In the second part of this two-part interview, Jón Torfi Jónasson draws from his work on educational change in Iceland and other parts of the world to discuss what kind of advice he gives to policymakers and educators. Part 1 explored some of the institutional factors that make it difficult to make changes even in an “undisciplined” system like that in Iceland. Jónasson is a professor Emeritus of the University of Iceland School of Education where he was also Dean of Social Sciences and of the School of Education.
Thomas Hatch (TH): Given what you’ve said in the first part of our interview about how institutional constraints on education operate, what’s your advice to policymakers and head teachers now? How do we work with this?
Jón Torfi Jónasson (JTJ): There are two things. One is the most difficult one, and that’s to get people, particularly professionals in the field, to talk about the idea of education. What is the essence of education? That means encouraging the discussion of the identity of students as people and the communication between people, and thus to focus on crucial social elements. This is so difficult that I understand why people normally avoid it. They want to talk about something else. It is just very difficult to decide what education should be or is. It is something partly personal that has to be developed. It cannot be decided by ministries, or OECD, or whomever. It’s something, at least partly, culturally, and personally developed even though there is a formaly defined core. But even that is difficult to define. One’s ideas may change, and they may differ from one culture to anther, one person to another, even one kid to another, so it’s difficult in that sense, but education centers around human interaction and thus it is a personal activity. But it’s not difficult to attempt to take the discussion up, and then to stick to it, that’s very important.
The other thing is to relish the freedom you have and find the balance. Teachers should be trusted, but that requires them to be knowledgeable and professional, and this also needs to be discussed. You should give trust to teachers, but not unconditionally. The condition is not to measure what they do, but to listen to how they talk and to what they are concerned about. I am worried about how, by “improving” teacher education and education research, we’re gradually moving the power of talking about educational issues from the teachers to somewhere else. Teachers realize they’re not “allowed” to talk about certain things because they don’t have sufficient grasp of the academic parlance; or they don’t understand the concepts well enough; or they haven’t been following the research. So, they might simply say, “I don’t know.” Even though they are the essential experts, they may insist that they are not, if they feel they lack the right vocabulary.
[R]elish the freedom you have and find the balance. Teachers should be trusted, but that requires them to be knowledgeable and professional, and this also needs to be discussed. You should give trust to teachers, but not unconditionally. The condition is not to measure what they do but to listen to how they talk and to what they are concerned about.
Last spring, in 2023, I was able to sit in on meetings with teachers in Reykjavík, and I have been impressed with how they want to solve the various challenges themselves. They want to get help, support, but they don’t want to outsource these tasks. Their discourse was anchored in practice. I listened to them talking very professionally and raising crucial educational issues, because they were free to talk as professionals. Sometimes, when teachers become highly educated, they in a sense become prisoners of the theoretical knowledge which seems to distance them from the situation they are facing every day. There’s a paradox there, and I don’t know how to solve it because you need to be informed and educated and simultaneously a visionary working in the field and you have to find the balance.
TH: Given that it’s hard to discuss education and it’s hard to realize that kind of freedom, where does that take you? What can we do?
JTJ: What needs to be done is mainly to discuss those two issues. First to assert that teachers have more freedom to do what they think is necessary: If you consider it important to attend to the kids’ social skills or their identity, you are allowed to do that, because that’s part of education. And then if they say, “Therefore I can’t spend as much time teaching fractions.” Then they’re also given license to decide this, but it has to be quite clear what their educational rationale is. Then I think it’s very important that people are given a license to be professionals themselves. I would still accept that not all people can do this perfectly or even properly. But that’s the price you have to pay when trusting the professionals. You don’t solve this by insisting therefore, that tests are needed everywhere, and accreditation and inspection, and so on. The net result of those is negative for the process of education.
I think it’s very important that people are given a license to be professionals themselves. I would still accept that not all people can do this perfectly or even properly. But that’s the price you have to pay when trusting the professionals. You don’t solve this by saying “therefore, we have to have tests everywhere, and accreditation and inspection, and so on.
