Pasi Sahlberg, the great Finnish educator who is teaching this year at Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote recently to explain how Finnish universities select future teachers.
Finnish universities are famously selective,accepting only 10% of the high school graduates who want to become teachers. But how do they select? Sahlberg’s very bright niece was turned down when she first applied.
So what is the selection process?
Sahlberg writes:
“Who exactly are those who were chosen to become primary teachers in Finland ahead of my niece? Let’s take closer look at the academic profile of the first-year cohort selected at the University of Helsinki. The entrance test has two phases. All students must first take a national written test. The best performers in this are invited on to the second phase, to take the university’s specific aptitude test. At the University of Helsinki, 60% of the accepted 120 students were selected on a combination of their score on the entrance test and their points on the subject exams they took to complete their upper-secondary education; 40% of students were awarded a study place based on their score on the entrance test alone.
“Last spring, 1,650 students took the national written test to compete for those 120 places at the University of Helsinki. Applicants received between one and 100 points for the subject exams taken to earn upper-secondary school leaving diplomas. A quarter of the accepted students came from the top 20% in academic ability and another quarter came from the bottom half. This means that half of the first-year students came from the 51- to 80-point range of measured academic ability. You could call them academically average. The idea that Finland recruits the academically “best and brightest” to become teachers is a myth. In fact, the student cohort represents a diverse range of academic success, and deliberately so.
“A good step forward would be to admit that academically best students are not necessarily the best teachers
If Finnish teacher educators thought that teacher quality correlates with academic ability, they would have admitted my niece and many of her peers with superior school performance. Indeed, the University of Helsinki could easily pick the best and the brightest of the huge pool of applicants each year, and have all of their new trainee teachers with admirable grades.
“But they don’t do this because they know that teaching potential is hidden more evenly across the range of different people. Young athletes, musicians and youth leaders, for example, often have the emerging characteristics of great teachers without having the best academic record. What Finland shows is that rather than get “best and the brightest” into teaching, it is better to design initial teacher education in a way that will get the best from young people who have natural passion to teach for life.
“The teaching profession has become a fashionable topic among education reformers around the world. In England, policy-makers from David Cameron down have argued that the way to improve education is to attract smarter people to be teachers. International organisations such as the OECD and McKinsey & Company, Sir Michael Barber for Pearson, and in the US, Joel Klein, former New York education chancellor now working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, have all claimed that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. These are myths and should be kept away from evidence-informed education policies and reforms.
“A good step forward would be to admit that the academically best students are not necessarily the best teachers. Successful education systems are more concerned about finding the right people to become career-long teachers. Oh, and what happened to my niece? She applied again and succeeded. She graduated recently and will be a teacher for life, like most of her university classmates.”
“At the University of Helsinki, 60% of the accepted 120 students were selected on a combination of their score on the entrance test and their points on the subject exams they took to complete their upper-secondary education; 40% of students were awarded a study place based on their score on the entrance test alone.”
So standardized tests ARE an integral part of the Finnish educational system! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!
werebat73: Finnish schools do not administer ANY standardized tests to students until the end of high school.
The test Finnish kids get at the end of high school is high-stakes for students. In the US, the high-stakes tests mostly matter to teachers, administrators, and schools. This may explain why Finnish students are more serious about school in general. I liked Salhberg’s book “Finnish Lessons” but he did leave out the high-stakes end of high school test. He only mentioned the one that sorts kids into vocational schools.
The test is a matriculating [i.e., entrance] exam for University. It is not a high stakes high school graduation test. Also, it can be taken over and over and as far as I know, is free. It focuses heavily on language studies, including foreign, and what is known as “mother tongue”, whether Finnish or Swedish or some other native tongue.
A good step forward would be to admit that the academically best students are not necessarily the best teachers. Yep.
Several observations. I supervised 5 students teachers from University of Maryland College Park, out of both the undergraduate and graduate education programs. The only one who failed was a 4.0 junior Phi Beta Kappan. He simply refused to do what was necessary to understand how to reach his students.
