriculum and teacher education for comprehensive school. It is noteworthy that the Hebart-Zillerian tradition dominated Finnish pedagogy until the Second World War, although it was long gone elsewhere. There were just a few individualistic or child-centred trends in Finnish schooling, unlike in Sweden and Estonia, for example. Symptomatically, it was social pedagogy that reformed

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the tradition after the 1950s, and it was this kind of discursive space that progressivism entered in 1970 with the massive two-volume National Curriculum, characterized as the Peruskoulu Bible. Thus progressivism came into Finnish schooling from the top and through reform. Feudal field teachers were seen as the very obstacles of reform, and therefore reforming teacher training was very high on the political agenda. Finnish teachers have historically been extremely loyal servants of the nationstate. Radical labour-union politics, not to mention the extreme Left, have been virtually ignored in the teaching profession, which is a trait on which teachers differ from their colleagues in various countries. Although year after year teaching has retained its position as one of the most popular careers in terms of university entrance examinations, the trainees tend to be young people with a high-school-proof habitus and ‘natural’ self-confidence in that context. All this promotes effective uniformity on the one hand, and organized wellbeing on the other. Although the street credibility of child-centeredness is not high, the official ideology of academic teacher education has veered towards a curious Peruskoulu pedagogy that could be characterized as paternalistic progressivism. Finnish teachers might appreciate their Master’s degree, but they still strongly doubt the ‘ecological validity’ of educational theories in the reality of the classroom. This paternalistic progressivism appears to have had a strongly intensifying effect on everyday schooling. It is paternalistic in the sense that teachers see themselves as experts keeping a professional distance from pupils and parents, and it is progressive in its deep commitment to ‘the no child left behind’ ideology that is strongly supported in official structures such as the ‘principle of overcoming learning difficulties’, the efficient special education and remedial teaching systems, school healthcare and other welfare services, and free school meals for all pupils. This works well in compulsory schooling – as long as teachers believe in their traditional role and pupils accept their traditional position. Thus paternalistic progressivism functions both reproductively and progressively, as does the schooling itself: it tends to keep things as they were, but still opens up niches for new practices.

Outlining constitutive discursive dynamics in Finnish politics of basic schooling Three constitutive dynamics in Finnish basic schooling are outlined above: ‘buffering embedded egalitarianism’, ‘empowering solicited trust’ and ‘intensifying paternalistic progressivism’. It is noteworthy that all the nouns (i.e. egalitarianism, trust and progressivism) referring to dynamics are doubly attributed: first with a term (i.e. embedded, solicited and paternalistic) particularizing the specific property, and second with a verb form (buffering, empowering and intensifying) referring to the main effect of the specific dynamics. These attributions, referring to the actors and institutions, make the

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main discursive formations dynamic. They reveal, interestingly enough, that some discursive dynamics are defensive or preventive whereas others are offensive or forward-oriented, which could have strong implications for the future. However, this conclusion is far from being rich enough to capture the complexity of the movements, elements and powers that run the system, especially if the aim is to learn something from the subject of the analysis, in this case the Peruskoulu policy field. For this we must take into account at least two points. First, we must distinguish the dynamics that are deeply bound to the specific Finnish socio-historical context from those in which the more or less conscious activity of institutional actors have made sense. Although complexity and contingency are always present in real political life, we have fine Finnish examples of the relative importance of conscious actors and institutions. Second, we must take seriously the tensions, paradoxes, contradictions, dispersions, discontinuation, irregularities and accidents that create the very Spielraum for the actors to play with contingency in a complex trans-national world. What is also remarkable here is that these dynamics may reflect Finnish history: a small country from the Nordic periphery arrives at late-modernity holding on tightly to certain values that could be considered pre-modern. Do these not obstruct and cramp modernization and progress? Are they not purely defensive? I think the answer to both questions is, ‘somewhat’. The Finnish experience reflects the extreme difficulty of consciously creating a policy that goes against the grain, against trans-national truths, against global consensus. At the same time, Finland has been the model pupil of the OECD and an obdurate defender of worker-peasant egalitarianism. In military language, it could indeed be characterized as a victory for prevention that resembles the Finnish combination of wishful thinking and stubborn resistance in the desperate battles against an overpowering enemy in the Second World War: if we can stand just one more day, maybe the world will change and we will be saved. The Finnish ‘model’ of QAE, based on mute consensus rather than a well-articulated political programme, reflects the same argumentation. However, it is possible to see that it also includes universal, positive and offensive elements. It is hard to believe that humankind would survive without notions such as equality, trust and progress. Wherever a Finnish educationalist has gone during the last decade, and whatever he or she has been talking about, questions from the audience invariably touch on the Finnish PISA success and the implications of Finnish experiences in education politics. As I have repeatedly stated above, I do not yet have the definitive answer (and I doubt I ever will have), but I think it is safe to refer here to Pasi Sahlberg. He recently published the first Finnish monograph and international bestseller on this subject.5 Written specifically for American markets and from the point of view of a policy-maker and consultant, it tells the great success story of sustainable leadership in a way that would do justice to a Hollywood movie. Nevertheless, it is a nice book and I agree with its three

