Towards twenty-first century education: Success factors, challenges, and the renewal of finnish education

This chapter seeks to analyze the success factors, challenges, and renewal of Finnish education in the context of learning twenty-first century competency. We analyze the good performance and low variation in performance of Finnish students and suggest Finnish teachers and teacher education as well as the Finnish approaches to curriculum, assessment and quality assurance as possible factors for the excellent results. In addition, we analyze possible reasons for the recent decline in assessment results. Challenges for Finnish education in the classroom, school, municipality, and national level as well as challenges in teacher education are considered. Finally, we introduce the new Finnish national curriculum and how it aims to develop the twenty-first century competencies of students as a solution to overcoming the challenges. The creation of teacher collaboration networks is suggested as a way to support teachers’ continuous professional development, particularly with respect to their teaching of twenty-first century competency. We show how such networks could facilitate the creation and sharing of educational innovations related to teaching and learning through teachers’ collaboration, inquiry, and problem-solving activities as well as through a close connection to classroom practice.