La selección y formación del profesorado: clave para comprender el excelente nivel de competencia lectora de los alumnos finlandeses

Authors

Javier Melgarejo DraperSalto de línea Director del colegio Claret de Barcelona. Ldo. en Psicología y Dtor. en Pedagogía.

Abstract

Teacher’s selection and training: key to understand the excellent level of reading competence of Finnish pupilsSalto de línea Salto de línea This article briefly analyses the Finnish education system, with the aim of discovering «which variable is critical in this education system to achieve the greatest efficiency possible in the reading competence of its pupils». Finland stands out exceptionally in the outputs weighted up in all international indicators (OECD, IEA), particularly in the extraordinary quality in reading literacy of its pupils. Scientific evidence proves that Finland has achieved a progressive increase in the reading success without any extraordinary input. The central, verified, hypothesis is that the «primary and secondary teacher’s training» (which includes a previous selection at university, the theoretical training at university, and the practice training) is the critical variable to explain the excellent performance of Finnish pupils at reading competence. Constant comparison method is used for this analysis, comparing the Finnish case with other Nordic countries and, particularly, with the Spanish case. Several concepts are essential: the concept of «education system», and the school, the socio-cultural, and the familiar subsystems. The author proposes an explanatory model of operation of education systems, and gives improvement proposals for the Finnish system as well as for the Spanish one.

Keywords

Education system, Finland, reading literacy, international indicators, teacher training, constant comparison method.