A Phase between Two National Core Curricula in Finland – What Are the Implications to Information Literacy Instruction and Library Collaboration?

The Finnish educational system has been a significant subject of discussions in educational forums over the last few years. Finnish schools have received visits from all over the world. Finland has been comfortably basking in the radiance of PISA results for too long, and now Finland has seen the drawbacks of leaving things to rest. The latest PISA result showed a downward trend in several results (Sulkunen et al, 2010) some of which were also statistically significant. At the moment, Finland is on the verge of massive changes in education. The digitalization of schools has started on a large scale; and most importantly, a reform of the core curriculum is on its way. The new national 2016 core curriculum has been accepted, and now it is up to the local municipal governments to plan its implementation. This phase is going to last for one and a half years and the new curriculum will take effect at the beginning of the fall term in 2016. This conference paper briefly introduces the first two of total three empirical parts of my dissertation, studying the occurrences and conceptions of information literacy in two consecutive core curricula and a combined comparison of the preliminary findings. The meaning of this to school libraries and public libraries is also discussed. The implementation of the new core curriculum is of great importance to public libraries and school libraries. Municipalities have been urged to take action in the form of planning committees that also include representation from libraries. This educational change in the educational system is making public libraries and the existing school libraries re-think their programs and products and also think of new ways to better serve the municipalities’ students and teaching staff better in accordance with the new 2016 core curriculum.