Heidi Krzywacki

Promoting mathematical thinking in Finnish mathematics education

In this chapter, we outline some of the main characteristics of the mathematics education in the Finnish educational context. In Finland, at both primary and secondary school levels teachers are educated to be autonomous and reflective academic experts.

Investigating Finnish Teacher Guides as a Resource for Mathematics Teaching

ABSTRACT The most commonly used Finnish mathematics teacher guides (Grades 1–6) are investigated so as to determine what kind of resource they constitute for teachers in planning and enacting mathematics teaching and what kind of mathematics classroom they promote. The structure and the main contents of the guides were found to be quite homogeneous. The nature of communication was mostly descriptive, but the separate activities suggested for each lesson were quite explicitly described. Suggested activities, such as mental calculation tasks and homework assignment, were typically motivated by non-specific rationales, and many activities seemed to be taken for granted in the Finnish mathematics classroom culture. The results add both to knowledge about how to analyse teacher guides and to knowledge about Finnish educational features.

Promoting Mathematical Thinking

In this article, we outline some of the main characteristics of the mathematics education in the Finnish educational context. In Finland, teachers are educated to be autonomous and reflective academic experts at both primary and secondary school levels. This policy means there is a strong emphasis on teachers’ independence and autonomous responsibility and it also has many consequences for teaching mathematics.

Challenging traditional classroom practices: Swedish teachers’ interplay with Finnish curriculum materials

ABSTRACT In the current paper, we present an analysis of a case study in which we have followed Swedish primary teachers who voluntarily began using translated Finnish curriculum materials, i.e. a textbook and teacher guide, in order to reform their mathematics teaching. The multifaceted data, consisting of questionnaires, interviews, protocols from collegial meetings and classroom observations, were gathered during the period 2010–2014. The analysis of the interplay within this cross-cultural setting reveals the special characteristics and the challenges existing in practice. Both the experienced and inexperienced teachers offloaded a great deal of their agency to the materials in order to become familiar with the ideas they mediated. Yet, the lack of a clear rationale behind the organization of the materials, as well as the suggested activities connected to taken-for-granted features of the Finnish teaching tradition, made fruitful interaction problematic. The changes teachers made in their classroom practice were tightly connected to the support offered in the materials, without which the teachers abandoned their new classroom patterns. Based on the results of this study, we suggest a number of general aspects that we regard as important to consider when implementing curriculum materials developed within another cultural-educational context.