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final conclusions. First, successful basic schooling must depend on those who implement every school reform, in other words the teachers. From this perspective, humiliating school inspections, standardized curricula and namingand-shaming ranking lists are more than questionable. Second, efforts must be made to preserve a relaxed and fear-free learning environment for students by keeping testing to the absolute minimum. Finally, enhancing trust within educational systems is de rigueur for sustainable success. This means putting responsibility before accountability and ‘good enough’ before excellence, and coming up with an adept combination of embedded national traditions and international insights.

Towards a sociology of the possible After all of the above reflections, allow me to open up a vision6 of, or even better a programme for further studies in comparative politics, and not only in education. German sociologist Hans Joas has characterized our time as ‘the Age of Contingency’. Although already on the drawing board in the early 1900s, contingency as a concept seems to capture something essential in our twentyfirst-century society, which has been characterized as post-traditional, postmodern and risk-based. Contingency implies an unpredictable sequence of antecedent states rather than randomness, chanciness or accident. It is seen here as a regulative idea relevant to a diagnostic strategy. Risto Eräsaari, a Finnish social scientist, summed it up in two questions: How can one find an orientation or even exist in the contemporary world? How can one find intelligibility, perspectives and vision beyond the boundaries of normal scientific communication or discussion? Thus far and symptomatically, ‘contingency theory’ has been exploited in the field of business management rather than in the social sciences. Perhaps not surprisingly, ‘the art of playing with contingency’ is much closer to the heart of business than of sociology. However, if we take the theory seriously, the focus of sociology should move from (but not disregard) structures, determinations and ‘necessities’ towards agency, freedom and possibility. Contingency and the complexity of social change are vital questions in this late-modern, globalized world, given the problems faced by humankind. It is thus no exaggeration to state that there is a social, or even global, call for something that could be characterized as the ‘sociology of the possible’. A theory of contingency related to social change, whether on the level of individuals, groups or social movements, must be supplemented with a theory creativity of action. An essential contribution thus far has come from pragmatism, from Joas, for example. It would indeed appear fruitful to analyse creativity as problem-solving, intelligent and reconstructing action that has situatedness, corporeality and sociality among its primary dimensions, and in which a ‘crisis of habits’ creates the opportunity for change. However, even neo-pragmatists do not seem to be immune to a certain disparagement of societal reproductive

