Laws and Amendments in Vocational and Higher Education

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In Finland, there are multiple laws developed over time through amendments guiding the training and behaviour of multiple stakeholders including teachers. Different laws in the form of Acts direct the actions of educators at different educational levels.  At country level, Ministry of Education and Culture provides the details on these Acts. While the above laws and Acts are in Finnish language, their English translations are available. (Click the highlighted text below to see the English translations)

There are four major Acts:

1.       Act on Early Childhood Education and Care (540/2018) deals with the early childhood education

2.       Act on Basic Education Act 628/1998 and Act on General Upper Secondary Education (714/2018) which deal with the pre-primary, primary and upper secondary compulsory education

3.       Act on Vocational Education and Training (531/2017) (VET) which the university of applied sciences

4.       Universities Act 558/2009 which deals with and Research Universities

While these Acts deal with multiple issues and direct the actions of multiple stakeholders, teachers, (As a start), apart from the above Acts, need to be aware of confidentiality laws, Copyright Issues and provision of safe environment for everyone involved in the educational facilities. This is vital since these laws direct and have an influence on teachers’ daily tasks. For training the teachers, OAMK conducted a webinar on 4th Feb 2023 on these areas. In the following sections I would reflect on some of the major areas discussed during the webinar.

Confidentially Law relates to the protection of personal data. “Personal data include all information concerning an individual or his or her characteristics or living conditions if they can be identified as pertaining to the individual, his or her family or those living with him or her, such as name, personal identity code, contact details, information on studies, IP address, genetic information and marital status.”  (Source: https://teaching.helsinki.fi/instructions/article/data-protection-teachers). At an EU level the regulations in confidentiality law come from GDPR article 5 which are then enacted at country level in different Acts. The major components in article 5 focus on ensuring the lawfulness, fairness and transparency​, Purpose limitation​, Data minimisation​, Accuracy​, Storage limitation​, and Integrity and confidentiality (Source: www.gdpr-info.eu ) ​. ​From a teachers’ perspective, these laws are translated into an institutional policy where they are guided on the issues of storing, updating and when needed purging the personal information of different stakeholders. Since there are no clear time limitations stipulated at EU and country level hence the institutional guidelines are followed. Therefore, for all the teachers it is important to be aware of the institute guidelines. For example, in my workplace we as teachers use Moodle system for the course management and the guidelines require us to delete and purge all the student information within the six months of the ending of the course.

 

Example of Privacy law at Turku School of Economics, Finland.

Another major area in terms of rules and regulations is the copyright law which teachers have to be aware of. Since a lot of teaching is based on published materials and also includes many graphics and video elements, therefore it is very important that teachers ensure their operations within the classrooms and institutions to be within the legal boundaries. Copyright law relates to the protection of creative work and therefore it gives the creators the right to govern their own work. In practice it would mean that as a teacher if I want to use the course materials developed by some colleagues, I shall ask for their permission since their work is protected under copyright law.  Similarly, when using graphics or videos in the lectures from internet it is always safe to use the content created under Creative Common (CC) license since such content is publicly available. kospisto is a country level service which provides access to the teachers to copyrighted materials available both nationally and internationally. This helps to ensure the compliance with law. At the same time, it provides guidelines to the teacher regarded the use and reproduction of authored work. During the discussion in the webinar one group shared this information presented in the following figure which is very useful.

 

HOW MANY COPIES CAN I PRODUCE IN A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION? (Source: kospisto)

Lastly, as teachers our actions are guided by the safety regulations as where it is part of our job to ensure a safe learning and working environment for different involved parties. Apart from the four Acts mentioned earlier, the provision of safe environment is further guided by Act on young workers 998/1993 and Occupational Safety and Health Act 738/2002 Safe environment in essence means that everyone has the right to life, personal freedom and integrity, and security. Security can be psychological, physical, social, and legal in nature - or all of them at the same time. As a teacher following figure depicts the major areas which we shall be aware of and develop an understanding of the institutional policies regarding the issues mentioned in the figure.  

Student Safety (Presented by Majid in Safety Competence Demonstration in Jan 2023)

Overall, as teachers, we shall always be up to date with the new amendments in laws and regulations related to different aspects of education. Since the laws and amendments are continuously evolving to ensure the safety of all the involved parties therefore continuous learning behavior is not only desired but also a necessity. 

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