I realize data is not the plural of anecdote, but the point is this – content knowledge is insufficient if one cannot communicate. Here I will offer my own experience as a soccer coach (very successful) with my own performance on a soccer field. I eventually became an outstanding goalie, but as a field player because I started late I had to study HOW to do things that did not come naturally to me. That made me a better teacher/coach of my players, because I had some understanding of the struggles some might have.
Here I note that many of the best managers in Major League Baseball were good but not great players themselves, and that some who were outstanding as players failed miserably as managers.
In short, the skill set to be expert at something does not automatically translate into being skilled in helping others to learn how to operate in a particular domain. Some outstanding students make wonderful teachers. Some make horrible teachers.
In seeking and training our teachers we need to remember that sufficient content knowledge is actually often far easier to acquire than are the skills necessary for effective pedagogy.
When I was in college the math professors were the worst. They were great mathematicians but they had zero ability to help others understand.
Same here – Out of all my college and grad school math professors, only one “knew” how to teach – the others were brilliant but had no clue how to explain anything. I teach high school math – it is an advantage not to be Einstein or you could never relate to kids possibly being confused.
I’ve said for years now that if the best students were always likely to become the best teachers, then our nation’s professors would enjoy a much more robust reputation for teaching.
teacherken: here and below, well put.
How do the rheephormsters use sports analogies and such? Take Dr. Raj Chetty [Please! a la Henny Youngman] who, in the Vergara trial, both sternly warns against the use and misuse of outliers and then justifies VAMania because he wants to put a Michael Jordan [an outlier among outliers!] in as many classrooms as possible!
😱
Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird—legendary as basketball PLAYERS but remind me, please, of what they’ve done as COACHES. John Wooden, legendary COACH at UCLA for many years—does anybody in their right mind even care what he could or couldn’t do as a PLAYER?
😧
The rheephormistas have a very old fashioned idea in mind: like the now-discredited notion that kings, e.g., could heal with just a touch, they seem to think that getting high scores on standardized tests qualifies people to do just about anything, no matter experience or training or aptitude. And the opposite: low test scores, can’t do anything.
Real world experience and trial-and-error doesn’t count with the “thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time.”
No, over and over and over again it’s apparent that “who you know” trumps [and Trumps!] “what you know.” Otherwise, how to explain the meteoric rises and falls and fails of Michelle Rhee and John Deasy and Paul Vallas and so many others that have displayed world-class incompetence—even by their own metrics of success!
And I must add: not just “who you know” but “who you work for.” Are you listening, Bill and Eli?
It is sometimes painful, as strange as that may sound coming from me, to see the leaders and enablers and enforcers of the “education reform” viciously caricature and skewer themselves with their own words and deeds. Remember John King making Common Core and Montessori practically one and the same? Or John Deasy making graduation rates go up by gaming the numbers? Or Eva Moskowitz claiming that the press is not giving her a fair shake? It’s like watching people run over their own feet with their own cars [as difficult as that may be].
But credit where credit is due. When it comes to the pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$, though the words du jour may change, they remain steadfastly planted on a firm ideological foundation:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well I have others.”
Marxists. All of them. And if Groucho were alive today, he would be so proud of them.
😎
Wooden does not serve your purposes. He was in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player (from Purdue) long before he ever became famous as a coach. He was a 3-time All American in college, and was elected to the Hall of Fame as a player in 1961, but did not win his first championship as coach at UCLA until 1964, when he had begun coaching at UCLA in 1948-49. Incidentally, the only other people in the basketball Hall of Fame as both players and coaches are Bill Sharman, Lenny Wilkens, and Tommy Heinsohn, and their recognition both as players and coaches is for what they did in the Pros.
teacherken: I much appreciate the correction.
I can now take my foot out of my mouth.
Ouch!
😳
Live and learn.
You’ve just reminded me of what Robert Schumann [among others] said:
“There is no end to learning.”
And you reminded me that sometimes Google can be our best friend…
Feel free to set things straight when the occasion warrants.
Thanks again.
😎
Don’t shoot the messenger, but Larry Bird was also an outstanding NBA coach and front-office executive. He was Coach of the Year in his first season, made it to the Finals in his third (and last) season, and he won close to 70 percent of his games, a very strong showing for a pro coach.