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continuities and resilient power relations, or indeed to a kind of naïve optimism about the reflexivity-enhancing potential of education and democracy inherited from the proto-American classics of pragmatism. Therefore, there is a need for European ‘social praxeology’ and ‘reflexive sociology’. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of socio-analysis7 has gone somewhat unnoticed in the sociological literature. In reflecting the social unconscious embedded in institutions and deeply lodged within their actors, socio-analysis may tell us something about the conditions under which moral agency is possible and how it can be institutionally enforced. Bourdieuan socio-analysis advises actors to ‘situate their moral responsibilities where their liberties are really situated’. It gives ‘a small chance of knowing what game we play and of minimizing the ways in which we are manipulated by the forces of the field in which we evolve, as well as by the embodied social forces that operate from within us’. Bourdieu’s scepticism in referring to ‘realistic utopianism’ as the political task of sociology is not cynicism, but rather realism, or even better sceptical optimism: ‘Such a sociological, that is, realistic, utopianism is very unlikely among intellectuals. First because it looks petty bourgeois, it does not look radical enough. Extremes are always more chic, and the aesthetic dimension of political conduct matters a lot to intellectuals’). Here Bourdieu comes close to the pragmatism ‘that has always been a moderate philosophy in relation to social reforms. Reform, on the basis of existing habits, rather than revolution, is its credo’ as Antti Gronow, a young Finnish sociologist, states. Bourdieu makes two essential points here. First, and paradoxically enough, the most vital part of a ‘sociology of the possible’ is the ‘sociology of the impossible’: ‘to discern the sites where we do indeed enjoy a degree of freedom and those where we do not’. Second, and given my focus on the space for creative (or moral) action in education policy (policy-makers) and schooling (teachers), Bourdieu substantially outlines the kind of professional habitus that creates the basis for the action of professionals, both habitual and creative. Thus, it makes sense to speak about a collective habitus that induces members of a profession to act habitually, inhibits them from doing otherwise and limits alternative action. It seems that Joas’ construction of the ambiguous concept of contingency as dialectics spiralling between uncertainty and freedom is useful. From the point of view of the actor, awareness of contingency means, on the one hand, that things are increasingly not necessary or impossible, and on the other, that it is precisely this that not only makes the change possible but also acts for it. Thus, and paradoxically, the concept opens up the field of meaningful action in today’s seemingly chaotic and intricate world. One could even say that it may ‘save’ the agency in these complex and late-modern times. In this sense, it could be seen as essential within the neo-structuralist project as understood by Finnish sociologist Risto Heiskala, a channel through which to bring subjectivity, history and meaning back to the discussion in the wake of postmodernist and post-structuralist nihilism.

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Notes 1 The original French title of Michel Foucault’s book Order of Things was Les Mots et les choses,Words and Things. Foucault preferred L’Ordre des Choses for the original French title, but changed it because it had been used in two sturcturalist works published immediately beforehand (Wikipedia). 2 I have been heading or co-heading five major comparative research projects since the late 1990s: an eight-country study Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion in Europe (EGSIE, 1998–2000, funded by TSER/EU); a four-country study Decentralization and Professionalism: The Construction of the New Teacher in the Nordic Countries (2000–2002, funded by the Nordic Research Council NOS-S); a five-country study Fabricating Quality in European Education (FabQ, 2006–2009, funded by ERC/Academy of Finland, AF); a two-country study Parents and School Choice: Family Strategies, Segregation and School Policies in Chilean and Finnish Basic Schooling (PASC, 2010–2013; funded by Academy of Finland and CONICYT/ Chile); and a five-country research and development project Intercultural and Bilingual Education in Latin America (IBE, 2005–2013, funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs). 3 In May 2011, we submitted a scientific proposal entitled ‘The Finnish PISA Miracle’ and the Problem of Policy Transfer: A Trans-national Analysis of Dynamics in Educational Systems as an application for the European Research Council’s Advanced Grant. The evaluation was excellent but due to the huge amount of competition we did not receive funding. We were able to capitalize on CADEP to some extent in a research project in which we were engaged at the time, a two-country study Parents and School Choice: Family Strategies, Segregation and School Policies in Chilean and Finnish Basic Schooling (PASC, 2010–2013; funded by the Academy of Finland and CONICYT/Chile). In 2013, we finally received €1.5 million funding from the Academy of Finland to fund our research project Transnational Dynamics in Quality Assurance and Evaluation Politics of Basic Education in Brazil, China and Russia (BCR, 2014–2018).When the Academy decided in 2014 to finance our long-time dream to compare Dynamics in Basic Education Politics in Nordic Countries (DYNO, 2014-2018), we may say that CADEP really has earned its showcase. 4 We have two studies in progress that we hope will enhance understanding of educational family strategies and classroom cultures. Parents and School Choice: Family Strategies, Segregation and School Policies in Chilean and Finnish Basic Schooling (PASC, 2010–2013) concerns the former, among other things, and The Functioning Neighbourhood School (TOLU, 2014, funded by the Research Program for the Urban Research and Metropolis Policy) relates to the latter. The advanced analysis will be described in my forthcoming Routledge book to be published in 2015, Dynamics in the Politics of Finnish Basic Schooling. 5 The Finnish Lessons has so far been published in English, Swedish, Croatian, Dutch, Greek, Chinese and Spanish. It will soon be available in: Hungarian, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese, Korean, Hebrew, Turkish, Latvian, Serbian, Indonesian, Azerbaijani and French (http://pasisahlberg.com/). 6 My doubt goes back to 1969 when I was given the Foreign Word Dictionary (Sivistysanakirja) as a present for passing the Matriculation Examination. The foreign term vision was translated into Finnish as ‘an apparition; a delusion; a hallucination experienced in religious trance; a visitation’. 7. Bourdieu has touched upon this theme rarely. My scrutiny here is mainly based on Bourdieu’s and Wacquant’s book An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (1992, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; see, also,Wacquant’s interview with Bourdieu “For a socio-analysis of intellectuals: On homo academicus” (Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 1989, 34, 1–29).

