Week 14 - Cultural

After spending some time on school placement I can see what a big part education plays in the culture of a country. I am constantly comparing Sweden to home and one of the main areas that I have thought about is the place of parents in their child’s education. As I said before parents can and do spend time with their children in school and this week the teachers are conducting parent-teacher interviews. I was amazed to discover that the children accompany their parents to these meetings and that the standard time spent on each interview is around 45 minutes with the grade 6 teacher saying that on one interview she spent 1 and a quarter hours. I like the idea of children attending the interview and having a say in what their goals are for the future; I believe they will better understand what is expected of them because it is discussed on a personal level when there is time to explain the reasoning. The teachers also conduct these interviews in the evenings and I think this further shows the high level of dedication that I have witnessed. The GTCNI states that teachers should liaise effectively with parents on the progress and attainment of their child and I think the way Swedish teachers do this is more effective than the practice I have witnessed at home.

The GTCNI also states that as a teacher I should be aware of significant features of a pupil’s culture, language or faith and what implications this may have for learning. I have discovered that even the small things might have short-term implications. My son has been taught to tell the time in school in Sweden but as they tell the time differently to us he may have difficulties when this topic comes up again at home. I have also noticed that Swedes use a comma instead of a decimal point and use a point instead of the multiplication cross that we use, again whilst these are easy to overcome they could initially cause problems especially if the teacher is unaware of these types of differences.

When I think of the culture of education in Sweden and at home I can see that on the whole we have the same kind of goals but we go about achieving them in different ways; at the moment I don’t think one way is totally better than the other and feel that we could learn as much from the Swedes as they could learn from us