Due to the world attention following Finland’s PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) success, Finland’s education export efforts accelerated over the past decades (Schatzh et al., 2017). One  branch of education export activity are Finnish International Schools which have emerged in varied locations around the world, including: Vietnam, Qatar, Oman, Maldives and India.  These schools are unique cultural and social mix, as they draw from the Finnish education system in various ways. However, each of these schools also teach through their local curriculum and employ local teaching staff. Also common to these schools is that they are fee-paying schools.

Finland International  Schools are part of rapidly growing international school sector (Hayden, 2011) with four-fold increase from 1700  international schools up and running in year 2000 (ISC, 2015) to 7014 international schools operating in year 2014 (ICEF Monitor, 2014 as cited in Bunnell et al, 2016). The desire for the Finnish education is a new variation on the long trend of international or global curriculum represented most notably in the International Baccalaureate.  The curriculum, pedagogy, networks and culture of the international school intends to provide its students with the skills to participate and move across an interconnected global world, through resources of international networks, connections, and transnational social capital, as well as the curriculum and examination processes (Howard & Maxwell, 2021a; 2021b). However, the epistemological roots of these curricula and ways of learning remain rooted in a European and Western orientation and knowledge base, displaying the continuance of a post-colonialist approach (Spivak, 2008).

The origins of the International school sector is undeniably anglo-centric, and English language is used extensively as the language of curriculum, teaching and learning in the international school sector (Bunnell, 2016; Bunnell et al, 2016). The language dimension is interesting also in relation to the Finnish international schools, as these schools use English as lingua franca, sandwiched between the local language spoken by the local teachers, students, and parents, and Finnish spoken by the Finnish teachers working in these schools. As such language creates a double layer of imported (colonial) influences: the first layer being the Finnish education system, and the second the English language in communities where English may not be the spoken language in the locality.

Based on online material from three different Finnish international schools operating in different countries in Asia this article examines how these schools conceptualise and articulate their “Finnishness” in their online publications. The following research questions guide this study:

According to the schools’ promotional material available to the public:

Q1 What do these schools deem as “Finnish” in the education they offer?

Q2 Who are the clientele of Finnish International schools?

In our quest to understand how these schools communicate their Finnishness to their local clientele we draw on postcolonial theory.  More specifically Bhabha’s concept of the third space and cultural hybridity (1994) allows us to explore how a curriculum and pedagogical approaches travel from a western “high achieving” country context to majority world countries and the ways in which curriculum and pedagogy occupy a space that is a hybrid of Finnish culture and that of local culture.  

In order to better understand how Finnish international schools articulate their “Finnishness” to the wider public, and to understand the clientele they are reaching out for we conducted online content analysis. We draw on online data namely: school websites and schools’ social media presence including Facebook and Instagram accounts. We also downloaded parent handbooks where possible, and other PDF documents available on the school websites, including for example promotional brochures and letters from the founders or principals. We also draw on census and/or other local and national data, in order to determine who the possible clientele of these Finnish International schools are. A challenge for researchers studying online material is the evolving nature of Internet content. We decided to tackle this by taking screenshots of the websites and social media accounts that we could then analyse retrospectively. Such strategy to “freeze time” has been used in studies drawing on online content (eg. Seppälä, 2022). The screenshots were taken in June – August 2022, and the material involved altogether 370 screenshots and 5 downloaded PDFs. Screenshots also allows us to study visual data alongside textual data. We utilised visual data, namely pictures and images on the school websites to complement textual data rather than carried out in-depth visual analysis. We use both deductive and inductive reasoning in analysis with some pre-existing codes emerging from our reading (eg. Finnish National Core Curriculum, teaching staff) whilst remaining open to emerging codes (eg. wellbeing, practical subjects). While we aim to understand commonalities between these schools, we remain sensitive to their distinctive features throughout the analytical process.

It became evident that these schools are selective in what they borrow from Finnish education, and that they combine features of Finnish and the local education system. Central themes that arise from what these schools deem as Finnish include: curriculum, pedagogy, learning environment, and excellence combined with well-being. Recruitment of Finnish staff and teachers’ active role in development and localisation of curriculum are also central. All schools describe a range of similar pedagogical approaches including: child-centredness, phenomenon-based learning, group learning, and holistic approaches. All of which can arguably be linked to Finnish education somehow, but are not solely, nor distinctly Finnish. Rather, much of the mentioned are universal pedagogical approaches that can be traced to various roots. Therefore, these ideas of learning folded in the “Finnish way”, may rather represent alternatives to traditional approaches prevalent in the local education system. Furthermore, while these pedagogical ideas, and curricular content are associated with Finnish education, the problem is that pedagogy and curriculum are not culturally neutral, something that easily travels from one context to another. Also due to their high tuition fees these schools attract local upper middle classes and elites. While this may seem to be part of a longer trend of elite international schooling (Kenway and Fahey, 2014), the Finnish international school represent a new global education commodification of democratic forms of education; good because of its reputational status. This reputation is built on Finland’s consistent high ranking in OECD’s international comparative survey, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the attempt to learn from and ‘export’ the Finnish experience to other international contexts (Salhberg, 2015). This raises questions concerning the extent to which cultural specificity of local schooling environments is compromised and transformed in the process of translating between very different cultural and social contexts (Biesta, 2010).

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