Tirri, Kirsi

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Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto

https://helda.helsinki.fiImplementation of Citizenship Education in EU: FinlandTirri, KirsiEuropean Parliament2021-08-01Tirri , K 2021 , Implementation of Citizenship Education in EU: Finland . in A Zygierewicz(ed.) , Implementation of citizenship education actions in the EU : European ImplementationAssessment . European Parliament , Brussels , pp. 70-73 . https://doi.org/10.2861/42361http://hdl.handle.net/10138/341158https://doi.org/10.2861/42361unspecifiedpublishedVersionDownloaded from Helda, University of Helsinki institutional repository.This is an electronic reprint of the original article.This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail.Please cite the original version.EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service    70 the lack of terminological and structural clarity, the most problematic issue is that new CE curricula have made the citizen invisible and disempowered. The citizen is literally shifted from the position of the bearer of rights and freedoms by which he/she actively participates in creating the ideas and modes of practice of human rights, democracy and civil “community” to the position of an individual subjected to institutional transmission of knowledge about these three systems. This is the reason why the question of whether education in Croatia serves the citizens to become politically dependent of emancipated, is more valid today than two decades ago (Kovačić & Horvat 2016). 3.2. Finland Kirsi Tirri, University of Helsinki With consultation of Jan Löfström, University of Turku Finland is a northern European nation, independent since 1917. It is a parliamentary republic with the central government located in Helsinki. Finland has a population of 5.5 million. Finland became a member of the European Union in 1995. Finnish basic education consists of nine years of schooling from the age of 7 to 16. The central goal is to promote the development of each student as a human being and as a member of society. In this regard, the Government Decree (2012) emphasises human dignity, human rights, equity and equality. Following the rise in social-democratic values, the education system was declared free for every student at all levels. It also led to a shift from the previously parallel school system to the present nine-year comprehensive school. The strong financial support for education by the government has resulted in a low share of private schooling. Policy of Citizenship Education Citizenship education is a vital means of getting students involved and teaching them to be ethical, active members of society, thereby promoting tolerance and respect towards diversity (Tirri, 2008). Moreover, the need to prepare students for citizenship and improve their knowledge and understanding of democracy and political activities takes centre-stage. The role of education and specifically schools in enhancing these values is vital. These values are also in line with the most common European values as identified by the European Union and the Council of Europe. In addition, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Child form the legal basis for basic education (NCCBE, 2014, 15).  According to a Government Decree, education not only provides the necessary knowledge and skills for life, but also promotes ‘human dignity, respect for human rights and democratic values of Finnish society including equality and equity’ (NCCBE, 2014, 20). These values are thus taken into consideration at all levels of decision-making on and the provision of basic education. The next level of governance features the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE), which provides the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (NCCBE) including details on the syllabus, assessment, school culture, values and school ethos. The fundamental values of equity, equality, humanity, democracy and cultural diversity, discussed in the Government Decree cited above, are all taken into account in the recent NCCBE and reflected through seven transversal competences: 1. Thinking and learning to learn; 2. Cultural competences, interaction and self-expression; 3. Taking care of oneself and managing daily life; 4. Multi-literacy; 5. ICT competence; 6. Working life competence and entrepreneurship; 7. Participation, involvement and building a sustainable future.  The NCCBE clarifies the specific role and contribution of each subject area in improving all these competences. For instance, the main focus of Competence 7 is to stimulate participation in civic activities in order to ultimately ensure an effective democracy. This is achieved through building participatory skills and a responsible attitude towards the community and future. Competence 3, for example, fosters the skills of taking responsibility for one’s own actions, and emotional and social Implementation of citizenship education in the EU    71 empathy for appreciating the importance of human relationships and caring for others. According to curriculum specifications at the national level, all these competences should be covered in all subject areas. For instance, Competence 2 should be included in the subject areas of language and literature, religion, ethics, history, social studies, music, visual art, home economics and guidance counselling. Competence 7 should be addressed in language and literature, geography, health care, religion, ethics, history, social studies, music, visual art, craft, physical education and home economics.  