Pedagogy according to the individual student’s needs

Even though the performance of Nordic students in PISA 2000 proved high quality, there is still room for improvement. Such improvements, however, presuppose an increased focus on the individual needs of students. In PISA, for

example, in every Nordic country, and particularly in Denmark, Norway and Iceland, more than 15 per cent of the students were found to have severe difficulties in coping with the reading literacy demands of today’s knowledge society. By international standards, this proportion is not particularly high. If a principal goal is equal learning opportunities for all, however, it should be considered high. Moreover, it is definitely far too high in a society where every individual’s mental growth and the nation’s competitive edge are based on the ability to build up knowledge about and competence in life-long learning, domains in which literacy skills play a fundamental role. The sounder, more comprehensive and more equal this foundation, the better it promotes the individuals’ quality of life and the economic growth of the nation, and the more effectively it prevents polarisation or marginalisation in terms of further studies, work, and social and cultural life. The Nordic comprehensive school must therefore continue struggling to minimise the proportion of students at risk. Joint efforts should be focused on understanding various types of learning difficulties, both neuro-psychological and socio-cultural, and their background factors in order to develop innovative support and rehabilitation programmes to conquer learning problems.

The PISA findings also suggest that it is imperative in the development of Nordic pedagogy to see the close relationship between the cognitive and affective elements of learning. Poor readers need both affective and cognitive support. Affective support can be increased through real-world interaction, by such means as authentic, interesting and exiting texts, personal choice of books and other reading materials, experiencing the joy that can be derived from reading and peer collaboration. These instruments can contribute to the affective elements of instruction and may also help to developing effective cognitive strategies. Interest and activity factors, if evenly spread, could also significantly reduce the gender gap and improve both the equality and the quality of reading literacy achievement. In reducing gender differences the Danish pedagogy could serve as a model for the Finnish school system, in particular, while the Finnish pedagogy could provide expertise in reinforcing more general interest and active engagement in reading. The PISA results also suggest that the Nordic countries could learn something, particularly with regard to boys’ reflective and evaluative reading, from Anglo-American pedagogy, especially the pedagogies of Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. The PISA results for these countries showed smaller gender gaps than the results of most of the Nordic countries in reflective and evaluative reading, in particular. This was the domain in which all the Nordic countries face a serious challenge.

In developing reflective and critical reading, linguistic and rhetoric knowledge of texts should be systematically enhanced through instruction, so that students are able to see beyond the surface and realise how various texts are constructed. Students need to understand how authors use language, style and structure to produce a certain effect; how metaphors and implicit information are embedded in texts; and how inferences can be drawn by

reading beyond and between the lines with a reflective and critical mind.

Depending on the type of text, and the purpose and situation of the reading, students have to learn to apply various reading strategies. Continuous texts demand a different strategy compared to non-continuous texts. In reading continuous texts, fiction requires a different strategy from that of expository prose. Furthermore, tasks calling for retrieval of information require different approaches from those involving developing an interpretation or reflecting on texts. To accomplish all this, teachers and test developers need to know a lot more about authentic texts as well as about tasks that are typical of boys’ and girls’ lives outside school. It is also possible that Nordic countries have something to learn form each other as far as different approaches to reading strategies are concerned. Finnish students significantly outperform their Scandinavian peers in reading literacy in PISA and when it comes to retrieving information from difficult expository texts the difference is strikingly large.

The Scandinavian students, on the other hand seem to be better at reflecting on and evaluating argumentative text written for a young audience.

In the Nordic countries, interest and engagement in reading, especially as concerns reading fiction, are evidently considered part of a feminine culture., Nordic pedagogues responsible for curriculum development and instruction should invest heavily in breaking this cultural code, and should jointly develop a Nordic reading and literature pedagogy that looks for new ways of approaching literature, with a view to inspiring boys and helping them to realise that reading fiction can be enjoyable and interesting. Furthermore, parental involvement should be encouraged, and parents, particularly fathers, should be made conscious of the role model they provide for their sons. Young people’s eyes need to be made aware that even 'a real man' reads, and not only newspapers, reports or Internet texts but also books, including fiction. On the other hand, electronic texts, which play a significant role in students’ free time activities, should also be a part of the every-day learning environment. In today’s learning environments, students need and should be able to develop skills to search, contrast, combine and critically evaluate information as well as to share, argue and reflect on text contents and forms. Using electronic texts in instruction may also be a way of arousing the interest of ‘nerds’ - usually boys - in reading and even in reading fiction, which provides endless possibilities of enriching the imagination and experiencing other worlds - both desirable and undesirable - with a critical eye.

There is also, however, the possibility that the PISA reading literacy tests have been biased in favour of girls. Compared to the IEA Reading Literacy Study conducted in 1991, the gender difference in favour of girls has increased.

In PISA, the largest gender differences were found in items connected to continuous texts, especially long narratives and argumentative and injunctive texts, which are not typical of boys’ reading material. Girls likewise seem to have an advantage in the open response items, where they can express their understanding and reflect in their own words, which again points to the fact that writing skills may play a certain role in the PISA assessment. Boys are not

at such a disadvantage when it comes to non-continuous documents such as charts, maps and figures. These texts have a relatively small amount of written information, yet on the other hand, they require the ability to understand, contrast and combine various types of information as well. In future assessments, texts and tasks may have to be redesigned to correspond to both girls’ and boys’ genuine reading interests and response preferences.

The gifted students have traditionally received meagre attention in the Nordic countries, and this lack of attention has often been mistaken for the opposite, namely the concern shown for the least successful students. Yet, it seems that even the development of students with widely differing knowledge and skills can be appropriately enhanced in heterogeneous groups as long as the teacher is willing and capable enough and has sufficient resources for within-group differentiation. Again, the pedagogies of England and New Zealand could be worth studying as part of the development of a pedagogy that takes full advantage of the whole potential of gifted students in various subject areas.

Japanese and Korean instruction methods could also stimulate new ideas for enriching both conceptual and process approaches in mathematics and science instruction. This, of course, should be done without jeopardising special support for students with learning difficulties. It is reasonable to suggest that instruction aimed at enhancing the scientific literacy of both low and high achieving students should emphasize science as a specific culture and a specific way of reasoning and thinking. This includes the idea that time must be spent on interpretation, reflection and discussion on how science relates to the larger context of community and society.