Leadership in Finland

It is right students who succeeded would seldom return to teach or become part of the traditional ceremonial community. Mostly, standard Ontario teaching conventions where not based on firstly, Haudenosaunee culturally relevant material. Ontario found its most teaching practices, not for the quest for actual knowledge, but it was developed more so to change the student to embrace a different ideology, not based on the Haudenosaunee traditional cultural practices, but a western, Eurocentric individualistic, capitalistic approach. The Haudenosaunee would learn to reject this approach as they would see the outcomes of their children return from the residential schools. Real leaders lead by example, but not by authority or fear, but by responsibility, honor, trust, and charisma. While the peer outer involvement context, rooted in the collective (i.

e. , the peers), strives to permit autonomy in the context of one resolving their problems, so they learn responsibility and build the necessary interpersonal and social skills to develop orderly (Hayashi and Tobin, 2011). Hayashi and Tobin’s (2011) article on the “Japanese experiment” of Preschool in Three Cultures added an important new avenue to explore in the classroom: the “gallery,” or the audience of the collective (p. The authors state that even though they reviewed the Japanese children actively involved in the problem or conflict itself (those fighting, punching, yelling, tattle-telling, comforting and discussing), they failed to notice those on the periphery, the audience. The school day is long with little breaks for both students and teachers, and the learning environment is antagonistic to a style of free and open inquiry (Walker, 2017).

Its educational practices and beliefs are overwhelmingly hierarchical and dependant on authority rather than being based on autonomy and the collective or community. Thus, the onus of discipline and regulation is placed on the individual. They often vilify or are vilified, and intervention by those in a position of power is used to solve the dispute at hand which means that the children miss out on vital opportunities to experience a range of emotions and interactions which can benefit them greatly (Hayashi and Tobin, 2011, p. In contrast to the American system, the Finnish education system is known to many as one of the best. ” The Finnish system allows a certain degree of autonomy for the individual but misses out on the collective experience that the Japanese teaching experiment achieves.

As the Japanese analysis demonstrates, it is not just the individual(s) in the dispute but the entire social dynamic of the class-collective which is essential. In the Japanese experiment, the children learn crucial social skills overtly but also gain additional skills to handle disputes and conflicts covertly. The collective (i. e. So granting, for example, fifteen-minute breaks every 45 minutes for both teachers and students, or being very well-staffed, are based on the amount of funding allocated to the school system (Walker 2017; Harvey 2006). The Finnish educational system does allow for limited interaction between the students, as the teachers are trained to intervene once continues contact has been made (Walker, 2017). Much of this can be attenuated to the cultural limitations present as social constructions of individualism overrule those of autonomy.

The Japanese educational system takes this a bit further as their system has a focus on the collective. However, within the Japanese approach, certain limitations can be identified as well. 155; Kovacs). It is obvious you must intervene when the dispute is getting violent, or children are hurting each other. The true function here is to allow the students to witness, experience and help them understand the dispute in a manner to which they peacefully work through the resolution, autonomously. For example, the Haudenosaunee approach requires the two who are in dispute to work with each other to ensure the dispute was amicable. In this sense, the authority figure or teacher becomes a guiding figure as opposed to an authority figure. That is, learning is created through ceremonies and the relationships established through these ceremonies about the natural world.

As a result, this ensures that our knowledge continues within our conceptual and cultural framework, and as we get older it is enhanced through this dynamic which is established through participation in such ceremonies from a young age. Like the Japanese experiment where education is not some mere product of what knowledge the teacher decides to transmit or some product of the curricula, learning arises from unknown and emerging variables whereas the experience of dealing with such unplanned variables, disputes and/or conflicts generates a deeper more fulfilling meaning than just an explanation or description alone. The Haudenosaunee epistemology conceives of the experience of a person, of the student, as the point as it establishes a relationship that can only be gained by attendance and participation – that is, the feelings which arise from dealing with new, emerging experiences is the point here.

A point that is fundamental to grasping the world around us, making understanding, and a position central to growing as a person and living a fulfilling life. The dancers then take up the role of Thunders, and people watch and see the dancers sing the songs of appreciation, chanting specific songs for them. Only to be interrupted, by the hitting of a large stick on the floor by individuals to give a pure speech of thanks, along with a bag of cookies, meat or other food items (to be divided up amongst the participant dancers afterward). The ceremony supports the traditional stories, and the ceremony provides the vehicle to immerse the participant in a more holistic active learning approach to the primary avenues of Haudenosaunee life and community.

The Haudenosaunee perspective understands that children are socialized through observing others in a social setting and that they learn through experiencing unknown variables and through seeing social issues and the various consequences of specific actions or behaviors. This is the point of such large scale and community-driven cultural ceremonies. The emphasis on the community and the noninterventionism of the latter heavily resembles an Indigenous approach to education and childhood where the responsibility of individuals is to look after the community and the trust and the community is to look after the individuals. As the Finnish school system clearly shows the benefits of the freedom for students to choose, and as the Japanese experiment has demonstrated that shifting the “locus of social control” onto the level of the collective functions better in regard to promoting not only discipline and control but also to promote learning and early childhood development in general.

This excellent learning environment rooted in the peer context is conducted civilly and maturely where students are not perpetually paternalized by authority figures, and where the “audience” – or, those watching which form the collective – are not overlooked. These approaches are consistent with and directly relate to the Haudenosaunee perspective (Kovachs). But, moreover, these approaches provide a discourse on how to implement, and which to describe, such a plan to education that varies from the ingenious way. As a result, I found that real command allows others to learn for themselves and do not direct. So, authentic leadership, that is, Haudenosaunee leadership is the implementation and guidance of adequate social and education practices and beliefs which promote self-learning, autonomy, community and the collective: that is to say, making the social environment one that promotes real learning.

Thus, I decided to look at one component of leadership for this paper: the role of the teacher in middle and different ways of learning. Therefore, this paper discussed the role of leaders/authority figures in educational systems by exploring and contrasting the Finnish and Japanize concepts of autonomy and their pedagogical strategies regarding childhood education. I conclude by showing the similarities and comparing approaches to educational practices of the Haudenosaunee perspective which lays out [what]…… Nonetheless, while Finland adheres to the peer context over the hierarchical framework of peripheral participation and sees the value in cooperation, I find it rests somewhere in between the Japanese experiment and the US school system. The Japanese Preschools Pedagogy of Peripheral Participation. Ethos, 39(2), 139-164.