Teacher Evaluation Policy Series | Professional Responsibility of Teachers: Teacher Evaluation in Finland by Hansol Woo

This is the final instalment in our series on teacher evaluation policy. Teacher evaluation has been a major feature of education policy reform in the United States during the past ten years. The triumvirate of Race to the Top (2009) funding competition, the No Child Left Behind waivers (2011), and the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) made teacher evaluation central to education reform over the past decade. This series considers emerging areas of growth in teacher evaluation policy. In the two-part discussion “Deweaponizing teacher evaluation: Using teacher evaluation for growth,” Sarah Hairston and a co-developer of the largest teacher evaluation system in the state of Missouri looked at the snares of teacher evaluations (part one) and discussed how to construct teacher evaluations towards a growth model (part two). In “Student Voice in the Teacher Evaluation Process – A lost opportunity” Seyma Dagistan considers the case of Massachusetts in the attempt to incorporate student voice in teacher evaluation. Here, in “Responsible Teachers: Teacher Evaluation in Finland,” Hansol Woo looks into the Finnish model of teacher evaluation where teachers evaluate their own progress. These articles consider why we evaluate teachers and who is best positioned to do so. We invite you to join the discussion be leaving a comment or submitting an essay of your own.

Why teacher evaluation?

Empirical studies have found that teachers are the single most influential factor of student academic learning (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2000; Rivkin et al., 2005). Policymakers also consider teacher policy as an important agenda because it is a relatively easier area in which to intervene, compared to schools, students, and their families (OECD, 2005). Contemporary education reform around the world, thus, has focused on improving teacher quality in their effort to promote student learning. Teacher evaluation is one of the policy recommendations to assure the quality of teachers (Darling-Hammond, Wise, & Pease, 1983). Teachers are able to improve their teaching practices by receiving feedback from evaluation, and the improved teaching skills can positively influence student learning (Hattie, 2009).

The teacher evaluation can be framed by six interrelated elements (Isoré, 2009): 1) Unit assessed (who)–Teachers can be the only evaluation subject in one system (e.g., Finland), or they can be evaluated with students and schools together (e.g., the United States);  2) Capabilities to assess and to use feedback (by whom)–Teachers can be evaluated by different levels of investigators from the school and local/state education agency to the Department of Education; 3) Aspect(s) assessed (what)–Teacher evaluation can be based on multiple sources such as student test scores, classroom observation, reviews, surveys, and codes of ethics; 4) Evaluation ‘technology’ (how)–Teacher evaluation can be related to various types of technology, including standard and criteria, knowledge and skill measurements, and data collection instruments; 5) Purpose (for what)–The consequences of the evaluation can include feedback, professional development opportunities, financial and career implications, and sanctions; and 6) Agent(s) involved (with whom)–many different agents (e.g., students, parents, peers, school principals, external bodies) can be involved in teacher evaluation. These criteria can look dissimilar in different systems, so this paper will explore how these elements take form in Finland, in contrast to the United States (U.S.).

Why Finland?

Finnish teachers evaluate their own progress based upon “individual development dialogue” that they prepare for themselves (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2014); Finnish education was highly structured and adhered to a nationally-regulated curriculum and official teaching guidelines until the late 1980s (Rinne, Kivirauma, & Simola, 2002). Admittedly, this Finnish case is an exception when we consider that accountability-based systems are prevalent across the globe. On average, 95% of teachers are formally appraised with the analysis of student test scores across the 34 participating countries in the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2013 (OECD, 2014). Because Finland is also a welfare state, which has a distinctive social and educational system (Sahlberg, 2011a), it would be difficult to directly draw a policy implication from the Finnish systems for improving the U.S. teacher evaluation policy. However, a comparison between Finnish and the U.S. teacher evaluation policy is worth understanding from an academic perspective because it tackles an underlying question “Why evaluate teachers?”

Teacher evaluation systems can take different forms

In many countries, central educational authorities and municipalities have provided guidelines to effectively evaluate teacher performance. The U.S. is one country that employs accountability-based teacher evaluation systems. Since the 2000s, the U.S. federal government has tried to secure “highly-qualified teachers” by developing and implementing accountability policies (e.g., the No Child Left Behind [NCLB] Act, Race to the Top grant). Improving students’ standardized test scores has been generally used to evaluate teaching quality. Even though the Every Student Succeeds Act, a revised version of NCLB, highlights multiple evaluation resources including high-quality classroom observation and student achievement scores, formal teacher appraisal is still based on theories of accountability and administration.