Although international studies show that Finnish students’ knowledge about social and political issues is high, their involvement in civil society is low compared to other countries (see Torney-Purta et al., 2001; ICCS, 2010). The new NCCBE (2014), therefore, lays a greater emphasis on participation. As seen earlier, participation has also been introduced as one of the seven competences to encourage schools, education providers and teachers to get students more involved in school activities and to help them learn the skills of decision-making, taking responsibility for and understanding the effects of their decisions, and practicing democratic action. Practice of citizenship education The NCCBE introduces the main principles to guide education providers and schools in directing school operations and developing a suitable school culture. Municipalities and schools further design their specific local curricula based on these main guidelines and national goals provided by the NCCBE. Municipalities, schools, education providers and teachers in Finland thus enjoy a high level of autonomy in selecting educational materials, textbooks, and teaching and learning methods. Another principle widely emphasised in school culture is participation and democratic action. Students’ active participation in society serves as an important means of promoting their democratic participation. Involving students in activities both inside and outside of schools helps them gain knowledge and practice decision-making and assuming responsibility. Schools should also provide opportunities for students to discuss social and political questions. This is often achieved by encouraging students to be actively involved in decision-making through planning, implementing, and assessing and evaluating school activities. Integrative and multidisciplinary learning are a vital part of school culture. Therefore, schools are encouraged to also use functional activities such as theme days, events and campaigns. Moreover, cooperation between schools and various organisations and communities gives students a chance to expand their sense of involvement and action in civic society.  Knowledge about democratic participation, democratic politics and democratic society is included in different subjects. However, social studies bears the main responsibility for including topics related to these areas. Religious education, history, languages, geography, and philosophy are the main subjects in which democracy is discussed. Teachers also emphasised that based on the new NCCBE, schools have been encouraged to involve students in school life and let them make decisions about activities and processes to practice democracy. Further, the NCCBE highlights integrative and inclusive instruction in learning. Consequently, functional activities in the form of extracurricular projects have been widely used in schools to teach democracy.  According to Seland et al. (2021), the social studies section of Finnish NCCB 2004 contains more focused goals related to civic competences. They include promoting knowledge related to societal topics and promoting the ability to acquire and use critical information related to society and to understand societal processes. Also among the learning objectives is promoting pupils’ disposition to be active agents in a democratic society and “take an interest in social participation and exerting an influence.” However, there are few explicit references to values (Seland et al., 2021, 49). Löfström writes a lot about social studies. He argues that social studies should contribute to students becoming interested in societal matters and interested to participate in them as democratic citizens. EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service    72 The results in the ICCS surveys suggest that the pressing challenge lies in the field of participation, and not so much in improving Finnish students’ knowledge about societal matters. It is a challenge that obviously also other members of the school community than social studies teachers should take on, because it relates to how school communities in general could be made more supportive of young people becoming recognised and respected as citizens and autonomous actors in the community. The more recent developments in the curricula as well as the introduction of social studies in primary school, with its pronounced objectives in education for democratic citizenship, can be considered to reflect and give further support to a notion of social studies that emphasises constructive societal engagement and intellectual growth simultaneously (Löfström, 2019, 99).  Finnish Principals` Aims for Civic Education In a study among Nordic school principals, a strong support for critical thinking in civic education was identified (Seland et al. 2021). This emphasis can be explained as a consequence of ideological shifts within the social democratic regime itself. As a result, at the institutional level, civic and cognitive skills such as critical thinking seem to have surpassed political participation in the notion of what good citizenship means. This is a break from the ideas of citizenship underpinning the traditional Nordic model. The concept of Bildung is embedded in the historical coordination of education in the Nordic countries at both the institutional and political levels. Seland et al. explain principals’ strong support for critical thinking as an attempt to unite recent theory on critical thinking and the German/Scandinavian Bildung-centred Didaktik, which uses processes of lesson planning to facilitate students’ meaningful encounters with pedagogical content (Tirri & Kuusisto, 2016). For the critical-constructive Didaktik movement, the crucial point is the teacher’s ability to lead students toward Bildung, meaning self-determination, co-determination, and solidarity through the experience of meaning. If students are given examples they can connect to, new insight might help create personal and political agency (Seland et al. 2021, 59). Support by government policy, constraints and possibilities The government and the Ministry of Education provide good support towards the cooperation between schools and different NGOs and organisations. Close cooperation between schools and the University of Turku, for instance, has resulted in the widely known and successful