Research On The Co-cultivation Model Of Teacher Education And Its Practice In Finland

“Education is the first of development and teachers are the first of the education”The quality of teachers is the most important factor influencing the quality of talents.Moreover,it’s the key to development,which naturally calls for the innovation of teacher education model.The co-cultivation model of teacher education which based on the cooperation between universities,government and schools has been carried out in the recent teacher education reform.Finland’s performance on the international student assessment attracted the worldwide attention,the achievement of its basic education are the result of successful educational reforms and highly educated teachers.Finland is a country with rich experience in teacher education.It’s teacher education reform can be traced back to 1970 s,after 40 years of educational reform,Finland has launched a new cooperative model of teacher education.This study aims to explore the co-cultivation model and its practice by taking the class teacher education as an example.The explanation of co-cultivation model of teacher education can be draw from the analysis of a large number of literature by using the literature research method and comparative research method.Differed from the cooperation between university and school,the co-cultivation model of teacher education put more emphasis on the responsibility of government.Universities,central government,local government,teacher training schools,city schools,associations,research institutions and other stakeholders are involved in pre-service education of teachers,they make decisions together on the student selection,objectives and ideas of teacher education,curriculum setting,education practice and teaching evaluation.The roles of the partners in co-cultivation has been summarized.The Finnish government leads the cooperation of partners.The Ministry of Education and Culture is more involved in making policies and funding whereas,the local government is take charge of the management of the partnership.The universities are responsible for teacher education,they have strong collaborative relationships with schools.The function of city schools and teacher training schools are to provide educational practice for student teacher,so monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the student’s practice are their main responsibility.Through the analysis of the motivations of the participants,the study draws the following concludes: First,universities are long for the funding,policy and information from government,and try to create a platform for the integration of theory,research and practice;Second,the government aims to improve the quality of basic education through teacher education,and ensuring education equality with high-quality teachers;Third,schools look forward to promoting the implementation of the national core curriculum,to cooperate with universities for providing teacher induction and in-service teacher education,and to obtain funding for educational practice and action research.Focusing on the keyword “co-cultivation”,this study found that the formation and operation of Finnish co-cultivation model of teacher education are supported by following conditions: The political culture of “trust”provides a favorable policy environment for co-cultivation,and decentralization of education governance creates the opportunities for universities to collaborate with more educational institutions;The educational forums,seminars and informal conversations,as well as cooperation alliance are important ways of communication among participants;Open databases and online systems enable the flow of resources among different institutions;More importantly the tradition of respecting teachers,equality in education and cooperation are the cultural factors affecting co-cultivation.Great achievements have been made in cooperation and integration of the teacher education,and in the development of regional education.Meanwhile,some challenges that need to be faced,such as the declining quality of teachers,inadequate design of co-cultivation system and insufficient funds.