Finland, on the other hand, does not have a state-mandated framework for teacher evaluation (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2017). The Finnish evaluation policy has distinctive characteristics compared to the accountable evaluation model (Tarhan, Karaman, Kemppinen, & Aerila, 2019). First, the unit assessed is the teacher apart from student achievement scores and school performance. Instead, Finnish teachers are assessed by their own progress based on their individual development plan. Second, school leaders have the capabilities to assess and to use feedback. Even though teachers evaluate their advancement by themselves, school principals are responsible for communicating with teachers regarding the development of individual teachers and supporting teachers’ professional learning with resources from the municipality. Third, aspects assessed focus on individual development plans and dialogues for the new academic year rather than on  the performance and achievements of the previous year. Fourth, evaluation technology is a formative consultation. Reflective, participatory, and collective consultations take place during professional dialogues between an individual teacher and the principal or between a teacher and his or her peer teachers. Fifth, the purpose of teacher evaluation in Finland is empowering teachers to make use of teacher evaluation as an opportunity to facilitate professional development. Teacher evaluation is also regarded as a tool for building professional learning communities. Finally, agents involved are teachers’ trade unions rather than educational authorities (e.g., state or local educational agencies, national ministry/department of education). There are no nationally regulated teacher evaluation rubrics, but the unions provide guidelines for teacher evaluation for the contract between the teachers and the municipality. Moreover, the principals and school boards decide how to use the guidelines.

Teachers are able to evaluate themselves through inquiry and professional reflection. They can enable their own development plans and learning; based on that plan, they can positively influence students.

How can self-evaluation be done in Finland?

Some scholars state that we are now living in the accountability era (Coburn, Hill, & Spillane, 2016), however, this is not the case for Finland. The term accountability is hardly used in Finnish literature, especially in educational evaluation discourse (Sahlberg, 2011a). Instead, Finnish society prefers the term “responsibility” to “accountability” due to the connotation (Aurén, 2017). According to Aurén (2017), responsibility implies honor and is a virtue, which is a desirable quality to possess, but accountability implies a neglect of the responsibility. Responsibility is largely used in everyday conversation, whereas accountability often appears in legal and financial documents. Moreover, the concept of responsibility is applicable to parents and students as well as educators and policymakers. In this context, Finland uses the term “responsibility to learn” to indicate “compulsory” education. Therefore, regulated evaluation systems for accountable teachers are unnecessary for Finnish teachers. In other words, teachers’ ethos of responsibility is deeply rooted in Finnish culture.

Clarity and coherence in designs in Finland have successfully supported “professional responsibility.” First, prospective teachers have an opportunity to develop inquiry and reflection skills as a part of a continuous learning process during teacher training (Livingston & Shiach, 2010). They also study how to learn and how to create a professional development plan from initial teacher education programs. Moreover, student teachers prepare to evaluate themselves by forming their own educational philosophy (Neimi, 2015). With this education and training, prospective teachers in Finland can realize the meaning of “professional responsibility” as a teacher and be ready to commit to the teaching profession. As the quality of teacher preparation is also strongly associated with the teachers’ willingness to participate in professional development (Darling-Hammond & Young, 2002), the preparation time of Finnish teachers is critical for them to reappraise themselves and to engage in professional learning through their careers.

Second, the higher social status of Finnish teachers is associated with professional responsibility (Sahlberg, 2011c). Entering teacher education programs is highly competitive in Finland, so only a few select students can become teachers. Finnish teachers also hold proper credentials. Not only do Finnish teachers earn Master’s degrees and are trained as action researchers, but they also attend graduate schools for free. With such hands-on experience, Finnish teachers have the knowledge and capacities to create their own curriculum and their assessments. In addition, both the students and their parents have a deeply rooted trust in teacher professionalism (Sahlberg, 2010). For this reason, Finnish students do not take standardized tests other than the university matriculation test, and Finnish teachers are also free from giving students standardized tests and do not need to prepare teaching material for the tests (Sahlberg, 2011b). Exceptionally, a selected sample of approximately 100 schools takes national and international assessments (e.g., The Program for International Student Assessment [PISA]) for evaluating the effectiveness of educational policy and national level curriculum but not for ranking or evaluating schools and teachers (Valijarvi, 2004).

