Leading a Learning System - A Conversation with Olli-Pekka Heinonen

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

We don't know what is the knowledge that a child will be needing in 30 years' time, and that means that we have to create an entirely different way of looking at the adaptability of the system and creating ways of emergent learning in the system.

Hi everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This week is a long-anticipated and fascinating conversation with Olli Pekka Heinonen, who will be the new Director General of the IB. Until now, Olli Pekka has been the Director General of the Finnish National Agency of Education, and prior to that, the Minister of Education and Science in Finland from '94 to '99, the Minister of Transport and Communication from '99 to 2002, and a member of the Finnish Parliament. He has also been the television director at the Finnish Public Broadcasting Company and State Secretary in 5 different ministries. Olli Pekka is a member of the Education Advisory Group for the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs, and from the beginning of May, he will start as the new Director General of the International Baccalaureate. He holds a master's degree in law, is married, and has 3 children. And you can follow Olli Pekka on LinkedIn and on Twitter @haino1olli.

Good morning. Good morning. Nice to meet you. Brilliant.

Well, thank you so much for joining me. Firstly, I would just love to say congratulations on your recent appointment as the DG for the IB. So that's very exciting. And obviously there will be a large community of IB educators out there very interested in you and who you are in terms of your beliefs and philosophy around education. So perhaps we we can start there. I would just love to ask you, perhaps you could think about some of your priorities in terms of what are the top must-haves for children and young people in this kind of contemporary international education with AI and, you know, the ubiquity of machine learning and rapid change and all of these things which we know. What would you say were your kind of personal priorities around education in response to that?

Well, what I've seen and been involved in this area My kind of basic idea is that you should have the focus on learning, that that's actually the most important thing, that we sometimes lose sight of that ball, that we are not concentrating on learning. And that's where all the important things happen or don't happen. Is where the learning happens. And after that, it's the question that how can we create an atmosphere, a culture, a learning system that supports that learning. I, I think that is most important. The second is the thing that we're definitely seeing a world which is changing very rapidly in a way that we cannot kind of predict, and that means that The idea that we could, for example, from a national level, know the right answers and to kind of steer through legislation and budgeting what should be happening in schools, it doesn't really function. That we have to be able to create a kind of an innovative and experimental atmosphere in the school communities. For the schools to be able to cope with the changes and the challenges that come with those changes. And of course, that's an issue that also brings the teacher professional in the center, that having a high-quality teacher education and continuous education system is of, of central importance. Maybe the third one is that We quite often think that what are the kind of building blocks of a functioning education system, and then we're talking about teacher education, or we're talking about curriculum, or we're talking about assessment, or the relationship between schools and homes, and there are different building blocks. But I think what is essential is how those things are interconnected. And then we come to the issue that how you can create enough trust in an education system, to be able to learn together, actually, to kind of be able through learning increase the trust in the system, and through that give autonomy to different actors, starting from teachers, the schools, the local authorities, to, to make those decisions and increase their capacity to adapt to these changes. So it's a kind of a learning circle, positive circle that we need to be able to create.

That's brilliant. Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. And I'd love to dig into a few of those things that you've said actually in some of the later questions, because I know you've had a big focus on experimentation and innovation with some of your work. But yeah, no, that's really useful introduction, if you like, and we'll dig into some of those things. So Obviously, your work with the National Agency for Education in Finland has been— so, you know, you're not yet with the IB, so we'll focus in on Finland. And obviously Finland has been very well regarded globally in terms of its education system. So perhaps we can look at a few of those aspects because I had a recent conversation with Andreas Schleicher about different aspects, which was great. But obviously with the PISA results in Finland declining over the last decade, or more. It obviously begs the question there in terms of what's the current situation, and you know, they're still very much, you know, above the OECD average, but clearly there's, there's some interesting dynamics of change happening in Finland. So I would love, firstly, if we can just look at that in terms of what you think some of those reasons are.