A selected English bibliography 1

Articles in refereed journals Grek, S., Lawn, M., Lingard, B., Ozga, J., Rinne, R., Segerholm. C. and Simola, H. (2009) National policy brokering and the construction of the European Education Space in England, Sweden, Finland and Scotland. Comparative Education 45(1), 5–21. Hannus, S., & Simola, H. (2010) The Effects of Power Mechanisms in Education: bringing Foucault and Bourdieu together. Power and Education, 2(1), 1-17. Heikkinen, S., Silvonen, J. & Simola, H. (1999). Technologies of Truth: Peeling Foucault’s Triangular Onion. Discourse (20), 1, 141–157. Johannesson, I. A., Lindblad, S. & Simola, H. (2002) An Inevitable Progress? Educational restructuring in Finland, Iceland and Sweden at the turn of the millenium. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 46(3), 225–339. Lindblad, S., Johannesson, I. A. & Simola, H. (2002) Education Governance in Transition: an introduction. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 46(3), 237–246. Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J. & Simola, H. (2002) Shoots of revisionist education policy or just slow readjustment? The Finnish case of educational reconstruction. Journal of Education Policy 17(6), 643–658. Simola, H. (1993). Professionalism and Rationalism of Hopes: outlining a theoretical approach for a study on educational discourse. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 3(2), 173–192. Simola, H. (1998). Constructing a school-free pedagogy: decontextualization of Finnish state educational discourse. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 30(3), 339–356. Simola, H. (1998). Decontextualizing Teacher’s Knowledge: Finnish Didactics and Teacher Education Curricula during the 1980s and the 1990s. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 42(4), 325–338. Simola H. (2009) Trans-national technologies, national techniques and local mechanisms in Finnish university governance: a journey through the layers. Nordic Educational Research 29(1), 6–17. Simola, H., Rinne, R., Varjo, J. & Kauko, J. (2013) The paradox of the education race: how to win the ranking game by sailing to headwind. Journal of Education Policy 28(5), 612–633.