KiVa project against bullying. Moreover, during the process of constructing the new core curriculum, the draft version of the document was uploaded onto the website of the Finnish National Board of Education in order to invite discussion, comments and suggestions by different agents, specifically NGOs. Subsequently, UNICEF has played a strong role in adding Child Rights to the curriculum, and environmental NGOs have played a vital role in the inclusion of the necessity of a sustainable way of living in the new curriculum as an underlying core value to be promoted in basic education. Although the Finnish formal documents seem to represent the common values well at all levels (national, European, and global), the values promoted in practice might be of a more national and European nature (Holm & Londen, 2010). International projects are needed to help students gain familiarity with the idea of entirely different cultures and the meaning of both democracy and of authoritarian regimes.  One of the main challenges is the fact that democracy is taken for granted and students do not have any clear idea about authoritarian regimes around the world, and the fact that democracy needs action. Another important issue that needs to be considered is the revision of pre-service and in-service teacher training in order to introduce teachers to the main changes and national goals of the official documents, since teachers might have limited knowledge about the NCCBE. We consulted Jan Löfström with two questions: what do you find positive in citizenship education in Finland and what should be improved? Implementation of citizenship education in the EU    73 Löfström is Associate Professor in History and Social Studies Education at University of Turku. His specialism are education for democratic citizenship and human rights education  ‘What I find positive in the parametres of citizenship education in Finland is that the national curricula in Social Studies and in History give more attention than before to 'literacy' skills (historical literacy, media literacy etc.) and that in the 2010's also recognizing the differentiality of interests between people in society and the 'political' nature of many public issues is included in the aims of Social Studies teaching. The picture used to be very 'smooth' in the curriculum and in textbooks but this has changed a little. It also comes forth more strongly in public views now than 20 years ago that 'politics' can and should be discussed in the class and teachers may disclose their political views in the classroom and make political opinions and discussion appear something ordinary and less suspect to students. It's also positive that the curricula and school administration leave freedom to teachers to use the kind of methods and emphasise the content that they think is best. Further the results show that so far there are small differences in societal knowledge and skills between schools.’ ‘What could be improved is that there is often not much collaboration or contact between school and the various agents in the local community, thus students don't have many opportunities to practice their civic skills in real life authentic situations. In upper secondary school there is also the national Matriculation Exam that is a format that does not easily allow to measure student's ability in some skills, and it may easily lead teachers to concentrate too much on what can be assessed in the exam, i.e. not skills of active civic participation in the local or other community, for example.’ 3.3. Germany Inken Heldt and Dirk Lange (Technical University Kaiserslautern and University of Hannover) With consultation of Hermann-Josef Abbs, University of Duisburg-Essen  Germany is a federal parliamentary republic. It is one of the founding states of the European Union, and therefore an EU Member State since 1 January 1958. It is also a member of the Eurozone since 1 January 1999. It has a strong literary tradition and is Europe's strongest economy. It also has a sizeable immigrant population comprising more than 7 million people, amounting to nearly 9% of the total population. Amongst Germany’s immigrant population, the largest group is of Turkish origin, comprising 2.5 million people or nearly 3% of the population, followed by 1.3 million Poles. The responsibility for the school system lies primarily with the 16 federal states. There are different education systems and plans in place, along with different types of schools and even different subjects.  Germany is represented by the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the 2016 ICCS cycle, which reports on how 14-year-olds are prepared to assume their roles as citizens. The study shows that the political knowledge of 14-year-old students is in the middle range in a global comparison. Compared to students from the European countries of comparison, German students show below-average performance. The students show a wide dispersion of performance. Students whose parents have little education perform significantly worse in the knowledge test than comparable students in other European countries. In no other participating school system, with the exception of Bulgaria, is political knowledge and reasoning so strongly linked to aspects of students' family background. A closer look at the results for North Rhine-Westphalia also reveals clear disparities in political knowledge between students in Gymnasium (providing advanced secondary education with an emphasis on academic learning) and students in other types of schools. In comparison with the European participating countries, students indicate a very low willingness to participate. This applies both to participation in peaceful demonstrations and elections and to involvement in 

Implementation of Citizenship Education in EU: Finland

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Implementation of Citizenship Education in EU: Finland

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