Conference:
ECER 2008
Format:
Paper
Session Information
14 SES 05, Research in RuralSschools and Communities (Part 1) Analytical Frameworks
Paper Session
Time:
2008-09-11
08:30-10:00
Room:
A1 318
Chair:
Lisbeth Åberg-Bengtsson
Contribution
Education plays a decisive role in improving living conditions of the inhabitants of any nation, no matter what its level of economic development. Basic education in particular has increased its offer in countries like Mexico; it is now possible to find elementary schools in almost all the country’s towns, no matter what size they are. During the last decades Mexico has extended its coverage of basic schools which are now in almost all the populations of the country. Nevertheless, the growth in the educational offer has not been accompanied by enhanced quality of the contents studied in the classroom. There are numberless elementary schools in Mexico but the quality of the education taught in them leaves much to be desired. This is shown by diverse evaluations of educational evaluations made by national and international institutions.
Mexico has the worst evaluation in educational issues according to the education measurements made by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The country with the best evaluation is Finland.
There are obviously huge cultural, economic, political, geographic, environmental and social differences between Mexico and Finland. Many of these characteristics can explain the difference of quality of the education given in both countries. Finland has greater social equality, much fewer poor people, favorable economic conditions, and a history of providing social equality that Mexico is far from attaining. Nevertheless, there must be a greater number of factors that explain the differences of educational quality between these two countries.
More than a comparative study between educative systems of Mexico and Finland, the principal purpose of this paper is to make a detailed analysis of the pedagogical strategies applied in Finnish multigrade primary schools to determine which of them could be adapted by and applied to the Mexican system. Therefore, the final product of the research will be the adaptation of educational strategies to the Mexican context in such a way that they can be used at this country’s rural schools.
In particular, the paper includes the analysis of curricular contents; organization of the time in the classroom; duration of cycle school; timing and frequency to develop educational activities; complementary governmental supports (e.g. transportation, scholarships, provision of school dinners); teacher’s formation, qualification and update; method of simultaneous work with pupils of various levels, ages and subject; knowledge and didactic abilities developed by teachers; cooperative work between students of the different degrees and entailment with the community: relations between teachers and parents - members of the community.
Method
I stayed in Finland during three periods in 2007-2008: April and August 2007 and January 2008. I visited the Universities of Jyväskylä, Joensuu and Oulu. I talked with Finnish university researchers and I found information in libraries and web pages, that include detailed statistics, research, fieldwork about multigrade education at the elementary level in Finland.
I visited four rural schools in three Finnish regions where I performed fieldwork. I applied drafting observation scripts and semi-structured interview scripts to teachers and principals.
Expected Outcomes
I’m organizing the information I have obtained, synthesize and analyze it and I have a preliminary draft of the first results of the research. The final product of the research will be the adaptation of educational strategies to the Mexican context in such a way that they can be used at this country’s rural schools.
References
OECD, 2005, Education at a Glance, OECD Publishing
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