TH: But doesn’t there still need to be some apparatus or someone to give them license to do that?
JTJ: I accept that. I haven’t got a simple solution. When I was most laissez-fair in my thinking, I listened to a former Minister of Education in Alberta, Canada, who was an impressive conservative, and he noted: “we must remember we are in a democratic society, and there must be some rules and some accepted aims.” And I took note. Yes, there must be a framework, and we also have that to some extent in the medical profession. You have doctors who are being educated and licensed, and you trust them to follow what’s happening in the field. But you don’t continuously accredit them. You trust them. You know that there’s a potential problem there, but it is still being done, but still with some general inspection system. The same applies to the teachers. There have to be professional norms that include the expectation that you follow what’s happening in your field; you must understand what’s happening in the world around you; you discuss your ideas, assume responsibilities and respect the culture of education. I’m not saying this is a solution to everything, but this implies a culture; this is a vision.
TH: But there is a fundamental challenge to equity with this, because if you accept that not every teacher will be able to have the same level of expertise or to teach in the same way, then, doesn’t that produce inequities?
JTJ: Absolutely. I find that quite interesting and of course important. When we established our accreditation and national testing system in Iceland in the 1930’s, that was actually pushed by the teachers, who wanted equity. It was not for tracking (even if it was subsequently used for that) and not really for testing. It was an equity issue, and the proponents realized that many of Iceland’s students, especially in the rural areas, were not getting the right or substantive education. That must be remembered when I want to dismantle national testing systems with any stakes attached. Yes, it is meant to have a function. But you get a lot of good work done in the arts, in music and gymnastics and various sports and many other activities even though you don’t have a formal national testing system. And many young people excel in different things without a universal testing edifice. I think you can do a lot of good work using various mechanisms, but often there is some implicit testing, implicit evaluation. There are problems with my argument on testing, especially standardized testing, but I think the pernicious effects are much worse than the positive ones. I also want to shift away from the heavy focus on initial teacher preparation, and I want continuous professional development to take some of its place. If you have professionals who are developing and constantly probing and discussing the main issues, they need to be – and also can be – trusted.
[Y]ou get a lot of good work done in music, gymnastics and various sports, even though you don’t have a formal national testing system.
TH: But part of the issue is we have no room to have these conversations. Teachers don’t have the time, and parents don’t have the time. How can we create the time and the mechanisms that allow people to have these discussions where we can both build trust and recognize and deal with the problems that might arise?
JTJ: I think you are there onto a crucial issue and you’re actually spelling out a solution by saying we know that we must create the time, and the solution is to do just that. It’s not easy because you have to push something out. But you need to have the networks and the time to deliberate. I once was at a European conference in Strasbourg organized on behalf of the Council of Europe, and I was asked to lead a discussion group with teachers from all over Europe. To start the discussion, I wanted everybody to say something, so I asked, “if you have extra money for your school, how would you use it?” The first person said, “I would use it to get time to talk to my colleagues.” I said, “That’s fine, but please don’t all mention the same thing.” Still all of them emphatically gave essentially the same answer. One said “I would like time to talk my colleagues in other schools”, but everyone sent essentially the same message, except one person who worked for a ministry. “No, no, I would not use it like that,” he said, “I would use it for something practical.” I will always remember this, and it reminds me how governing instances can be out of touch. The teachers said we need to talk about professional issues but not just teaching concerns. Time must be given to professional conversation between the teachers, among themselves. This is so important. We must allow this; we must create time for this; and we must value its importance within the school and among schools. It is such an important part of the professional life of teachers – probably all professionals.
TH: Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned that the municipality of Reykjavik organized a meeting in the spring of 2023 where teachers were given time when they were able to talk together. You were asked to observe and reflect on those meetings. Can you describe for me a little bit of what you observed?