Yes, that's correct. That has been the, the case. And first of all, I would like to say that we are not developing the Finnish education system to get good PISA results. Good. We didn't do that in the earlier decades and we don't do it today. And at the same time, of course, the evidence that the PISA results show us are important evidence to us. Yeah. But what we also want to kind of make sure that we have a more holistic view of how we can help help each child in Finland to grow into humanity. That's the aim that we're having. And, and that's a kind of a wider objective. And in that we need many different kinds of evidence: research, evaluations, assessments, questionnaires, tacit knowledge from the teachers, and so on. But about the fact of some of the PISA results in Finland going down, I would say that What has been the problem has been the one that we have not been able well enough to take care of both wellbeing and learning. 'Cause they are very strongly interconnected. And we are seeing also in the Finnish society certain trends of polarization. There's more diversity in the Finnish society. And that means that we should be able to take care of the issues of wellbeing before the learning can happen. If you have something bothering your mind, it means that your mind is not flexible to learn new things. And that's the issue, that we have not been good enough. And, and I think now there is this understanding that it's not the way that the school is taking care of, of the learning, and then there's somebody else who's taking care of the well-being. It's a child who is a whole. And we have to tackle those issues and we have to find ways that those both important aspects that make the growth of a child possible are there better than they have been. So I would say that, that we are doing a lot of work in that sense, in all kinds of levels of the Finnish system.

It's interesting. I was reading about one of your experiments, actually it was related to breakfast clubs and how you were, you know, working with young people in the morning. And getting a good meal at the start of the day. But actually, the focus of that experiment, in inverted commas, was not to boost academic results, but actually to build the relationships between the teachers and the young people so they could understand and build those positive relationships, to have the understanding of the context and their morning that they'd had, and in order to then, of course, ultimately build academic results. But I thought that was a really interesting focus.

I think that's the case. And as the kind of diversity of needs and starting points of different pupils and students is getting bigger. That means that we have to have also abilities to understand that diversity and to be able to create more kind of personalized learning and well-being paths for each children. And that, that is a tricky issue And it's not the thing that it's sometimes misunderstood that then we're creating a more kind of individualistic system. No, definitely not. The ability to do at the same time more personalized learning paths and utilizing the strength of the community in learning, they have to go hand in hand. They're not opposite to each other, but they are part of the same challenge.

Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. I think often that idea of individualized learning and personalized learning are conflated and misunderstood. Yeah, that's brilliant. But then also just to follow on from that idea of diversity, just to dig in a bit more, one of the other dynamics in the results was the girls and the boys and the gender gap. That's quite an interesting one, right? Clearly the girls are flying. In Finland, but the boys seem to be struggling quite a bit. And I just— was there something there in terms of understanding that? Obviously it connects to what you've just been saying, but was there any other additional work or dimension to that that you had any observations on?

Well, it is kind of a tricky question for us Finns to really kind of understand that what we are talking about then, because generally we think also ourselves, that internationally compared, we are in gender equality issues quite a progressive country. And at the same time, that is the case you described. And actually, when, when talking about choosing our professions, it's very gender related. And, and for that reason, it is a big issue for us. I think what we are maybe dealing with is that we have unconscious different expectations and ways of dealing with boys and girls, which starts from the families, the parents. It's a cultural issue. Yeah, there is no kind of bad meaning in that, but it has an effect. The idea that boys are boys and they behave in a way, and girls are girls, and there are different expectations— how should they kind of perform in schools and so on. And for that reason, what we are doing is that we are increasing the gender sensitiveness of teachers. It's not gender kind of neutrality in teaching and learning, but being more sensitive about these issues and understanding our biases that we might be having and what's the effect of those biases. And that's the thing that we are working with. The positive issue is that when we look at the BIAC results of 25-year-olds, the learning differences and differences in, in learning outcomes, they have disappeared. But of course it's a serious issue that when you're a 15-year-old and when you're making kind of choices in your life, that when at that moment there are this kind of differences, it is still a very, very serious issue we're working with.

Yeah, it's very interesting that it converged later and the differences disappear. But no, fascinating. And then if we just shift slightly then to the level of curriculum in schools, because obviously I know out there there is a great deal of interest in the idea of phenomenon-based learning as a kind of interdisciplinary and inquiry-based curriculum model that Finland is using. But in 2016, you were part of the process of mandating that. So that it was part of the national curriculum and that all schools were engaged in that. I was just wondering, perhaps you could say a bit more about the rationale behind that, firstly, in terms of why it was mandated there, and then some reflections on how that has been in the last 3, 4 years in terms of understanding how teachers have responded to that, or what the skill gaps are, or the training needs there.

