Teacher Training in Finland

Finland is well known for its world advanced primary and secondary education in many international comparative studies. One of the crucial factors that contribute to its success is its unique teacher training system.

The video below illustrates how a Finnish research university affiliated primary school trains two student teachers during their first year teaching and how the school collaborates with university researchers to develop education theory and policy.

In most countries, teacher education, classroom teaching and education policy are three separated systems. Student teachers are taught with theories that are hard to apply in classroom teaching. Student teachers usually spent less than one year in student teaching, which is not enough for them to gain good amount of experience for first year teaching. As a result, the quitting rate is very high for the first two years teaching.

On the other hand, experienced teacher generally do not have access to make contribution to the research in the university level, even though many of them are exceptionally good at teaching and established their own theory of practise.

Finnish teacher training program successfully connects student teacher, experienced teacher and university researchers together and creates a very collaborative community to facilitate the learning and teaching across all different levels. This model is worthwhile for many countries to learn from and incorporate into their own education systems.

For more reading about Finland education system, visit: http://ncee.org/what-we-do/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-teacher-and-principal-quality/