Early literacy practices and the Finnish national core curriculum

Abstract

In 2004 the Finnish National Board of Education launched a new curriculum framework that includes principles, instructional aims, and a brief list of content by subject areas. The intent of this framework is that teachers should interpret the core curriculum at the local level and apply it in their own schools and classrooms. This approach encourages teachers to use their professional knowledge and take into account their students and the learning environment in applying and implementing the curriculum. This case study sought to understand how this core curriculum has been implemented by way of observations of language and literacy lessons in 8 grade 1 and grade 2 classrooms during a 2‐month period. The observations and the analysis were guided by earlier research conducted in classroom identified as ‘excellent’ in the US. The resulting data, in turn, were compared with the core curriculum. The findings show that, although some of the principles and the content of the core curriculum were reflected in practice, there were inconsistencies between the instructional methods used in the classrooms and the principles set in the core curriculum. Although some areas of the core curriculum were well represented in classroom language and literacy practices, others were covered only in part or not at all during the observation period.

Keywords:

• core curriculum
• Finland
• instructional methods
• literacy instruction
• primary education

Notes

1. See, e.g. Darling‐Hammond et al. (2000).

2. See Fisher et al. (1996).

3. See Grundy (1987).

4. See Bohn et al. (2004), Hay McBer (2001), Pressley et al. (2001), and Wharton‐McDonald et al. (1998).

5. See also Niemi and Jakku‐Sihvonen (2006).

6. i.e. evaluations of grades 1–9 in all subjects by Apajalahti et al. (1996), Norris et al. (1996); evaluations of ‘mother tongue and literature’ instruction reported in grade 2 by Huisman (2006) and in grade 6 by Korkeakoski (2001); and interviews of grades 1 and 2 teachers by Haring (2003).

7. See Korkeamäki and Dreher (1993).

8. Although Huisman’s (2006) report dealt with beginning grade 3 students’ achievement, she examined their grade 2 teachers’ practices.

9. All pre‐service teachers who participated in the course took part in the observations. Observations with reflective discussion were part of their coursework.

10. All grade 1 and 2 classrooms at the school were included in the study.

11. These observer’s notes (and others in this paper) were translated from Finnish by the first author. In many observations, the procedures of a lesson appeared in intervals of a few minutes. Five‐minute intervals were very common; but for some lessons even 2‐minute intervals were frequent.

12. i.e. each student’s set of notes was assigned a number and pages of these notes were numbered as well. The subsequent analysis made clear that the observational notes followed the guidelines given for observations.

13. In other words, the data were read line‐by‐line, reducing them and tallying the reduced data from each classroom into categories in a grid; see Miles and Huberman (1994).

14. Numerals were used to help find the data from the observational notes for constant checking. The first numeral indicates the number of each observer’s notes and the number or numbers after the colon indicate the page number of the notes. The arrows (see table 1) point to a reduced phrase inferred from the data.

15. For example, one teacher asked students to cut out news from foreign countries. In Finnish, news from foreign countries is a compound word ‘ulkomaanuutinen’ and includes a lot of information that is difficult for a grade 1 student to understand without a thorough explanation.

16. It is necessary to note here that, during member‐checking, teachers reported that the grade 2 practice on Fridays was to combine all their students and place them in ability groups. In these groups, students composed together for 30 minutes and were assisted more personally. The students were allowed to continue these compositions either at home or later in school. However, in grade 1, the focus was on spelling, and children were expected to learn how to spell words correctly before writing more freely.

17. For a typical feature of the Finnish language, see Korkeamäki and Dreher (2000).

18. During member‐checking, teachers responded to the lack of classroom libraries, noting that the goal is not to establish a library in each classroom, but to equip several libraries which will serve more than one classroom. The school’s architecture is based on the idea of a few classrooms sharing space in a foyer just outside the group of classrooms. These spaces have been planned to be places for such libraries. In fact, by the time of member‐checking the teachers had ordered information books based on the second author’s presentation on the importance of information books as part of a comprehensive reading programme.

19. In rural areas, the public libraries used to be in the same building as the primary school. This is no longer the case.

20. See, e.g. Morrow et al. (1999), Pressley et al. (2001), Tracey and Morrow (2002).

21. See Apajalahti et al. (1996), Atjonen et al. (2008), Haring (2003), Huisman (2006), Korkeakoski (2001), Norris et al. (1996).