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Book chapters Carlgren, I., Klette, K. & Simola, H. (2002). Restructuring, the mission of schooling and teacher professionalism. In K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen, & H. Simola (Eds.) Restructuring Nordic Teachers: Analyses of interviews with Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Teachers. Oslo: University of Oslo, Institute for Educational Research. Report no. 3. Pp. 145–168. Gray, J., Croxford, L., Strømbæk Pedersen, C., Rinne, R., Silmäri-Salo, S., Simola, H. & Mäkinen-Streng, M. (2011) Teachers’ Perceptions of Quality Assurance and Evaluation. In Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen,P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) Fabricating Quality in Europe: data and education governance. Pp. 127–149. London: Routledge. Grek, S., Lawn, M., Lingard, B., Ozga, J., Rinne, R., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (2011) National policy brokering and the construction of the European Education Space in England, Sweden, Finland and Scotland. In Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen,P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) Fabricating Quality in Europe: data and education governance. Pp. 47–65. London: Routledge. Ozga, J., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (2011) The Governance Turn. In Ozga, J., DahlerLarsen,P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) Fabricating Quality in Europe: data and education governance. Pp. 85–95. London: Routledge. Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen,P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (2011) Introduction. In Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen,P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) Fabricating Quality in Europe: data and education governance. Pp. 1–8. London: Routledge. Ozga, J., Simola, H.,Varjo, J., Segerholm, C., Pitkänen, H. (2011) Central-Local Relations of Governance. In Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen,P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) Fabricating Quality in Europe: data and education governance. Pp. 107–126. London: Routledge. Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J. & Simola, H. (2001). The Turning Point in Educational Policy and the Marginalisation of Youth in Finland in the 1990s in the Light of Statistics. In S. Lindblad & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.) Statistics on education and social inclusion and exclusion in international and national contexts. Uppsala: University of Uppsala, Department of Education, Uppsala Reports on Education 38. Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J., Aro, M. & Simola, H. (2001). Liberal, Conservative and Nordic: Opinions of the Youth and the New Educational Policies of Five Post-industrial Countries in a Comparative Perspective. In S. Lindblad & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.) Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion: Studies in the Powers of Reason and the Reasons of Power. Uppsala: University of Uppsala, Department of Education, Uppsala Reports on Education 39. Pp. 377–420. Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J., Hirvenoja, P. & Simola, H. (2000). From Comprehensive School Citizen towards Self-Selective Individual. In S. Lindblad & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.) Public discourses on education governance and social integration and exclusion. Analyses of policy texts in European contexts. Uppsala: University of Uppsala, Department of Education, Uppsala Reports on Education, No 36, January 2000. Pp. 25–54. Simola, H. (2000). Construction of the Finnish Teacher in the National Steering Documents of the 1990s: Tasks and Qualifications. In K. Klette, I. Carlgren, J. Rasmussen & H. Simola (Eds.) Restructuring Nordic Teacher: An Analysis of Policy Texts from Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Oslo: University of Oslo, Institute for Educational Research, Report No. 10. Pp. 108–186.

A selected English bibliography 285

Simola, H. & Hakala, K. (2001). School Professionals Talk about Educational Change – Interviews with Finnish school level actors on educational governance and social inclusion/exclusion. In S. Lindblad & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.) Listening to Education Actors on Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion. Uppsala: University of Uppsala, Department of Education, Uppsala Reports on Education 37. Pp. 103–132. Simola, H., Rinne, R. & Kivirauma, J. (1999) Finland: National changes in education and educational governance. In S. Lindblad & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.) Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion: National Cases of Educational Systems and Recent Reforms. Uppsala: Department of Education, Uppsala University: Uppsala Reports on Education No 34. January 1999. Pp. 42–64. Simola, H., Rinne, R. & Kivirauma, J. (2001). Shifting Responsibilities, Insolvent Clients and Double-bound Teachers – The appearance of a new system of reason in constructing educational governance and social exclusion/inclusion in Finland? In S. Lindblad & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.) Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion: Studies in the Powers of Reason and the Reasons of Power. Uppsala: University of Uppsala, Department of Education, Uppsala Reports on Education 39. Pp. 59–103. Simola,H., Ozga, J., Segerholm, C.,Varjo, J. & Normann Andersen,V. (2011) Governing by Numbers: the Rise of Data in Education. In Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen,P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) Fabricating Quality in Europe: data and education governance. Pp. 96–106. London: Routledge. Varjo, J., Simola, H. & Rinne, R. (2013) Finland’s PISA Results: an analysis of dynamics in edcuation politics. In Heinz-Dieter Meyer and Aaron Benavot (Eds.) PISA, Power and Policy: The Role of International Benchmarking in the Emerging Global Education Governance System. Institutional and Policy Perspectives. Albany: SUNY Press.

