Undertaking Professional Development With Finnish Teachers

For three months between Feb-April 2024, I have been living and working in Sweden, employed by Stockholm University as ‘guest lecturer’. This post is the second of a series that discusses some of the highlights of my time there.

Following on from my work with students in Stockholm, and the various lectures I have been giving to undergraduates, I’ve also been working with a group of eight primary and junior secondary teachers in Mariehamn.  Mariehamn is the main town on a little island called Aland situated midway between Sweden and Finland.  It’s actually Swedish-speaking but is part of Finland.  It’s very picturesque.

I’ve led a series of three-hour PD sessions with them around ‘writing launches’, ‘shared writing’ and ‘writing workshops’ and I encourage them to undertake practical exercises with their students between sessions. Here’s a photo of me and my group at the conclusion of one of our sessions.

I’ve also had the pleasure of spending time in some of their classrooms and it’s really interesting.  The kids are lovely and love practising their English but almost all of the teachers work with their students in whole class (rather than small group) situations, largely because they don’t believe that students not working with the teacher will retain their focus.  I tell them that our kids can be ‘just as naughty’ and ‘just as easily distracted’ as theirs, but we promote independence right from school-entry.  Hence we can teach needs-based small groups while others work independently.  As keen as they are, it will be a slow process for the teachers to move to this.  

In addition, they do lots of assessment but almost all of it is ‘assessment for accountability’ rather than ‘assessment for learning’.  Needless to say, they find this frustrating.  ‘Teaching to needs’ (rather than teaching from a text-book) is a reasonably new concept to them, but one they are very excited about.

Here’s a photo of an article that the local press wrote about my work on Aland. 

Unless you can read Swedish, it’ll mean nothing to you but the headline reads:

Murray Gadd Wants to Help Children Find the Joy of Writing. 

Yes, this is my life’s work.