The future of ever-developing education lies in unconventional innovations. Jyväskylä Vocational Institute's Skills Central Finland is a demonstration of a broad-scope educational model, while Jyväskylä Polytechnic's new Degree Programme in Music Management represents innovation in a specialised branch. Both in their own way constitute a break with tradition.
A sudden whim can have far-reaching consequences. An idea that seems good on one day does not necessarily appeal a few years down the line. If models of education are unbending, a flight of fancy may steer a person into a career that did not feature in childhood daydreams. Flexibility is one of the clearest fundamental principles of education.
Jyväskylä Vocational Institute's model of vocational education, Skills Central Finland, has created a new kind of flexible, broad-focus educational pathway. It is the joint operating model of 38 colleges, covering the whole of Central Finland.
It offers students an extensive spectrum of secondary-level studies driven by student needs. Offering individual learning paths has always been the task of vocational education, but the stress on individualizing studies has recently acquired new significance.
In addition to pedagogic development work care is being taken in Central Finland to develop new learning environments. Vocational education has opened out towards the workplace, and learning taking place in working life occupies a central role in the curriculum. Education is tailored to the needs of the labour market and designed in cooperation with the same.
Another innovative feature of Skills Central Finland is the regional development perspective. Vocational education has been overhauled to support the province as a whole together with the visions of its different regions. Planning successfully for education in terms of quantity and quality demands extensive cooperation as well as the ability to arrive at a common view of the future development of one's own region.
The overall aim is to educate multi-skilled professionals needed by companies and see to it that a sufficient number of qualified people are turned out for all the various branches.
Hannu Salminen, director of Jyväskylä Vocational Institute, says that the new educational models require things to be turned on their head. Our preoccupation with individual educational institutions has to cease. "We must blow away the administrative and geographical boundaries. Learning has to be brought to places of learning, which may be far removed from the traditional classroom."
One concrete demonstration of the success of this new thinking was the Central Finland Innofinland award granted in 2003. Innofinland is a project which has promoted innovative activities in Finland since 1994.
While Skills Central Finland is a broad-focus model for vocational education, the Degree Programme in Music Management begun at Jyväskylä Polytechnic in autumn 2003 is an educational innovation aimed at one special sector.
It constitutes a new-style combination of music, business and culture management. At the same time it serves to internationalize the polytechnic's culture-branch education.
The aim of the programme is to prepare graduates who seek employment and early progression within the management structures of the European music and entertainment industry.
The programme will enable the students to consider issues directly relevant to the industry, in view of their relationship with the fields of management, information technology and business across Europe.
Both the music and entertainment industry and the higher education sector have recognised that there is very little formal education and training available for management and administration positions in the field, especially within a European context.
A novel addition to tertiary education, the Degree Programme in Music Management fills a gap in Finland in the teaching of applied music-branch expertise.
On the music management programme the language of study is English, and the degree programme is carried through in exceptionally close cooperation with a British and a Dutch university. "The innovativeness of the degree programme is based on the international network within which it was developed. Innovations are born in networks: in national and international contexts", says Hannu Ikonen, Director of the School of Cultural Studies at Jyväskylä Polytechnic.
A tight network demands more than the usual amount of work from an educational organization as well as the ability to communicate internationally and between cultures. The quality of the organization's own expertise has got to be so high that it can be given to partners and international students on an exchange basis.
Pilot education in this branch can also be considered new in that it shares many of the features of an adult education programme. Although admission to the programme is possible in principle straight from school, weighting in the selection procedure is given to work experience.
"In the future close ties to working life will feature even more prominently in educational innovations. The core idea of the polytechnic's programmes is that in addition to students job organizations should benefit from them", forecasts Mauri Panhelainen, Rector of Jyväskylä Polytechnic.
By Tommi Salo Photos by Petteri Kivimäki