Oivallus Final Report (Education in Finland)

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Authors’ Summary

One objective of the education system has historically been to prepare people for the requirements of an industrial society – for jobs that had strictly defined tasks, allocated in advance. Employees worked largely separately from each other and learning one skill was sufficient for a long time.

We have been moving towards an information society or an experiential society for a while now. What is becoming crucial is the capacity to work in a new way to achieve new or improved solutions. To rise to the challenge, companies are changing the way in which work is performed. Mechanical thinking by the book will seldom be the case in the future. Strict instructions are being replaced by guidelines and the goals of work are becoming more and more vague. People have to define the content and the rules of their work on their own or together with others.

In order to prepare for the aforementioned future, promoting creativity will become the foundation of all education. Creativity should be understood as divergent thinking: imagining alternative solutions to problems. Education that promotes creativity adopts methods from work life: experimenting with others without the fear of making a mistake will be encouraged. This is why future education will focus on skills in addition to knowledge and working in groups instead of working in isolation.

Adopting a  broad range of learning methods prepares students for work that is performed in a variety of ways. We will move away from a fragmented curriculum towards learning that is based on problems and phenomena. This enables us to handle more and more complex environments. Learning expands as schools are opening up to the society that surrounds them. Structures of education will support collaborative teaching — at the end, teachers are the ones who enable the change
towards education that promotes creativity. The way in which learning is assessed is at the core of the change. What is assessed will be taught and learnt.