Well, first about the motivation behind it, it is the kind of interdisciplinary character of that approach. To integrate the different subjects and different fields of knowledge in a way that you not only bring that knowledge together, but you also strengthen the agency of pupils and students utilizing that knowledge. So it's not the question what you know, but what you can do with what you know. And there is often a very strong also the teamwork component there. And what's important is also that the pupils and students themselves are strongly involved in the process of choosing what are the phenomena or projects or issues that they want to dig into. So it's a motivational aspect there too. So those were the main motivations behind why the decision was done. Then about how it has been functioning Well, first I must say that to many teachers, to a lot of schools, there wasn't that much new in it. They had been doing similar things earlier, so it didn't kind of make a revolution. But of course, when you're making it so it covers all schools, then there is the issue that what are the kind of skills of the teachers, all teachers, what are the kind of materials that support that kind of work, and so on. And I think that has been developing quite well. I myself, I see a national curriculum, I see it as a tool for development. It's like a kind of a bonfire that you come to sit around to talk with each other and understand in a similar way that what are the objectives that you're looking for. And for that reason, of course, these years now have been the years of doing that having that dialogue in Finland. We have also had the discussion, which I think is important, that are all pupils prepared to take part in that kind of an inquiry or project or phenomena-based learning? That is it a fear that some of the students would be lacking behind being kind of quiet standby modes for that kind of pedagogical approach. And that's an important aspect for us to look after, that that won't happen.

That's a really interesting point, actually, especially when you situate that next to the PISA socioeconomic inequalities. And actually, that is one of the concerns about that kind of differently structured approach is that, yeah, perhaps it favours or supports better achievements in certain groups. That's very interesting. But I loved that metaphor of the bonfire. That's fantastic. But I think from what I understand, that kind of characterizes the education system in Finland is that idea of autonomy for the teachers, which is often quite revered around the world, let's say, in systems where there's a bit less of that for teachers.

Yeah, I think that is the case. And I see that as a kind of strength of our system. And as you mentioned, Andreas Schleicher, we have had many talks about the question that is it possible for an education system with so much autonomy to move to the same direction when there are rapid changes in society?

Mm-hmm.

That it's not centrally strongly led. Yeah. So can it make changes? And I was very proud of what happened with the COVID-19 and moving from schools to distance learning. Yeah. And how well the autonomous teachers actually took the responsibility of doing their work in entirely different circumstances and connecting with the children.

Yeah.

And I think that showed that because they had the autonomy, they were responsible of the teaching and learning, they could also use that autonomy to do it in, in different circumstances. So I thought that it proved our case to Andreas also.

Yeah, it's a good proof. Nice. But there's also something really interesting there, I think, in the idea of leading and guiding a complex system, right? So clearly a national education system is a deeply complex adaptive system, just like a school is, even on the ground, or a classroom is. So that kind of leads quite nicely because I, I spoke with Andreas about that tension between structure and agency, and actually We need kind of enabling structures, particularly to support innovation and build agency across the system. And I was really interested to read about your Innovation Center and the experimentation labs that you've been setting up. And that idea of learning loops, again, you know, building learning into the system, just fantastic, really interesting work. And that you talked about building the capacity and resilience at the local level. As well, connecting the local and the national. So it's kind of a big topic, I guess, but perhaps you could just say a bit more about that process of that kind of experimentation mindset and trying to embed that around the system, and maybe some examples of how that works.

Yeah, it is quite a big change in the traditional mindset of the different roles in the education system, because traditionally there is a strong tendency that all the actors in the system should have the right answers. That on the national level, we should be the ones who know how things should be done, and then we should make the decisions and implement them very kind of waterfall type model to, to the local level. Yeah. And on the local level also, the different professionals, also teachers, they should know the right answers. And the question with the world that we are living today is the fact that when we're talking, for example, how the kind of intergenerational transmission is happening, we don't know what is the knowledge that a child will be needing in 30 years' time.

Yeah.

