Page 12 - 樂善堂梁銶琚學校（校刊2019）

Preschool Simonkallio Early Childhood

Education Education Centre

Daycare centers in Finland seem to take more account of qualitative indicators than

quantitative metrics. Teachers tend to communicate with parents informally about their children’s
daily school life, rather than giving the parents quantitative developmental growth reports. Besides,
teachers are not required to do much administrative work or attend administrative meetings. They

do not even need to be appraised by the centre director and therefore have more time to spend
with the children and to plan teaching themes with their colleagues.

Children do not need to follow a standard curriculum but have their own individual learning
plans. One teacher is responsible for each child’s plan during the child’s life in the daycare centre.

As a result, that teacher has a deep understanding of the child and can provide a tailor-made
personal development programme.

Teachers and parents believe in the power of play. Children need lots of time to play on a
regular basis, as it benefits cognitive, social, emotional and physical development. Every corner
in the centre is a learning place. Students enjoy a great deal of freedom and independence. They
walk the hallways, serve themselves food and are excited to be in school on their own. Teachers
seem comfortable providing students with ample freedom, to encourage creativity, and they nudge

students to develop stronger critical thinking skills.

What can we try at our own school?

In Chinese culture, students’ negative feelings are generally ignored. Students are not allowed
to show negative feelings, such as anger, fear and sadness. After this visit, we think we should learn
to listen to, accept and understand students’ feelings so that we can help them to build up positive
minds.

Teachers could provide students with opportunities to choose what they would like to learn,
how they would like to learn and how they would assess their own learning. In this way, teachers

can help develop students into active learners and enable them to learn independently and
effectively.

We are deeply impressed by this inspiring lesson. It reminds us the usefulness of student-
centred learning in which teachers are facilitators of learning rather than dominators. During

our future teaching planning, we should put students’ interests and learning styles first by
acknowledging students’ voices and needs as the centre of our teaching. We should also help build
students into self-motivated-life-long learners. Developing good teacher-student relationships will

help students enjoy their school lives.

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