Finland Summer Exchange Programme – The Lessons

2024-07-15

Three of us (Poon Pan Ching, Water; Fan Bless; Chau Yuet Tung, Kathleen) were  selected from the school to participate the 2023/24 Global Leader Programme – Finland Summer Exchange, a 3-week programme (July 15 to August 3 2024) organized by Twin Oaks Education, which is a Taiwan social enterprise offering international project-based learning programmes, offered us a life-changing opportunity to experience Finnish education.

During our time in Finland, we attended classes at the Helsinki Upper Secondary School of Language, where our main topics included climate change, psychology, and environmental science, etc. Additionally, we engaged in various group projects that not only enhanced our learning but also taught us valuable skills in communication and reflection.

Laura’s Lessons

One of the lesson topics we had was on climate change. We were taught by the biology teacher Laura at the school we went to. In Finland, school etiquette is far different from here, and they call all teachers by their first names. We learned everything from the causes and effects and current solutions and future outlooks.

We got to put our learnings into practice through many activities such as looking through an assortment of restaurant meals and re-ordering them to lowest to highest in terms of carbon footprint. After this exercise we became more aware of the carbon footprint of different foods and it also helped us become more used to gauging whether a meal was good for the environment.

In addition, we also did experiments to see the effects of climate change on the environment. We did experiments on the effects of ocean acidification, desertification and land salinisation. Although the experiment was on a very small scale and done in a short time period, we could clearly see that the agriculture and fishing industry would be affected hugely as climate change worsens.

We learned a lot through experimentation, discussion and research. Thanks to the patience and dedication of our teacher, we are now more understanding of climate change and better equipped to educate others on the matter.

Joshua’s Lessons

Continuing with the theme of climate change, our other daily lessons were taught by Joshua, and were about the psychology behind climate change denialism. We learned various concepts in psychology about humans, perception, cognition and society. These helped us further understand climate change denial; how through human flaws, it exists in the gap between climate change knowledge and acceptance and desire.

In Joshua’s classes he would very often ask questions about our views and experiences, or hold space for us to speak up. Not only that but he would show us experiments and sometimes even conduct them on us to demonstrate and prove a psychological concept. Other than participating in experiments he would give us opportunities to be more involved in the lesson, such as getting us to search for headlines and identify the bias in different news outlets.

Concepts we learned include: social inhibition and facilitation which can damper or amplify voices, social loafing and bystander effect which affects whether or not we ourselves take action, and cognitive dissonance which helps create climate change denial.

Overall, Joshua’s classes were extremely educational and interactive. He created a fantastic learning environment for us and made us more cognizant of how psychology affects not only climate change denialists but ourselves too. With this knowledge we are more prepared to spread the message about climate change and can more effectively induce action. 

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