And that means that we have to create an entirely different way of looking at the adaptability of the system and creating ways of kind of emergent learning in the system. And that means that when we have been doing those experiments and that innovation work, so that, for example, our agency, our people have phoned the schools and teachers and asked, do you have some problems that you need help with? The first reaction has been that, have we done something wrong? That they've been kind of scared that nobody has called from the national level, and now when they are calling, there must be something that we have done wrong. But after that process of getting together, and now we come back to the also the kind of responsibilities of well-being and learning, the different professionals that are working around the wellbeing and learning of children come together and start thinking, what's the problem and what should we do? When there comes that moment in those dialogues that somebody says that, I don't know what we should do, that's the moment when the important things start happening. That's the moment when you kind of let go of that shelter of having to know the right answers, and you really start the inquiry and learning path together, that what can we do together? And that's the spirit that we want to create, and not only in some schools, but we should be able to create that kind of a culture that covers all schools.

Amazing. That's brilliant. I absolutely agree. We always see education as a complicated problem that has right answers if only we can find the right experts, right? And it clearly is not. It's a complex problem that therefore requires a different approach. Really interesting. And clearly that idea that wellbeing and that interaction with learning is a wicked problem and those, you know, trying to address some of those. I mentioned the Breakfast Club example, but are there some other kind of practical examples of things where you have seen some interesting outcomes in terms of those experiments?

Well, actually, pretty many of them are connected with exactly this kind of well-being and learning integration. And the solutions are very different in different areas because the local circumstances are different. It might be the issues that how the professionals are working together, how they're connecting with the families, with the homes, and there are kind of very many different solutions, and I think there should be. And the thing is that we quite often do— we name those solutions best practices, and then we try to distribute the best practices, but it doesn't function that way because the people who have come up with that solution, they have gone through a learning process and a process of commitment. And if you only take the outcome and take it to another context, it won't stick. You might be able to take the process of learning and commitment, but the outcomes in other context might be entirely different. Yeah. So, so that's the understanding that experimenting, it's not about the outcomes, it's about the process.

Yeah, absolutely. That's really interesting. And then just, I'm conscious of your time. I'm sure you want to start your working day, but just, I'd love to, if we could just ask you one more question, because obviously with the IB you will be working and thinking about the diploma programme and the career-related programme and that idea of the school leaving certificate. So perhaps just in a Finnish context, if we could look at what's your thinking around the school leaving certificate in Finland and how is that kind of conversation evolving related to higher education and university?

Yeah, we have had quite active discussion about, in Finland, about this issue. We have on the secondary general education, we have this what we call matriculation test, which is the only kind of national test that we do have. On the vocational side, we have these kind of working life situation where you show what you know. And that's the method of showing that what you have achieved during the vocational education and training. I think that what we have done in Finland, if we talk about the matriculation test first, is that we have digitalized it fully. Um, actually the test is going on right now. So it's a very up-to-date issue here. And also what we have done— there are kind of many things that has happened there, but, but one thing is that in Finland, moving on from the secondary to the tertiary, what we want to make sure is that it's not up to one test, that the test matters, but there are also other paths that you can have to enter the university. So there's a certain percentage of people who have the possibility to be taken in because of the results in the matriculation test. But then there is also other possibilities that you have, and there's also the pathway through the Open University also to go in. So what we value very much in Finland is that there would be no dead ends in our system, that no matter what choices you make, you can later choose differently.. And that of course involves also the vocational side, that you can take the vocational side and you can still kind of end up doing your doctoral thesis in the university. So, so that's the idea that we have tried to highlight. But still, I would say that we need more interaction between the kind of autonomous universities and universities of applied science. And the secondary education and the matriculation test authorities to look at the issue from the viewpoint of the student. That we too often look at it from the point of view of the education institution. Yeah, but it should make sense from the student's point of view, and that kind of interaction and discussion we should have much, much more in Finland.

Yeah, interesting. It reminds me of something that Yong Zhao said to me, exactly that, about the idea that we always reform, we tinker with everything else except focusing on the needs of the learners, actually. And yeah, no, really interesting. Well, thank you. That's a fascinating conversation. I'd love to talk to you much more, but as a really interesting overview and introduction to you for the, for the IB network and, and more broadly, I think I just really Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much. It was really, really a pleasure to have this chance to talk about these issues. Great.

Well, thank you, Olli-Pekka. And yeah, I wish you the best starting the role at the IB in 6 weeks' time or so. And yeah, look forward to staying in touch.

Me too. Thank you, Tim.

Perfect. Have a great day.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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