I decided to choose a country that we haven’t looked at in this course but when looking at PISA scores or other measures typically preforms well across all areas. The Finish education system has some similarities and more than a few differences with BC’s. one of the things that draw me to their system is the absence of formal high stakes testing and an emphasis on classroom based and formative assessments. Finish students take one standardized exam at the end of high school, rather than many exams along the way. BC is moving to fewer exams in secondary to the literacy and numeracy assessments when I was in grade 10 – 12 I wrote provincial exams in math, science, and English 10, social studies 11, as well as English, math, French, geography, chemistry, physics, and biology 12. I think moving to fewer assessments is better for the students as my memory of grade 12 courses was teaching to the provincial and not to us understanding the concepts, in math I did not understand the concepts, I could apply rules and formulas, but I didn’t get it. In the Finish system teachers are trusted professionals who are able to use formative and summative assessment tools to determine how their students are doing and to develop success criteria with students based on the curriculum. One of the articles references that in Finland assessment is used for steering and to drive instruction rather than for teacher accountability. I really feel that this is where we should be focusing our efforts with assessment, what do students know and where can we go next. Another thing I found interesting is the use of test results in Finland where students are given assessments in reading or numeracy and the results used to identify students who may need additional support moving forward. In Finland results are never used to compare or rank schools or to hold teachers accountable.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XiRO0fDKMFmyRmjhuadW5s0e8_hQnYCQnqPW8L50XXc/edit
https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/pgasite/documents/webpage/pga_173315.pdf
https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/standardized-testing
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/
https://science-sciencemag-org.proxy.queensu.ca/content/sci/306/5703/1877.1.full.pdfReply to Thread
