The Fourth Way: Policy Analysis On Finnish Basic Education Reform

With the development of knowledge society since 1990s, basic education gets attention increasingly, and become the focus in national and international agenda. In UNESCO policy documents, basic education is considered as the key measure for the society transformation and civilization sustainable development. When it comes to the new millennium, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) organized by OECD is treated as an important international test to evaluate performance of basic education system Its target is for student future development, and is accepted by more and more countries around the world. PISA test has carried out for four rounds (2000,2003,2006,2009), during which Finnish education system is showing excellent performance in the participating countries and regions. Finnish basic education system is considered as the world's most high-quality, equitable and efficient education system. Excellence of basic education in Finland has attracted attention from countries around the world. It is rapidly becoming a hot research to explore the mystery of success in Finland.Most previous studies used static perspective, trying to find related factors that can improve the performance of the education system from school curriculum, educational management, educational policy and practice etc. It may be helpful to discover specific characteristics in Finnish education system, but could not confirm whether it is causal relationship between these factors and Finnish education system. On the contrary, they cast mysterious color on Finnish education system This study uses Historical Sociology approach, and finds that since 1960s Finnish education system has undergone tremendous reforms and gradually generates the organization structure and ideas. It abandoned the previous hierarchy structure, and changed to unified comprehensive system. Equality is treated as the dominated ideology in school and curriculum reformHowever, it is different from the notion that Finnish uses a pattern of gradual reform This study finds that Finnish education uses neither gradual change, nor radical reform, but a "phase-type of change". It is one phase from 1960s to 1990s, and from 1990s it steps to another stage. During the stage, educational reform shows certain continuity; but between the two phases, the idea and content of educational reform shows great differences. Before 1990s, it was the main feature for Finnish comprehensive school to be a fair and welfare system. It adopted bureaucracy and state control. But 1990s later, it is more concerned about personal interests and self-development. Freedom of choice and competition appeared in neo-liberal discourse, and existed with fair words in parallel. Two conflictive discourses appear in the educational system and become the inner parts of complex social, economic and political systems.For the analysis of characteristics of the Finnish education system, this study suggests that Finland has not adopted the international popular pattern-"global education reform movement", but basing on the traditional professionalism, promotes a relaxed standard of responsibility and flexibility of overall development of students. It is alert to market power. It is the implementation of these initiatives that make the Finnish school liberal movement to avoid disadvantages in new-liberal movement. But this study does not agree the view that Finland opened up the "Fourth Way" in education reform as many researchers held. Based on international situation, this study analyzes power matrix in education system in Finland, and finds that the Fourth Way notion is reliable in theory, but it is still questionable in policy practice. Finnish education reform is not an independent path, on which international organizations and mainstream ideology have great influence. Especially 1990s later, neo-liberal ideology of gradually gained a firm foothold in Finland, and Finnish traditional philosophy was under stress. From the perspective of State-Market power balance, the Finnish model is between the First Way and the Third Way path. Its fundamental properties and logic have not changed. Finnish social, economic, cultural and political context have major differences from other states. It would lead to another way mistakenly if policy makers ignore policy background and simply transfer Finnish policies and measures to their own state. Basic education reform is a complex and difficult task, when we learn education change experience from other countries in the perspective of globalization, we should gradually promote the conduct of national policy practice based on own situational context.