Edited books Klette, K., Carlgren, I., Rasmussen, J. & Simola, H. (Eds.) (2000). Restructuring Nordic Teachers: An Analysis of Policy Texts from Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Oslo: University of Oslo, Institute for Educational Research, Report No. 10. Klette, K., Carlgren, I., Rasmussen, J. & Simola, H. (Eds.) (2002). Restructuring Nordic Teachers: Analysis of Interviews with Danish, Finnish and Norwegian Teachers. Oslo: University of Oslo, Institute for Educational Research, Report No. 3. Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen, P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) (2011) Fabricating Quality in Education: Data and Governance in Europe. London: Routledge. Rinne, R., Aro, M., Kivirauma, J. & Simola, H. (Eds.) (2003) Adolescents Facing the Educational Politics of the 21th Century: Comparative survey on five national cases and three welfare models. Finnish Educational Research Association. Research in Educational Sciences 17. Seppänen, P., Kalalahti, M., Carrasco, A., Rinne, R. & Simola, H. (Eds.) (in press) Contrasting Dynamics in Education Politics of Extremes: School choice in Finland and Chile. Rotterdam: SENSE Publishers. Simola, H. & Popkewitz, T. S. (Eds.) (1996). Professionalization and education. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Department of Teacher Education. Research Report 169.

286

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Simola, H., Johannesson, I. A. & Lindblad, S. (Eds.) (2002) Changing Education Governance in Nordic Welfare States: Finland, Iceland and Sweden as cases of an international restructuring movement. Special Issue of Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 46(3).

Note 1 Does not include texts republished here.

Index

against the flow in global education politics xii–xviii, 60, 224–51, 219, 237–8, 276, 279 Aho, Erkki x, 55, 58, 59, 234, 264 assessment of students/pupils xvii–xviii, 10–11, 21 fn. 11, 36, 58–61, 106–7, 109, 137–60, 151, 188, 210, 219, 229–30, 233–4, 236–7, 243 Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA) 49, 53, 191, 226, 242 Ball, Stephen ix, 34, 40, 49, 255 belief in schooling xviii, 11, 35–6, 73, 104, 174, 256, 257–62, 264, 267, 275 Bourdieu, Pierre xiv, 5, 15, 17, 18, 20 fn. 4, 72, 81, 84, 116–17, 118, 125–6, 273, 281, 282 fn. 7 Carlgren, Ingrid ix, x, 181, 183, 196 comparative education xviii–xix, 50, 207–8, 211, 224–5, 244, 252–7, 267–8, 273–5, 280, 282 fn. 2 comprehensive school pedagogy xvii, 6–7, 9, 13, 14, 20 fn. 6, 39, 80, 90 fn. 3, 121–2, 161–77, 189–92, 195–7, 213–16, 217, 219, 276, 277–8 Confederation of Finnish Industries and Employers (CIE) xiv, 49, 58, 211, 226, 233, 236, 243 context xii–xiv, xv, 4, 7, 73–5, 139–40, 142, 146, 152, 175, 189, 195, 209–10, 275–6, 278–9 contingency xv, xvii–xviii, 60, 195, 218, 224–51, 252–70, 274, 276–7, 279, 280–1 corporatism xviii, xv–xvi, 32–4, 40, 51, 69–94, 117, 175

decentralization xv, 48–65, 20 fn. 3, 33–4, 48, 51–61, 122, 194, 226, 229, 239, 241–2, 265, 276–7 decontextualisation xv, xvi, 12–15, 17–18, 19, 39–40, 111, 120–2, 128, 252 deregulation 33, 48, 51–61, 169, 229, 241–2, 265, 277 determinant model for curriculum planning by Saylor & Alexander 14–15, 21–2 fn. 12 didactics xvi, 8–9, 12, 14–15, 19, 20 fn. 6, 72–3, 78–9, 80–7, 89, 91 fn. 7, 103–5, 107, 109–10, 115–33, 146–7, 189, 193, 208 disciplinization xv, 12–13, 14 16, 19, 96, 98–9, 103, 109–11, 137, 148, 167 discursive formations xv, xvi, xviii, xvi, 3–26, 27, 40, 69, 79–80, 86–9, 96, 101–12, 122, 273, 275–80 discursive principle, tacit xv–xvi, 4, 16, 19, 80, 107–12 dynamics in education politics xv–xviii, 4, 15–18, 19, 219, 274–80, 282 fn. 3 exclusion xv, 12, 27, 35, 39–40, 73, 97, 122–7, 128, 137–60, 174, 190 Foucault, Michel xiv, xvi, 5–6, 18, 49, 80, 87, 89, 95–114, 137, 151, 156, 196, 239, 273, 282 fn. 1 goal rationalization xv, 9–12, 14, 16–19, 21 fn. 9–11, 33, 40–1, 52–3, 60–1, 84, 104, 107, 119, 147, 150–2, 153–5, 216, 236–7 grammar of schooling 15, 39

