Education Superpowers: How Finland, South Korea, and Poland Produce High Achievers

http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/enewsletter.php?msgno=1305

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The article compares 3 superpowers of education: Finland, South Korea and Poland.

The first difference between US (which is arguably similar to Australian education) and South Korea highlights the dog-eat-dog nature of the Asia education system which is very brutal and very results focused. It's all about getting to the top 2% of the cohort at the end of highschool to qualify for the best university. Possible it would indirectly promote rote learning for some students who at that young age would no see the value in life-long learning and would prefer to live a more results-focused academic life (I can reflect on this as there was a period where this was me). It seems this learning culture is even promoted by their government and families. Applying this to my current research I see one possible difference between the goals of international students studying at UQ and that of domestic students; that is whether they are here to learn the skills necessary for them to be applicable in the workforce, or whether they are here to get that GPA of 6.9+.

Motivational goals compared, it would seem that Finland and Poland were found to be more balanced in terms of lifestyle and academic culture. Although the article doesn't go into much detail it hints as stronger pastoral care in the Finnish education system whilst the Poles had reformed their educational system (no details on what happened here) but the key to their success was 'Rigor' - the will to push and incite change despite opposition. I feel that Rigor will definitely be needed in my work as there is lots to do and if I don't do it, no one else will.

It seems like secondary education systems vary far beyond my understanding in foreign countries and I will need to understand it more. I've had special pastoral care classes in my high school but never understood what they were for, perhaps other countries use it to better effect and I can learn more from them to make sense of my past?! Furthermore, if I could learn how to apply pastoral care to program design I could possibly incorporate stuff into my proposed international student program.
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