I do agree generally that being good at something doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll be good at teaching it.
One more point. Most of the very good to outstanding teachers I have observed have an ability to relate to / connect with the students before them. That skill is not something necessarily able to be determined by a conventional test, which is one reason that increasing numbers of schools, including some public schools, now require teaching a sample (mini-)lesson
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
“The Best and Whitest”
The ‘Best and Whitest”
Is what we’re after
Reformer said
To teacher laughter
After 20 years of teaching in college teacher-ed programs, I am convinced that many of the “best and the brightest” are simply not cut out to be teachers. It is not tat they aren’t bright enough to figure out what works, but instead I think much of the problem is that they never really had to work hard at figuring out their subject, and how they learn. I found some of the best future teachers to be those who had struggled in school, had been forced to work really hard at figuring things out. I can remember hearing many of my top graduate students saying things like… “I just don’t get it, what is so difficult about this lesson. Who don’t my students get it?” And for the record, some of my best teachers came from the lower rungs of standardized test scores. One of the finest teachers I ever had the pleasure of teaching never could pass the NTE (remember that one?) and it was NOT because she wasn’t bright…she was a summa cum laude graduate of her high school, her undergraduate, and she was a top graduate student. She had test anxiety issues coupled with some medical problems… and standardized tests were simple too much for her!
Noel, I want to agree with you here. A young friend of mine was a brilliant student, Phi Beta Kappa at an Ivy League college, then on for a degree at Oxford University. She became a teacher, and she didn’t last out the year. She knew many things, but she didn’t know how to connect with young minds. She was a terrible teacher.
Makes perfect sense.
Teachers for life in America?? Ha, ha, how quaint. Veteran teachers are loathed, despised and consistently demonized in this country. Teachers with years of experience are portrayed as being burned out, uncaring, dull, ineffective and for the status quo. Experience is not valued when it comes to teachers, especially unionized older teachers. The older teachers have targets on their backs, the reformers would love to get rid of them since they are the most expensive teachers and they often are not shy about expressing their opinions. The reformers do not want teachers for life, they want de-unionized newbies who shut up and know their place.
When I read the signs of child abuse they parallel what is happening to most teachers.
1. Unexplained injuries. (teachers are sick frequently)
2. Changes in behavior.
3. Returning to earlier behaviors.
4. Fear of going home.( teachers stay late and work excessive hours or chronically late to work)
5. Changes in eating. (rapid weight gain or loss due to stress)
6. Changes in sleeping.(many sleepless or bad sleep nights, weight gain increases the chances of sleep apnea and snoring, both cause poor sleep)
7. Changes in school performance and attendance. ( missing lots of school)
8. Lack of personal care or hygiene. (dressing poorly, unshaven, wrinkled clothes, etc)
9. Risk-taking behaviors.(engage in high-risk activities such as using drugs or alcohol, self-medicating)
People wonder why new teachers only last 3-5 years. It is not hard to figure out.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/when-does-the-teacher-abuse-stop/
“A good step forward would be to admit that academically best students are not necessarily the best teachers”
This is true in other professions, too, so one would think it would be obvious.
I’m not in education, but do those who are in education think that “education” is maybe more vulnerable to this sort of thinking because it IS “education”? In other words, educators assign too much weight to how academic success translates to success in a profession because you rely on grades? It’s a conflict, right? People in education can’t really sign on to academic success not translating directly to success at work because this system of A-B-C-D ranking is what they rely on in the field itself. If it isn’t 100% valid in the workplace (and I agree it’s not) then where is it valid and relied upon? In education, right?
I hear ya. Success is a slippery term. Mostly, it is defined in our society by the old saying those that die with to most toys, win. I’ve talked to more than one parent who asks why their kid should focus on school when he/she is making x times more than me at some job or endeavor. And there are those PhDs mixing lattés at Starbucks.
Maybe instead of “if you are educated, you are successful”, we look at “if you are not successful, you are not educated” as a fallacy. Then the question is why we do not value education.
