Education reforms require pilots and research to be successful

Challenges just about anywhere nowadays come from environments and interaction, societies and an increasing number of retired people with lifelong learning needs, social media and new technology in nearly all occupations. 

They ask for a new kind of skill combinations from all future citizens. No matter how good the intentions are to promote more advanced versions of the curricula to basic and higher education, the hindrances in implementation may prevent any real progress and leave the goals unachieved. It then would not be worth the effort.

Studies that an international research team conducted for Chulalongkorn University this year on motivation and learning, educational leadership and learning organisations in Bangkok showed there were already many phenomena that would need more intensive consideration once curricula reform is launched. 

First, the ways teachers seemed to be controlling the classroom learning environments noticeably reduced the motivation of the students, even though it was not negative or low at the beginning of a learning event, or lesson. 

In sum, there may soon be a non-learning group of 6,000-7,000 students in each basic education grade and generation of people. Where should they go after their studies? Who would give them meaningful jobs and lives to lead?

Second, and at an organisational level, no real learning organisation characteristics were found other than in the mental understanding of teachers and principals. 

What made it more serious and confronting was that their views were different from each other and did not respond to the challenges of a lesson situation or teachers’ individual activities or performance. Insufficient support was available in the real situation, even though teachers seemed to think there was. To foster a successful curriculum update in this kind of situation, which is based more on beliefs than research, a whole lot more research and study is needed. 

Another move towards a correct and sustainable direction would then be to build a pilot school network that would conduct action research, learning-outcome assessment and development pathway analysis. This was the method used in Finland, when it changed its basic education into a success story – and the best-performing day-school system in the world. 

It was also the success factor in Kazakhstan, where significant all-sector development has taken place in every field of society during the last 10 years, promoting surprisingly rapid growth of well-being, more activating education, new skills and, on an upper level, the success story of the entire state. The country’s development has been known for a few years as an “intellectual school” network, a title given by President Nazarbayev.

How would such a pilot curriculum programme succeed? First, a group of voluntary and skilful schools would be needed, and given funds to go further. Second, they would need to develop their own pilot curricula based on national know-how and international research on education. This would take six to 12 months, based on the experience of Finland and Kazakhstan. 

Third, their pilot’s process should be analysed by themselves in a chain of essay and research publications, in a continuous number of seminars and conferences, with their collected publications and experiences to be shared publicly in social media, as well. Finally, the most effective learning outcomes so often come along with the freedom that is granted: freedom for trial and error; freedom to manage and share; and freedom to test various methods without an army of observing supervisors.

After a few years of action, the know-how would then be ready to spread over the country in terms of training regional school-level trainers and mentors in the new curricula reform. Implementation is so local, that local manpower for mentoring and collaborating is essential.

In its latest curricular reform, Finland utilised 10 university training schools as an accelerating core of the network to train the locals as curriculum development facilitators. 

Once the update reached all the schools, it would then immediately be met with already-skilful teams of teachers, instead of laborious top-to-bottom approaches. It would very seldom let just the best trees bear sustainable learning and achievement fruits anymore. 

Empowering pupils would certainly enhance their motivation, and the importance of education for all would need to be manifested as a right to achieve a better skill-based future, and not only as a duty.

The future has multiple layers of professions that no-one today has yet even given a name to, not to mention the suitable content or subject matter that would suit them. Still, schools try to give meaning with the information they have.

Curricula reform is so huge a step that it should work by itself in the hearts, attitudes and skill-based development of learners as a positive flow of human growth. No nation, and no learner, should be left behind. It is the hope and joy of learning that has so often boosted people to do more than their best – and the best drivers are already prepared.

 

The author – Adjunct Prof Jyrki Loima, PhD, of the Universities of Helsinki and Eastern Finland – was a visiting professor at Chulalongkorn University in 2013 and 2014, running two international research team studies into Thai basic education. 

He is currently an adviser for research-based teacher education development.