Five Covid Lessons from Finnish Teachers
Distance learning further propelled digital tools and environments into the daily lives of every teacher. Nevertheless, distance learning has not pushed traditional tools aside, finds a survey conducted by Freeed – a global discovery platform for teachers.
Here in Finland, schools were not immune to the covid crisis. Schools moved to remote teaching in March and students returned to school at the end of May, just before the summer break. Schools in Finland will resume regular face-to-face classes from 11th August, 2020.
Exceptional in many ways, the Covid Spring 2020 highlighted the best and the worst aspects of the teaching profession. But how has it affected teachers at the chalkface?
At Freeed, we reached out to the 14,000 teachers on our platform to find out. Throughout April and May we conducted two surveys with teachers based in Finland. According to the responses, here are five of the most important themes for schools to focus on this coming school year.
1. Peer support
Professional learning communities strengthened during the corona crisis. In particular, online teacher communities flourished during this exceptional period as schools raced to run classes online.
As many as 80 percent of teachers felt that they had received good or excellent support from their own school community during this transition.
2. Wellbeing and massive workload
Embedding self-care activities such as physical activity, catching up with friends, and setting boundaries around work can support teachers to improve and maintain their personal wellbeing. But when combined with a massive workload, they tend to be pushed towards the bottom of our priority list.
Nearly 90 per cent of the teachers estimated that their workload had increased as a result of shifting to distance learning during the corona crisis. Put simply, teachers explained that it had become ‘hard to find time to rest’.
3. New digital tools
Teachers are always on the lookout for continued professional development. And the shift to remote teaching presented a learning opportunity, or necessity, for teachers to reinforce their digital skills.
More than 90 per cent of teachers said their own digital skills had improved either ‘a lot’ or ‘somewhat’. Many teachers even overcame their nerves to create educational videos for the first time, which they then shared with their colleagues.
4. Traditional methods
Distance learning further propelled digital tools and environments into the daily lives of every teacher. Nevertheless, distance learning has not pushed traditional tools aside.
Interestingly, according to the teachers who responded to the survey, textbooks are still regarded as the most important learning material in their toolbox.
5. Learning gap
The effects of the corona spring are expected to be visible in autumn as well. The coronavirus epidemic situation is stable in Finland, although the number of reported cases as well as incidence have increased slightly.
More than a quarter of teachers estimate that the past spring has caused such a learning deficit that they will need to return to parts of the spring curriculum during the autumn in order to bridge the learning gap.
Freeed is a global discovery platform for teachers founded in 2018 in Finland. Learn more from our global teacher community at www.freeed.com.
Writer: Heikki Rusama is a co-founder and CEO of Freeed.com, a collaborative platform for teachers globally. Heikki is a seasoned edtech professional previously worked with Rovio & Sanoma Learning. He is also a board member of Edtech Finland.
