A touchstone of Finnish curriculum thought and core curriculum for basic education: Reviewing the current situation and imagining the future

Abstract

Pandemics, like other global challenges, are unquestionably curricular issues. They are curriculum issues not only because of the disrupting consequences of Covid-19 and the economic and social crisis alike but also because people have, through their own activities, contributed to global catastrophes and perpetuated injustices. This article attempts to answer the question: How does Finnish curricular thought, including the role of the teacher and the core curriculum for basic education, respond to the various global crises? While reviewing the current situation, the article also imagines a post–Covid-19 curriculum. Reactivating what is still powerful in Bildung/Didaktik and emphasizing the importance of education’s ethical dimension and the teacher’s role as a curriculum theorist offer the means for dealing with the theme. In addition, understanding the structure of the National Core Curriculum document, the political dimension of the Finnish curriculum’s design process, and the educative possibilities in subjects and multidisciplinary modules, the teacher is capable of creating opportunities for educational experiences that are (ethically) significant for students, proactively and in terms of crises.

Towards equity literacy: exploratory enquiry with Finnish student teachers

“…(NCCBE) 2016) emphasising generic, transversal skills, e.g. critical thinking, future skills and multiliteracies as well as teacher collaboration and integration across subjects (Hakala and Kujala 2021;Haapaniemi et al 2020).…”

“…Gorski 2016a; Pennington et al 2013) have been suggested to capture the overarching issues and qualities. In teacher education, these notions could potentially be supported by the increasing emphasis on generic skills and competences over subject-matter-based objectives in curricula at different levels (Hakala and Kujala 2021;Harju and Niemi 2018;Toom and Husu 2018). In the context of intercultural teacher education, Dervin, Moloney, and Simpson (2020) suggested using 'competences', in the plural, to recognise the various dimensions of teachers' intercultural competence.…”

Including students with special educational needs in physical education: An analysis of the current Finnish national core curriculum

“…F I G U R E 1 Structure of the Finnish national core curriculum of basic education Thus, if we seek to understand the emergence of any particular curriculum version, the complex histories that characterize how a school or a subject function must also be understood (Brady & Kennedy, 1999). As previous research has shown, the desired curricular goal in PE is to shape the students' bodies to conform to the requirements of particular sports, which goes back to the strong role of extracurricular sports in the past (Giese & Ruin, 2018;Hakala & Kujala, 2021). Until emphasizing the educational goals of PE in the current curricular shift in Finland (FNBE, 2016) and internationally, normative expectation of a healthy and functioning body capable of performing at a high level has been idealized in curriculum documents (Giese & Ruin, 2018).…”

“…Cultural diversity and gender quality are promoted for the first time in the current PE curriculum, as stated above (FNBE, 2016). As pointed out by Hakala and Kujala (2021), previous Finnish PE curricula entirely excluded cultural diversity until 2014.…”

“…In Finland, the PE curriculum seems to lag behind in the development of interculturality and other diversity issues due to the traditional ideas of a homogenous Finnish society and (sports) culture (Hakala & Kujala, 2021). Hakala and Kujala (2015) therefore suggest that teachers should be conscious of the ethos of sport behind lesson planning to counteract its force.…”