But many conservatives point to education as a cause and/or solution to our terrible wealth inequity. So, they are caught in a trap as well. If Republicans truly want to address wealth inequality, they should support, not demonize, educators. What they and neoliberals ignore is the many other factors that contribute to some definition of success.
For (quite literally) my entire adult life I have been listening to politicians travel to Ohio and tell people to retrain. It doesn’t matter what language they use- “upskill”, “skills gap”, “retrain”.
I just can’t believe they are saying this as if they haven’t been saying the same thing for 25 years. It harms their credibility that they don’t know how long we have heard this same refrain. People already know this. They haven’t been sitting around waiting for orders since 1993. They retrain ALL THE TIME.
Now I see why Americans don’t look to other countries for guidance. Too much common sense, introspection, and rational decision making. No opportunities for demagoguery or, really, profit. Finland, bah, humbug!
To put it another way, if we say that “the best” teachers, physicians, lawyers (practitioners) are not necessarily the highest ranking students in college (I agree) doesn’t that threaten the validity or usefulness of the ranking system used in colleges?
I won a four-year scholarship that paid vast majority of my college tuition in exchange for a commitment to teach in the public schools for eight years. It was literally called the “Best and Brightest” award.
I’m not certain, but I’m pretty sure that a good part of the reason I won the scholarship was because of my excellent performance on the SAT. My actual grades at the private Catholic school I attended (that I was only able to afford because my father taught there) were good, but not phenomenal (I made second honors more often than not).
I guess the “Best and Brightest” scholarship could be viewed as a sort of prototypical TFA program.
I’m not sure how I should feel about that, close to twenty years later.
Diane Hi! Please read or browse my paper on Finnish teachers, I think you will like it; you may download it Are Teachers Crucial for Academic Achievement? Finland Educational Success in a Comparative Perspective | Andere | education policy analysis archives | | | | | | | | | | | Are Teachers Crucial for Academic Achievement? Finland…Are Teachers Crucial for Academic Achievement? Finland Educational Success in a Comparative Perspective | | | | Ver en epaa.asu.edu | Vista previa por Yahoo | | | | |
Have a nice day! Eduardo De: Diane Ravitch’s blog Para: eandereitam@yahoo.com.mx Enviado: Viernes, 10 de abril, 2015 9:01:15 Asunto: [New post] Pasi Sahlberg: Finnish Teachers Are Not “the Best and the Brightest” #yiv7835022963 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv7835022963 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv7835022963 a.yiv7835022963primaryactionlink:link, #yiv7835022963 a.yiv7835022963primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv7835022963 a.yiv7835022963primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv7835022963 a.yiv7835022963primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv7835022963 WordPress.com | dianeravitch posted: “Pasi Sahlberg, the great Finnish educator who is teaching this year at Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote recently to explain how Finnish universities select future teachers. Finnish universities are famously selective,accepting only 10% of th” | | Respond to this post by replying above this line |
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| | | | Pasi Sahlberg: Finnish Teachers Are Not “the Best and the Brightest” by dianeravitch |
Pasi Sahlberg, the gre
Dr. Andere, allow me to assist …
Are Teachers Crucial for Academic Achievement? Finland Educational Success in a Comparative Perspective
by Eduardo Andere
Visiting Research Professor, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/download/1752/1592
Abstract: Teachers are seen as the main reason behind the high, equal, and consistent student performance in Finland as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and there is a lot of truth in this. Candidates for teacher training programs are selected through a rigorous process, for example. However, using primarily the case of Finland, this paper seeks to show that factors beyond the quality of teachers are also involved in explaining high performance on international standardized tests by students around the world. The policy of attracting high-caliber students and providing high-quality preservice training, suggested by organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and McKinsey & Company, does not necessarily seem to be related to high student performance in all countries.
Thank you, Lowie
I dunno, if I were looking for future teachers, evidence of teaching experience/aptitude would trump any test score. Which kids have tutored their peers or younger students? Who are the kids that others turn to when they’re stuck? What kids have had any actual teaching/child care experience, such as teaching a Sunday School class, being a summer camp counselor, leading a sports team or club or, heck, even babysitting? I’d want letters of recommendation testifying as to how those potential teachers actually relate to kids and how the kids relate to them.
