Few Finnish pupils have adequate command of practical use of computers

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“The Finnish information society has started to crumble from the roots up”, establishes University of Jyväskylä Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology, Professor Tommi Kärkkäinen.
      Kärkkäinen is referring to the weak situation with regard to the basic teaching of computer skills in Finnish schools.
      As a result, the level of schoolchildren’s practical application of computer skills has weakened.
     
The findings of new studies conducted among comprehensive school, upper secondary school, and polytechnic students worry the experts. Kärkkäinen recommends information technology to be reinstated as an official discipline in schools. Senior assistant Leena Hiltunen and assistant Jaana Markkanen from the Faculty’s Department of Mathematical Information Technology agree.
      According to them, today’s youth are comfortable enough surfing the Internet.
      However, few of them have a solid command of text processing, spreadsheet computation, presentation graphics, image processing, information retrieval, or media literacy.
      Docent Marja Kankaanranta of the Finnish Institute of Education Research, who in part coordinated the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) comparison study SITES (Second Information Technology in Education Study) 2006, has observed that in Finland the headmasters have an exceptionally great say when it comes to the level of IT teaching in their schools. Depending on the headmaster’s own interest level, the quality of teaching can vary from extremely high to quite feeble.
     
Kankaanranta is aware that the pupils’ utilisation of computers in school is very different from the usage at home.
      The more IT is taught in school, the less computers are used at home - and vice versa.
      The University of Jyväskylä experts recommend a system whereby an IT subject teacher would teach the basic skills that could then be applied and complemented in other classes and on other levels.
      According to Kärkkäinen, the number of IT subject teachers graduating in Finland each year is far too small. Instead of a mere 15, the minimum need is in the region of 40.
      Hiltunen and Markkanen point out that according to the present comprehensive education curriculum, information and communication technologies are to be included in other subjects.
      “IT-related matters cannot be learned without systematic, repetitive training”, Hiltunen and Markkanen emphasise.
     
The Ministry of Education officially outlined the Finnish information society’s objectives in its report Education, Training and Research in the Information Society: A National strategy for 2000-2004. In it the Ministry urged that each educational establishment draw up a strategy for its teaching of information and communication technologies in order to develop the use of new technologies in teaching and studying.
      In Hiltunen and Markkanen’s view the problem is that these strategies are not assessed, updated, or monitored.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finland breaks point record in PISA study (5.12.2007)
  Practical use of computers ebbing away in Finnish schools (8.12.2004)

Links:
  Education, Training and Research in the Information Society: A National strategy for 2000-2004

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