On March 9, 2018, IICE and Sports Bureau of Shushan District, Hefei City co-held a Sino-Finnish High School Education Forum in Hefei. The theme of the forum was ‘Focusing on Core Literacy & Transforming Way of Teaching’. IICE Associated Professor TENG Jun attended the forum and delivered a speech entitled ‘The Nature of Project-based Learning and Characteristics of Projects’.

Prof. TENG pointed out that project-based learning is gaining increasing popularity across the globe as way to revolutionize learning, but the purpose of project-based learning is not projects themselves, but to facilitate change in students’ learning approaches. Carrying out project-based learning, therefore, should line up with effective learning such as being student-centered supported by appropriate plans, goals and assessment. Prof. TENG also talked about some distinguishing demands of project-based learning such as product-driven designs and systemic thinking.

Those present in the forum also included Mr. Jorma Suonio (Director of High School Supervision Department of Education Bureau, Tampere), Ms. Heini Maenpaa (Headmaster of Lyseon High School, Tampere) and Mr. Antti Saarinen (Math teacher from Tampere Technische Hochschule). They not only shared educational reform experiences in Finland from the perspectives of administration and management, but also demonstrated teaching of finite summation of n steps arithmetic progression that incurred heated discussion.

Further cooperation between Chinese and Finnish basic education sectors was strongly called for in the forum.