Good common sense.
The best IT developer I know would make a terrible teacher. He immediately understands anything to do with computers but ask him to explain it in layman’s terms and he just can’t.
Likewise the current best managers in the English Premier League such as José Mourinho and Arsene Wenger were only amateur players. These limitations arguably helped them to understand the sport more.
Yes, I’ve worked with those folks.
It has been said many times, I know, but worth repeating the Latin root of amateur is amatorem, or lover of something. There are no better professionals than those who see themselves as amateurs.
Albert Einstein said “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”
I’ve worked with many IT people who could “get the job done”, but really did not understand what they were doing.
One such fellow even upgraded the router at the company without any firewall and opened the whole internal company network up to the internet!
Those who can do, those who understand teach.
Those that can, teach. Those that can’t, rant.
Grades reflect only one component of what makes up a good teacher – the hidden values of perseverance, compassion, and passion can never be measured in a college course! I’ve worked with outstanding teachers, & the “best & brightest” are not usually the outstanding teachers. Grades are important in that they reflect a measure of content knowledge, & sometimes they measure who can best “play the game” to get the A on a project, paper, etc.
” Grades are important in that they reflect a measure of content knowledge, & sometimes they measure who can best “play the game” to get the A on a project, paper, etc.”
No, grades don’t “reflect a measure of content knowledge” and they don’t “measure who can best play the game”.
Grades aren’t measurements and the mechanisms used to determine grades (a truly anemic description of a student’s abilities) are not measuring devices.
Keep on using the edudeformers’ concepts to help them instill their dogma/propaganda about what education is, should be and/or can be. Resist the malapropisms that abound.
Gates tried to determine what qualities make a great teacher, but he wandered into the weeds of testing and metrics. If you want to know what makes a great teacher, ask a great teacher. That is not as self-referential as it sounds. The idea of mentoring and apprenticeship has been around since one human taught another to hunt and farm. Find a respected artist, doctor, lawyer, executive, machinist, firefighter – and you nearly always find a valued mentor standing behind them. Why do we ignore thousands of years of what works and instead disparage our veteran teachers and force upon the profession meaningless ranking systems?
Once the experienced teachers are gone out of the system and very few others last long enough to get experienced…where will the mentors be? Cuomo has made it pretty easy to be ineffective and on your way out the door. Special ed teachers will especially be on the quick turnover path.
I see a time in the next 3-5 years when there is a huge teacher shortage. The older ones have had enough and retired. They new ones stay a year or two and leave. What a recipe for disaster!
Teacher shortage? We’ve been told that that’s coming for the last fifteen years or so. It hadn’t come. It’s one of those things teachers tell themselves to make themselves feel better. If and when it DOES come, yes, it’ll have an impact on some of the shenanigans we’re seeing. But it isn’t here yet. Where is the evidence that it is coming?
Yes, drext727. Disaster for public schools is exactly what the corporate reformers are trying to achieve.
A teacher shortage, if it does come, will be filled by H1bs. Welcome to globalization.
“The Best and Brightest”
It’s good the Best and Brightest
Are running school reform
Like Drew, who took the law test
Five times the NY norm
“International organisations such as the OECD and McKinsey & Company, Sir Michael Barber for Pearson, and in the US, Joel Klein, former New York education chancellor now working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, have all claimed that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”
I believe that this statement is in fact true. The fallacy is to assume that the quality of a teacher can be determined/measured/predicted by academic achievement, profile and aptitude alone, just as Sahlberg maintains. “The Best and Brightest” student may not be the best and most effective teacher. Learning and teaching are not only not the same, they are VERY different and require a significantly different set of talents, qualifications and values.
The constructivist theory of knowledge might be reduced to this statement attributed to George Bodner, chemistry professor at Purdue University:
“Knowledge is constructed in the mind of the learner. Knowledge is seldom transferred intact from the mind of the teacher to the mind of the student. Useful knowledge is never transferred intact.”
