Merja Paksuniemi, PhD, Satu Uusiautti, PhD and Kaarina Määttä, PhD
University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

Series: Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World
BISAC: EDU043000

The purpose of this book is to provide a special viewpoint on the development of the Finnish school system and teacher education. Understanding the success of today requires information about the past. The book covers the history, ideological background, and development of Finnish teacher education from the 19th century to today. The historical review uses a northern Finnish teacher training college of Tornio as the example.

This book provides interesting information about the ideological foundation of the first teacher training colleges, description of how the ideology was applied in the practice of teacher training, and how students were selected for teacher training. The development of teacher training faced certain hardships too. What happened in Finnish society since the establishment of teacher training colleges in the second half of the 19th century affected Finnish teacher training significantly. The book brings out the special circumstances in Finland at the beginning of the 20th century focusing on the war years of 1939-1945.

This book, in a very tangible manner, presents the implementation of the educational ideologies of Finnish colleges and elementary schools shedding light on the success story of the Finnish educational system as it has been continuously ranked among the best in the world. The Finnish ethos of seeing education as an act of social justice seems still functional. The belief in the value of learning and education as the means to achieve success has been strong in Finland already for over a hundred years.

This book provides a multidimensional description of the historical phases of the Finnish teacher education up to today. The book is aimed at the professional, academic audience, and practitioners and researchers, including historians and educators, teachers and teacher educators, and everyone interested in the educational system of Finland and its history. (Imprint: Nova)