JTJ: This was what they called a social innovation lab session. I sat in on three half-day sessions that were repeated for three different professional groups (playschool, primary school and recreation centers) in each borough within Reykjavík, the capital city, and I was asked to observe discussion in one of the boroughs.The social innovation lab was originally introduced into our educational setting by colleagues from Alberta, Canada and there were many different parts to it, but in Reykjavik they extended the conversations in important ways because it included the actual leaders of the system: Helgi Grímsson and Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir. They led the sessions, but they did it in a way where they were genuinely listening to people expressing their concerns and where there was a real conversation – the professional field deliberating with the top administration. There was not a long monologue on either side. They also had different institutions within the system represented, and they were talking to the teachers and the teachers were talking to them. People were in contact with others they would normally never or rarely be in direct personal contact with, and all these discussions were on an egalitarian basis.
The teachers very clearly expressed their concerns and the problems, but they were not complaining. They were describing their experience. There was also an attitude of actually doing something about these things. The professionals involved were feeling the freedom to deliberate. If they felt something was important and they wanted to do something about it, they could do it! Of course, there were financial issues that then had to be solved, but that was not a constraint to stop them from developing their ideas. That meant it was not just about ideas; it was developing ideas within a system where these could be implemented.
If they felt something was important and they wanted to do something about it, they could do it! Of course, there were financial issues that then had to be solved, but that was not a constraint to stop them from developing their ideas. That meant it was not just about developing ideas; it was developing ideas within a system where these could be implemented.
TH: Part of the challenge is that we’re asking people, in a sense, to operate in opposition to the institutional forces that would reward them for just sitting in their office and doing their job, so it takes tremendous courage to take the time for these conversations. The three days could have gone badly, and people could have felt they’d wasted their time, and they might not do it again.
JTJ: I think they realized that, and everybody was so relieved that it didn’t go badly. And that came up with those who planned the event who said it literally in the way you expressed it: “We cannot take the time because we should be sitting in our offices doing what we are used to doing,” but they actually will do it again after this experience. The same doubts were expressed by literally all the participants, but who very emphatically expressed their appreciation afterwards. There were things that should be modified, but they were, to me, relatively minor things. One was the time spent on conceptual clarification. They spent some time clarifying new concepts, like wellbeing and inclusion, but they could usefully spend even more time on that. Another was on developing their ideas further. Some ideas about what could be done were introduced, and they were put on posters, but I think possibly some more time might be spent pursuing those ideas and how these would be transformed into daily practice. But the consensus was that this would be the next stage of related work (which is in process).
TH: In your next meeting with the minister of education in Iceland what advice would you give him?
JTJ: He’s working on the issue of well-being, and I’ve criticized the school system for not attending to that issue for some time, so I think that’s good. But my main advice – and I think it is in line with his intention, is to suggest, “Don’t do it from the top.” We had a minister some years ago who was very keen on information technology, and he encouraged conferences among teachers and developmental projects. He didn’t seek to control everything, and I thought he operated very sensibly. So, I would suggest to the minister, “Make sure that you are supporting good moves by the teachers and schools when implementing general policy and don’t set up pet-projects yourself.“ I think that is a reasonably good strategy, and it will build up trust. But it’s not uni-directional, so teachers need to show they want and deserve to be trusted. Just like these conferences on information technology around 2000. Those were attended by hundreds of teachers. They wanted to learn about the use of computers. They didn’t need to be pushed; they just wanted to be involved.
TH: But again, that takes courage from a minister who, in a sense, has to wait for the things to arise, and he can’t wait. He’s got 4 years, maybe 8 years in office, and he’s got to have something to show for it. And if he’s just standing there waiting for other people to step up…
JTJ: I know that argument, but I don’t feel it is a problem for him. This minister has already established himself as somebody who wants something to happen and it is relatively clear what it is. And to me that’s sufficient, because people know it’s genuine. He’s doing a lot of the right things. And I’m convinced this is sufficient for him as a politician with a future. He doesn’t need to wait for some outcome to become visible because it takes decades anyway. So, I would not be worried on his behalf. I think he’s already evaluated as a successful Minister, even though he is still waiting for something lasting to evolve.
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