• Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with 'topics' as country reforms its education system – Europe – World – The Independent

  HT @Romathio
  Finnish schools dropping subjects. http://t.co/EHZzL2spCB cc: @jbrettjacobsen @boadams1 @EmilyBreite @kristaparker @HollyChesser #mvlearns
  Schools in Finland will no longer teach ‘subjects’ http://t.co/ufIbBOGwN7 @boadams1 @cliffordshelley @chiphouston1976 @jbrettjacobsen

  tags: mvlearns topic-based schoolreform schooldesign schools of the future curriculum #MustRead

  • “What we need now is a different kind of education to prepare people for working life.
  • Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic.
  • More academic pupils would be taught cross-subject topics such as the European Union – which would merge elements of economics, history (of the countries involved), languages and geography.
  • There are other changes too, not least to the traditional format that sees rows of pupils sitting passively in front of their teacher, listening to lessons or waiting to be questioned. Instead there will be a more collaborative approach, with pupils working in smaller groups to solve problems while improving their communication skills.
  • “We really need a rethinking of education and a redesigning of our system, so it prepares our children for the future with the skills that are needed for today and tomorrow.
  • Ms Kyllonen has been advocating a “co-teaching” approach to lesson planning, with input from more than one subject specialist.

• Skills in Flux – NYTimes.com

  “Making nonhuman things intuitive to humans. Purpose provision. Opposability. Cross-class expertise.”

  tags: skills #MustRead

  • As the economy changes, the skills required to thrive in it change, too, and it takes a while before these new skills are defined and acknowledged.
  • For example, in today’s loosely networked world, people with social courage have amazing value. Everyone goes to conferences and meets people, but some people invite six people to lunch afterward and follow up with four carefully tended friendships forevermore. Then they spend their lives connecting people across networks.
    • Network sustainability.
  • People with social courage are extroverted in issuing invitations but introverted in conversation — willing to listen 70 percent of the time. They build not just contacts but actual friendships by engaging people on multiple levels. If you’re interested in a new field, they can reel off the names of 10 people you should know. They develop large informal networks of contacts that transcend their organization and give them an independent power base. They are discriminating in their personal recommendations since character judgment is their primary currency.
  • “The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.