The Education for the Future (EDUCA) Flagship: How to make Finland the model country for education again?
The research and development of education was significantly strengthened during spring 2024 when the EDUCA Flagship started its operations under the direction of the Ģֱ. The consortium now consists of nearly 150 researchers, including doctoral researchers.
With the help of research-based knowledge, the Flagship strives to promote the development of education and educational policy decision-making as well as the competence of teachers and principals. The aim is also to take new research initiatives together with various actors in business and society.
The University of Helsinki, the University of Turku, and Aalto University are part of the consortium led by the Ģֱ.
Declining learning outcomes a concern
One of the main goals of the EDUCA Flagship is to gain knowledge on why learning outcomes are declining and school absences increasing. The engagement of children and young people with school, well-being challenges, and the heritability of education are examples of overlapping phenomena that have raised concern in recent years.
“The EDUCA Flagship brings together multidisciplinary and multimethod expertise which hopefully helps us to find more reasons for the decline of learning outcomes and research-based proposed solutions to change the direction,” says EDUCA Flagship director, Professor Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen.
Polarisation and inequality, particularly among children and young people, have increased in Finnish society. Polarisation has been observed, for example, in pupils’ well-being, study engagementand learning outcomes."
"The mutual evaluation of the decline in proficiency levels, attitudes towards studying, and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic do not offer simple answers or explanations for the decline of learning outcomes.”
What is behind the differences in proficiency levels?
“It is known that differences in pupils’ proficiency are due to different individual and social backgrounds,” says Lerkkanen.
Competence is influenced by pupils’ background and enthusiasm for reading– reading easily takes a backseat to other attractions
In the most recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study on the capabilities of 15-year-olds, the number of low performers in reading and mathematics has clearly increased and even the level of the so-called top performers deteriorated.
The main reasons behind the differences in proficiency levels are down to a person’s home background and interest in reading and mathematics. Especially reading and mathematics performance of children from a lower socioeconomic background have deteriorated in relation to others the most. Also well-being factors are linked to learning outcomes.
Poor reading skills are also linked to the risk of dropping out of school and secondary education choices. The negative trend is also reflected in recreational reading.
Being engaged reader and having reading as a hobby are strong predictors of reading skills, but also of being good at other subjects and further studies,” says Lerkkanen.
“The development also reflects a drastic change in the time use in families, and with children and young people, where reading has often taken a backseat to other attractions.”
More understanding of optimal learning moments and engagement
Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen says that the aim of the Flagship is to create an ecosystem for education which promotes understanding of the declining learning outcomes, increased school absences, dropout rates, and the benefits of technology for learning.
With the assistance of the multidisciplinary ecosystem, a data infrastructure will be built to merge the theoretical and multi-method expertise of educational science, psychology, learning analytics, sociology and economics, as well as a platform for the utilization of extensive longitudinal and register data.
The aim of the EDUCA Flagship is to strengthen the research-based decision making when it comes to educational policy making,and experiments, and also to develop teacher and principal training,” says Lerkkanen.
“We want to increase understanding of optimal learning moments and educational engagement. In addition, we want to make research results better available to policymakers on social and individual learning processes, the competences of teachers and education directors, and scalable technology enhanced learning solutions and environments.”
Research data generated in four research areas
The four research areas of the EDUCA Flagship are the following:
- Assessing the impacts of educational policy reforms and interventions
- Learning variability, interaction, and support in learning contexts
- Scalable digital solutions for learning and teaching
- Teachers, principals and leaders as builders of learning communities
Additionally, an educational policy review is undertaken across all research areas, while research-based solutions are sought for complex educational policy challenges.
Over 100 researchers work for the Flagship. In addition, a total of 78 doctoral researchers will participate in the EDUCA-Doc doctoral training pilot, 22 of them at the Ģֱ.
The two-year pre-primary education trial is a great example of testing scenarios
One of the EDUCA Flagship’s main datasets involves the two-year pre-primary education trial, which was carried out from August 2021 to May 2024 and financed by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.
In accordance with the law on the two-year pre-primary education trial (1046/2020), municipalities or areas consisting of municipalities were selected for the trial by random sampling. About 35,000 children born in 2016–2017 participated in the trial, of whom 10,000 were randomly selected for the trial group. The Finnish National Agency for Education prepared the basics of the curriculum for the trial.
“The experiment is a fantastic example of how educational policy scenarios can be anticipated and tested before their extensive introduction,” says Lerkkanen.
“The goal of the experiment is to gain insights into the changes of pedagogical practices and the two-year primary education’s impact on the development and learning conditions of children, on their social skills and on the formation of a healthy self-confidence.”
In April 2023, an interim report on the experiment was published, and the actual research results will be released in 2025. It is included in the current Finnish Government Programme that a decision on the possible introduction of two-year pre-primary education will be taken at the earliest after this date. The further follow-up and monitoring of the trial’s affects will continue as a subproject of the EDUCA Flagship.
Rebuilding with research-based decision-making
The Research Council of Finland will fund the Flagships in two 4-year periods.
“When EDUCA eventually completes its work,” Lerkkanen says, “the main achievement at that point would be the fact that the Flagship has produced information to support decision-making, which can assist in, for example, halting the decline of learning outcomes while also stopping the increases in school absences and dropout rates.
“Overall, more understanding is needed of the shortcomings of comprehensive support for children and young people, and of how can they be addressed to support learning and well-being throughout their educational path, starting from early childhood education.”
In addition, for the EDUCA-Doc Doctoral Education Pilot the goal is to produce doctoral graduates within the set three-year period. The aim is that these graduates will produce socially impactful research data for the development of early childhood education and primary education, and that they will be employed in a wide range in both the public and private sectors.
