Finland’s educational evaluation approach to benefit Saudi Arabia, says official

Finnish State Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Culture Tapio Kosunen is leading a 72-member delegation consisting of high-profile academic and business people to showcase their educational system at the three-day International Exhibition and Forum for Education 2013 (IEFE 2013) that kicked off yesterday.
This year’s theme is “Educational Evaluation Approach & Techniques.”
“I am proud to introduce Finland at this exhibition. We are looking forward to exchanging views and discussing issues connected to education,” the state secretary said.
The state secretary said, “We know that in Saudi Arabia education and building school are important issues. In Finland we gradually improved our education through evaluation. I hope we can share our experiences so Saudi Arabia might benefit from those. That is why we are here.”
The state secretary referred to plans for improvement in Saudi Arabia to streamline the education system at all levels.
“I know a school is being built in Riyadh in line with the Finnish model. It should be finished by 2014 and would then be open to 3,000 students.”
Jouni Valijarvi, director of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research at the University of Jvvaskvla in Finland talked about the Finnish evaluation of education in a global context. “From the mid 1990s, evaluation systems have changed substantially in European countries. Most countries in central- and northern Europe have followed the Anglo-Saxon tradition with their detailed standards, massive national testing systems, and public distribution of the results.”
He said accountability and transparency have been stressed in educational policies. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study tests 15-year-old students’ scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading. The study aims to improve educational policies and outcomes. PISA was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years.
Disappointing PISA results have triggered reforms in the evaluation systems in participating countries. In Finland, the PISA results have been quite satisfactory, said Valijarvi. Crucial changes in the evaluation of education have not been seen necessary.
Valijarvi noted that evaluation of learning outcomes takes place with national and international survey-based studies in core subjects covering typically 7-10 percent of the cohort.
“No national tests covering all school and the whole student cohort exist. The system does not involve any ranking of individual schools. The school inspection and the control of the textbooks were abolished in the 90s. Instead of national control, local evaluation and schools’ self-assessment, and teachers’ autonomy and professionals skills are encouraged,” said Valijarvi.
Competition between Finnish schools is not encouraged, and results of the national and international studies on learning are not public. Schools are informed about their results and are compared to national/international averages to help schools to develop their own practices. Local and school level self-assessment is encouraged. In many cases municipalities use assessments for positive discrimination on school level.
Bronwen Cowie, director of the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, spoke about evaluating educational programs.
“Assessment comes in a variety of forms and formats and is required to meet a number of purposes. Broadly speaking, these purposes include the support of teaching and learning, summing up learning, and assessment to monitor teacher, school and system performance,” she said.
“Recognition of the connection between curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment has contributed to an appreciation that each kind of assessment has a role to play in supporting teaching and learning. All need to be part of a blended and balanced assessment system.”
Talking on the importance and necessity of evaluating technical assistance, Jonathan Alan Plucker, professor of Educational Psychology and Cognitive Science at the Indiana University School of Education in the US, said that educational systems around the globe have realized the importance of program evaluation.
Countries that have implemented evaluation systems have learned difficult lessons about supporting and conducting this work. Plucker shared a model of evaluation technical assistance that was designed to support the US Department of Education as it implemented an aggressive initiative to promote program evaluation among all of its programs and grantees. He also provided the lessons learned from the implementation of this model, along with recommendations on how to support a culture of program evaluation at every level of a country’s education system.
Repositioning evaluation through culturally responsive evaluation in the 21st century was the topic of Rodney Hopson, president of the American Evaluation Association. He said culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) is an emerging methodological and conceptual approach and technique within the field of evaluation that raises important questions about how evaluation is designed, conducted, implemented, and disseminated. At the core of CRE is a repositioning of evaluation beyond traditional and mainstream approaches. CRE considers larger contexts and cultures of participants and communities that have often been traditionally underrepresented.
This presentation traced the historical legacy of CRE in evaluation by building on conversations that have emerged in the last two decades, including its relevance for positioning culture in evaluation by relying primarily on examples from psychology, anthropology, public health and education.