288

Index

Hirvi,Vilho 34, 40–1, 52, 55, 59, 217, 265 individualization xv, xvi, xvii, 30–2, 34–5, 36–43, 52, 95–114, 119–21, 128, 137, 138–9, 142, 147–57, 163–5, 168, 171, 173–6, 178–203, 207, 210, 216, 239, 275, 277–8 Joas, H. 225, 227, 254, 256, 280, 281 Kansanen, Pertti ix, 20 fn. 6 & 10, 78, 82–3, 85–6, 119, 121, 211, 262 Kettunen, Pauli ix, 225, 241, 253, 254, 266, 274 leadership in education xvii, 276, 279 Lindblad, Sverker ix, 27, 181–2, 214–15, 216 Lingard, Bob ix, 49, 224, 255 Meyer, John W. xiv, 3, 4, 18, 19, 210, 253, 273 Ministry of Education (and Culture) (ME) 9, 21 fn. 12, 34, 40, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 60, 71, 72, 82, 87, 110, 118, 153, 187, 217, 225–6, 229, 231, 233, 242, 265, 268 fn. 5 National Board of Education (NBE) 51–61, 71, 103, 110, 140, 142–4, 147–9, 151, 190, 225, 229, 230, 234, 236, 238–9, 242–3, 265, 277 naturalization of schooling 12–13 new public management 12, 33–4, 41–2, 48, 51–3, 54–5, 169, 186, 229, 235, 238–9, 276–7 Nóvoa, António ix, 207, 208, 219, 244, 252, 254, 273 Numminen, Jaakko x, 21–22 fn. 12, 70, 82–84, 118, 126, 129 fn. 4, 233, 268 fn. 5 Ozga, Jenny ix, 49, 85, 224, 255 pastoral professionalism xvi, 99, 107–11 Popkewitz, Thomas S. ix, xiv, 3, 9, 18, 27, 39, 77, 115, 120, 138, 207, 216, 256

professionalism of teachers and their educators xv, xvii, 7–9, 15–19, 38–40, 69–94, 95–114, 115–33, 172–5, 192, 195, 212–13, 216, 218, 256–7, 262–4, 276–8 quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) xiii–xv, 48–66, 224–51, 265–7, 277, 279 rationalism of hopes 16, 19, 122 rationalism, wishful xv–xvi, 3–26, 39, 61, 108, 279 reforming education xiv–xvii, 3–26, 29, 34, 38, 39, 41, 48, 54–6, 60, 62 fn. 2, 69–94, 101–2, 110, 115–36, 143, 145, 146–9, 154–7, 168–72, 178–203, 211–14, 216, 219, 224, 238, 240, 244, 255, 263–7, 276, 278, 280–1 Rinne, Risto ix, 6, 29, 30–3, 36, 39, 50–1, 55, 75–6, 82, 84–5, 90 fn. 3 & 6, 104, 110, 117–18, 120, 124–5, 140, 142, 156, 189, 212–13, 217, 229, 239–41, 243–4, 252, 257, 265 Rose, Nicholas ix, 27, 48, 156, 179, 196 Sahlberg, Pasi ix, xiii, 62 fn. 2, 279–80, 282 fn. 5 school–free pedagogy 15, 17–18, 120–2, 128 state centrism xvi, 4, 5, 20 fn. 3, 27–47, 32, 33–4, 52, 54, 69–94, 71, 73, 84, 117–20, 125, 127–8, 175, 209–10, 213, 216–17, 229, 242–3 state educational discourse 34, 36, 38, 39, 107 teachers union OAJ 51, 62 fn. 3, 70, 72, 76–7, 87–9, 21 trust xvii–xviii, 55, 175, 195, 211, 212, 217–18, 256–7, 264–6, 267–8 truth, system/regime/history of xvi, xviii, 5, 19, 38, 57, 87, 89, 95–114, 138, 157, 228, 231, 239, 257, 267, 279 Tyler Rationale 11, 16–17, 18 Whitty, Geoff ix, 32, 37, 41, 42