Moi! けいけいです。以前からフィンランドの教育システムに興味を持っており、実際に学校を見学したいと思っていました。そこで、小学校の先生をしているフィンランド人の友達に見学の許可をお願いしたところ、学校を1日見学させてもらえることになりました。今回はその見学での気づきや考えたことを、自身の経験を振り返りながらご紹介したいと思います。(実は英語でのブログ執筆に挑戦したいと考えているので、今までは全て日本語で投稿していたのですが、今回の内容部分は全て英語で書かせて頂きます。)
Moi! I’m Keikei. I’ve been interested in the educational system of Finnish education and longed to visit primary schools. Fortunately, my friend, who is working in the elementary school as a teacher allowed me to observe his school for a whole day, so in this article, I’m going to introduce what I found and thought about the system on that day. I’ll reflect on my experience in my elementary school, so most of my findings and considerations depends on it and the Japanese perspective.
Basic Information of the School
Finnish official language is Finnish and Swedish, so Finnish and Swedish speakers can accept education in their mother tongue separately. The primary school I visited was for the Swedish-speaking students and the number of students in one class was around 15 on average although two grades were combined. However, holding a class for both for instance 1st and 2nd grade students is not limited to the case when there are few students in one school. It is regarded as effective for a better learning environment for children, so there are schools which intendedly hold combined classes. Also, the number of classes depends on each region in Finland, so in the areas close to Sweden, the scale of the school for Swedish-speaking children would be bigger.
Time Schedule of that Day
Except for 1st and 2nd students, students had 5 classes for 45 minutes and there were 15 minutes of recess between 1st and 2nd classes and 3rd and 4th classes. Lunch break was between 3rd and 4th classes and there was a short snack time in 4th class. The 1st class began at 8:30 and the last class finished around 14:10.
My Main Findings
There are three discoveries: Free and personalized learning style, the effectiveness of refreshing time, and the good atmosphere of the classes. I dig into those three findings from a Japanese perspective.
Free and personalized learning style
In the classes I observed, most of the time was for independent works like doing a workbook in pairs or answering questions of a distributed print. Students could walk around in a classroom and consult their peers about the questions, also some students played with intelligent toys like Rubik’s Cube while taking the class. Sometimes teachers allowed students to do work in a place they preferred and ranged from the table back in the classroom to even outside of it, but no one disturbed other students; most of them concentrated on their work independently.
I was really surprised at this learning style because, in my elementary school, we had to sit down on chairs in a good posture all the time in class if there wasn’t any permission from our teacher and there was a strict school rule that strictly prohibited us from taking unnecessary stuffs our school.
There was a strong relationship of mutual trust between teachers and students in the Finnish class. Teachers let them do what they need to study with the most comfortable style because they expect students to judge whether what they do is allowed in a school depending on their trust toward students.
The effectiveness of refreshing time
As I mentioned before, there were some recesses between the classes, and, almost all students went outside and enjoyed some physical activities with their peers or teachers. While some students enjoyed playing house, others rolled around on the snow; each group enjoyed each activity, which was so lovely. It is widely said that doing physical activity in a short break contributes to refreshing and retrieving concentration, so recess with physical activity should enhance the quality of children’s study more.
Especially in the age of primary school, children are more active, and some students might not know what to do with youth energy, so physical activity between classes would play a very important role for students around that age not only in studying effectively but also develop themselves.
Good atmosphere of the classes
The classes were moderately noisy; not too quiet, which made it easier for students to talk about things related to the contents of the class or ask teachers.
This character was also different from the Japanese one; as far as I remember, in my primary school, we tended to talk in a whisper so that we would not interrupt others.
I feel a bit stressed when I study in a very quiet place because it makes me care about noise both from me and other people excessively. Instead of such an environment, I prefer a learning place with moderate sounds, and I suppose that the reason some people choose a cafeteria to study comes from a similar feeling.From this perspective, it can be said that Finnish schools achieve to provide students with a comfortable environment.
Summary
Thanks to this school observation, I found that Finnish education effectively contributed to the enhancement of children’s both academic skills and what cannot be measured with tests like independence or creativity. However, since I mostly relied on the Japanese perspective and my personal experiences, the findings should be considered from other aspects, too. To assess the Finish educational system by comparison with the Japanese one, I have to refer to the latest Japanese educational situation. This issue makes me interested in educational study, which is also one of the precious achievements of this school visit.
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