Again, why teacher evaluation?

Teacher evaluation can provide feedback for teachers in order to improve their teaching and to increase student learning outcomes. Still, most extant research heavily focuses on how to measure teacher quality rather than on how to design teacher evaluation policy. We should think about the fact that teacher evaluation can adopt a different form. We can expect responsible teachers rather than accountable teachers when our society values the teaching profession and coherent policy systematically supports them. Teachers are able to evaluate themselves through inquiry and professional reflection. They can enable their own development plans and learning; based on that plan, they can positively influence students. In this form, we are able to understand the reason why teacher evaluation is needed a little differently – as a professional learning process for teachers.

Hansol Woo is a Ph.D. student in the dual title Educational Leadership Program and Comparative International Education at Pennsylvania State University. Previously, he received a Masters of Education in Educational Administration at Seoul National University, he was a research associate at Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI). In addition, Hansol worked as associate manager in charge of training programs for school leaders at National Academy for Educational Administrators (NAEA) in South Korea. His current research interests include teacher quality and policy in international context, and teacher professional development with technological innovation.

References

Aurén, H. (2017). Finland country case study. (Background paper for Global Education Monitoring Report 2017/8.)

Coburn, C. E., Hill, H. C., & Spillane, J. P. (2016). Alignment and accountability in policy design and implementation: The Common Core State Standards and implementation research. Educational Researcher, 45(4), 243-251. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X16651080

Darling-Hammond, L. (2000). Teacher quality and student achievement. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(1), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v8n1.2000

Darling-Hammond, L., & Young, L. (2002). Defining “highly qualified teachers”: What does “scientifically-based research” actually tell us? Educational Researcher, 31(9), 13–25. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X031009013

Darling-Hammond, L., Wise, A. E., & Pease, S. R. (1983). Teacher Evaluation in the Organizational Context: A Review of the Literature. Review of Educational Research, 53(3), 285–328. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543053003285

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning. A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Milton Park: Routledge.

Isoré, M. (2009). Teacher evaluation: Current practices in OECD countries and a literature review. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Livingston, K. & Shiach, L. (2010). A new model of teacher education. In A. Campbell & S. Groundwater-Smith, S. (Eds.), Connecting Inquiry and Professional Learning (pp. 35-45). Routledge: London.

Niemi, H. (2015). Teacher professional development in Finland: Towards a more holistic approach. Psychology, Society and Education, 7(3), 278-294.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2014). TALIS 2013 results: an international perspective on teaching and learning. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing, and Retaining Effective Teachers. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264022157-ja

Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J., & Simola, H. (2002). Shoots of revisionist education policy or just slow readjustment? The Finnish case of educational reconstruction. Journal of Educational Policy, 17, 643-658.

Rivkin, S. G., Hanushek, E. A., Kain, J. F., Rivkin, B. Y. S. G., Hanushek, E. A., & Kain, J. E. (2005). Teachers, schools, and academic achievement. Econometrica, 73(2), 417–458.

Sahlberg, P. (2011a). Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland. New York: Teachers College Press.

Sahlberg, P. (2011b). The fourth way of Finland. Journal of Educational Change, 12(2), 173–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-011-9157-y

Sahlberg, P. (2011c). The professional educator: Lessons from Finland. American Educator, 35(2), 34–38.

Salhberg, P. (2010). Rethinking accountability in a knowledge society. Journal of Educational Change, 11(1), 45-61.

Tarhan, H., Karaman, A., Kemppinen, L., & Aerila, J. (2019). Understanding Teacher Evaluation in Finland: A Professional Development Framework. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 44(4).

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (2017). The global education monitoring report: Accountability in education. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.

Valijarvi, J. (2004). The system and how does it work: Some curricular and pedagogical characteristics of the Finnish comprehensive school. Education Journal, 32, 31-55.