Bulletin

Issue: January/February 2008

News

Teaching with a Swedish gloss

The education of school teachers at La Trobe comes this year with a Swedish gloss, thanks to an exchange program between the University's Bendigo campus and the University of Umea.

Twelve 4th year Bachelor of Education (Bendigo) students are spending three weeks in the snowy north of the country observing how their Swedish counterparts educate the next generation.

Emphasis in the early years of Swedish schooling is on teaching children social skills and social responsibility, says La Trobe literacy lecturer Debra Edwards.

'Scandinavian schools have a history of welfare and children's rights and responsibilities,' she says. 'Subjects such as reading start in the first year of school when children are aged seven, but formal goals are set for the end of the 5th and 9th year, rather than every year as in Australia and there is no formal assessment until after the 8th Year.'

By contrast, schools in Australia have a more academic focus, she says. Children are expected to be reading by the end of Prep when the curriculum becomes increasingly delivered in written form and those who are not proficient readers tend to fall behind.

'We've lost a lot of the developmental play and oral language from the early years of school,' Ms Edwards says,' by focusing so heavily on the academic skills of numeracy, reading and writing.'

Swedish children, she says, learn to problem-solve with others. Most of their early learning is negotiated with students selecting from a list of tasks.

'This encourages independent learning right from the beginning.'

The La Trobe exchange program is aimed at opening teachers' minds to the social and emotional sides of education emphasised in another culture.