The Finnish curriculum reform was carried out in years 2012-2014. Within the reform process, the Finnish National Board of Education organized a national debate around the national core curriculum twice. It was a cyclical process: on round one (2012), the national aims, generic skills and main pedagogical approaches were published and opened for commenting on FNBE´s websites online. On the second round (2014) the aims and core contents of different subjects were published and opened for commenting. The commenting was visible on the websites, on the blog-like commenting space. This started a lively debate around school development. There were lots of discussions about values, the aims of basic education and many pedagogical aspects as well. On round one, 1100 comments were posted on the websites. After three-week online debate and dialogue, the curriculum working groups had the results of the debate as a resource for revising the draft. On the second round, over 2500 comments from 170 different organizations or individual persons were posted on the web. The goal of the online dialogue was to engage different stakeholders and teachers, the curriculum users, to the curriculum process, and familiarize them with the objectives of the national core curriculum. One remarkable feature in the Finnish dialogue was that it was open for every citizen. The national advisers constructed the web-based platform for dialogue, and also moderated the debate. That was challenging because the amount of the feedback was enormous. Teachers, education administrators, students, parents and representatives of different organizations joined the debate. Many advocacy groups were active on providing feedback. A clear benefit was the possibility to introduce the curriculum to the wide audience, which turned out to be a remarkable success-factor in the reform. Eventually, the national debate turned out to be a tool for enhancing educational change.

Nieveen, N., Fisser, P., Muller, A., & Voogt, J. (2014). Create the debate: Towards a set of design principles for national curriculum debates and dialogues with technology support. Enschede: SLO, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development