Finland’s PISA standings in the last decade have resulted much interest in its pedagogies and curriculum across the globe – not just amongst the education community, but also among economists, INGO’s, and corporate business. This interest has led to a rise in ‘borrowing’ what Finland does, i.e., ‘Finnish Education’ by other countries, in the hope to replicate their PISA success. Some of the countries importing the Finnish curriculum, are worlds away from day-to-day life in Finland, culturally, societally, and politically. Which leads one to question, what is it exactly that is being imported and expected to produce the same results; how is it being implemented; and to what cost?

For decades, the research community has consistently critiqued the borrowing of international policy as questionable policy tool (Rizvi & Lingard, 2009; Cheng, 1998) particularly in relation to borrowing from Finland (Simola, 2005; Salokangas & Kauko, 2015). The ‘businessification’ of education has been highlighted and critiqued (Viruru; 2005) and it is evident that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) standardised test (PISA) has created the conditions for what Viruru calls an ‘imperialist project’ which may lend itself to a corporate driven agenda (2009). This critique is even more stark in a post-covid world where discourses of ‘catching up’ and ‘knowledge economies’ are dominating not only the educational policy space but also the political and economic arenas. This leads to the posing of important questions, such as the purpose(s) of education and its ability to (re)produce social inequalities and neoliberal values (Giroux, 1983; 2020). It also poses questions about ‘what works’ in the educational space, and for whom (Biesta, 2010)?

One example of ‘borrowing’ is the growth of Finnish international schools in the Majority world. The schools are privately own businesses who purchase the Finnish curriculum, import and localise it, employ a mix of Finnish and local teachers, and establish a fee-paying school. These schools have been established in various locations across the globe (e.g., Oman, Maldives, Qatar, Morocco, Vietnam, India, and Kazakhstan) and cater for middle class and elite children from early childhood to second level education. The study sets out to explore and compare stakeholder perceptions of how Finnish education travels to different national, cultural, social, and political contexts. The wider research study asks:

1. What is the “Finnish education” that is being exported?
2. How does “Finnish Education” as stakeholders understand it, travel to these varied national and local contexts?
3. How are democracy and participation understood and practiced in these schools and how possible “collisions” of different approaches to the same are handled in the school community?  
4. Who is the clientele of these schools what implication their involvement has on the local community?

The wider project employs the use of case study approach, and this paper examines a phenomenon that was observed in a case site between local teachers and Finnish teachers. The study employs a postcolonial framework and draws on a multidisciplinary lens to examine the intended and unintended consequences of exporting a model of education from the Minority World to fee paying, private schools in the Majority World.

The study draws from an ethnographic research tradition through carrying out participant observation and use of multiple sources of data including reflective research diaries and photographic and visual methods. This paper discusses one of the initial findings. The study involved a ten-day fieldwork visit to the school and local communities, during which data was gathered through participant observation, ethnographic methods, and through formal interviews with teacher and school leaders. Both researchers were involved in data collection, analysis, and sense making, in order to capture the social and cultural complexities embedded in these schools. One of the research team spent time in each classroom during the visit and the other researcher spent the school week observing and taking part in the youngest class in the school. Formal interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Research notes and transcripts were thematically analysed using an interpretive lens and MAXQDA software.

Despite disparities in salary and training, local teachers seem to thrive in the working conditions of the school. They spoke of the autonomy they experience in their practice, and how their own private time is valued and protected by school leadership. They gave examples of how they can plan their lessons and prepare for class within their working day and were not expected to do unpaid extracurricular activities in the evenings or weekends and holidays. The local teachers were also observed to do a lot of invisible work, helping the Finnish teachers navigate the local customs, values, and ways of life. They spoke about this in more depth in interviews and seemed surprised that it had been noticed. They also discussed how they would help orientate new local teachers to navigate the Finnish teachers’ values, customs, and ways of being. The same conditions were observed to be very different for the Finnish teachers, who reported feeling constrained in their teaching and not particularly true to their authentic teaching or selves. The docking of salaries, clocking in and out, and the requirement to stay in the school to plan led to the Finnish teachers feeling under surveillance, and not trusted as much as they were in Finland. They were observed by the researchers as being in a ‘hypervisible’ state (Settles, Buchanan & Dotson, (2019), both in the school and local community. The teachers reported feeling watched and listened to, ensuring they were paying close attention to strict local values and customs, particularly those religious in nature. They also mentioned their trips outside of the city as opportunities to be more relaxed and having to gear themselves up when going back to “reality”. ‘Reality’ seems to be a very different world to the Finnish teachers than the world the local teachers inhabit.

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