Click to access 24_Construct.pdf
Consequently, it is not the academic achievement of the teacher, nor even the “quality” (read best and brightest) of the teacher’s mind that matters, but rather the teacher’s ability to help/assist/guide/mentor/coach the learner so that they might construct a version of “useful knowledge”, that is to say “learn” – a process that can only occur in their own minds.
The Finns seem to already know this. We are unwilling to accept their “knowledge” and wisdom.
Not all excellent students have an aptitude for teaching? How could this be true? For me it’s just another self-evident truth that escapes the “reformers,” most of whom don’t have any teaching experience. (By teaching experience, I mean at least five years as a full-time classroom teacher–I think you need ten years in the classroom to be a fully experienced teacher, because it may take you that long to unlearn the conventional wisdom and develop your own personal style, if that’s still allowed.)
By the same token, average students can become great teachers. This is another no-brainer. If you feel called to teaching, you can succeed if given the chance, provided you work at it. Again, it’s obvious to most experienced teachers that graduating at the top of your class doesn’t make you fit for teaching. But again, if you’re truly interested and you work hard at it, you can succeed.
To paraphrase James Herndon in How To Survive in Your Native Land, WE are the dumb class! That is, many people who think they know education, even some who’ve worked in the field for years (read “administrators” if you want), refuse to look at the realities of teaching and learning in actual classrooms. Most “reformers” fall into this category (the “dumb class!” category). Willful ignorance and magical thinking are the orders of the day.
It wouldn’t hurt to go back to the 70’s and 80’s and reread some education classics based on actual experience. Herndon, Herb Kohl, John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, Theodore Sizer (Horace’s Compromise), John Goodlad (A Place Called School), and so on. It’s shocking to me that a seminal work like Daniel Fader’s Hooked on Books is out of print. Maybe once the Common Core Standards are a thing of the past there will be room for a new edition.
I would like to hear Sahlberg’s thoughts on the massive gender gap in Finnish reading scores. Finnish boys’ PISA scores are statistically indistinguishable from US boys’, and Finland’s boy-girl gap is by far the largest in the world, about twice as large as the US gap.
Perhaps there are some reasons to hold off on emulating Finland.
Tim,
I will ask Pasi to respond.
Are you also outraged by the racial-ethnic gaps in DC? DC has the largest black-white and Hispanic-white gaps of any urban district tested by NAEP. Are you outraged?
Black and Hispanic NAEP scores have been improving in DC, albeit slowly. The gap has widened because DC has rapidly gentrified and more affluent whites and Asians are sending their kids to public schools. This sort of population shift is a positive if it is reducing the number of schools with high concentrations of at-risk kids (I don’t know if that’s the case in DC).
Generally, yes, I am outraged by gaps and the differences in opportunity created by a district system that mirrors residential segregation. I am confused, though, because I don’t recall saying that DC should be a model, whereas scarcely a day goes by without someone telling me we need to drop everything and be just like Finland.
I need to start emulating the Fins’ alcohol abuse. Oh, crap, I already do that.
I have attended schools where some are deemed the brightest and they flunked out. So what is the the brightest? I hate the term: Brightest. For me ‘brightest” like mastery is an OXYMORON
I haven’t slept in, I don’t know, since whenever I woke up on Thursday morning, so I’m a bit fuzzy in general right now. Can someone explain to me what Sahlberg is saying here? Finland does not select the “best and the brightest” for its teacher ed programs, and that’s a good thing? And the reason Finland doesn’t select the “best and the brightest” is because Finland emphasizes entrance exams over, what, high school grades? And it’s a good thing that Finland emphasizes entrance exams this much, because . . . because it ensures that Finland doesn’t select the “best and the brightest”?
Next time, stop reading after you see “Finland.”
At least this once, Tim, I agree with you!
It’s possible I effectively did that this time.
They don’t just skim off the top scorers:
“This means that half of the first-year students came from the 51- to 80-point range of measured academic ability. You could call them academically average. The idea that Finland recruits the academically “best and brightest” to become teachers is a myth. In fact, the student cohort represents a diverse range of academic success, and deliberately so.”
I think what he is saying is that they recognize that academic prowess doesn’t necessarily define who will become good teachers. An aptitude test is not testing academic excellence. I would also like to know what the written test looks like. In other words, the entrance exam is not a test of academic excellence but is looking at evidence of a broader range of skills.
Right, that’s partly what makes this seem so opaque to me. It’s not clear what they’re testing or whether the tests are any more capable of identifying people who are well-suited to the profession than high school grades would be. (Obviously I don’t mean to give the impression that we shouldn’t emulate everything that Finland does related to education, no matter how opaque it may seem to the layman.)
In other presentations–there is a lot of Pasi Sahlberg on YouTube–he explains the admissions process in Finland. As I recall, for the first round of testing, applicants are given a thick packet of research papers and several weeks (I forget the exact time) to study them. The written examination is over these papers. The idea is that the schools are looking for candidates who can process and retain information from academic research. The second round of “testing” is observing the candidates teach sample lessons, which they have had to plan on short notice and in a group with which the present the lesson, and interviews.
Thanks for the info. It’s off to YouTube.
This piece makes me feel good about myself. My college gpa was a mere 3.27, but I have had a passion toward teaching since I was 9 years old. I love trying to hit upon the right combination of interests, curriculum, books, etc. in order to motivate my students with special needs and varying learning styles. I buy with them in mind. I don’t like to miss school because I might miss a ripe opportunity for learning. I am not the smartest in intelligence but I am passionate about what I do. Watching Selma the other day, Dr. King reminded me of what we as teachers must do: negotiate, demonstrate, and resist. This is the only way we will return to real schools.
Apologies in advance, as this comment isn’t immediately applicable to US p.s. system– that will only happen when world-language teaching goals (some of which, in some states, are well-delineated) are matched with adequate curriculum accessible to all. This just meant to contribute to the subject ‘what qualities are important in a teacher’, not necessarily top marks in one’s field.
I am hardly a ‘best & brightest’: tho I attended a top school & achieved high grades in my subject, those were not necessarily key. Nor do I consider myself a fabulous teacher, but the one thing I try to do (teach beginners to move swiftly toward conversational ability in French or Spanish), I do well. This doesn’t even mean that I am a fabulous rapid conversationalist in French/ Spanish; I get by fairly well & consider myself a perpetual student. It means I work hard to help ALL students move toward conversational fluency.
My background makes me a shoo-in for advanced reading & analysis in world-language literature. That is the background sought for world-language teachers, but it is not the right fit for teaching conversational prowess. Tho a number of states now emphasize conversational ability as the end-goal, they continue to hire high performers in BA lang-lit, who have next to zero experience in teaching conversational language.
The US ed system considered me hireable as a foreign language teacher because of top grades in my subject. The closest an interview came to assessing my ability as a conversationalist was deciding I had an authentic accent. I was never interviewed by a fluent conversationalist.
What has made me good is studying poor examples of WL teachers, & close study of American curricula (which routinely fails to produce even passable conversationalists even starting in primary grades & continuing for many years). Also close study of recent curricula which, while seldom used, do better (TPRS, & h.s. courses developed for SpEd students who had to forgo earlier WL classes in order to schedule resource room). And 15 years’ experience tweaking, goal-setting, assesssing student & self-performance while developing a course for very young children. And very early lessons learned from teaching adults, thus learning the typical American cultural attitudinal road-blocks to success.
Zero mentoring! The one fine example I have had is a piano teacher in my area. She had deep understanding of musical structure, but difficulty in learning to sight-read. She developed a method for teaching learners like herself, to get them over the hump into sight-reading at a much earlier age. She did that by studying what had eventually worked for her, and translating it into lessons for young children. Significantly, she created a studio comprising teachers with other sorts of abilities, & handed off those with sight-reading facility early on.
None of what I do could have been accomplished in the umbrella of US p.s. teaching of world language, which even now leans toward a century+-y.o. model geared to reading & writing, while shorting listening & speaking skills.
What makes me a good teacher: (a)a passion for sharing the joy of communicating in another language (b)the ability to zero in on precisely what I want to accomplish (c)the discipline & perseverance to continually examine/ update goals, assess how students perform & thus tweak how I deliver the product