Finland is known for its high-performing educational system but performance has declined during the past decade; we may not be dealing with a true anti-Flynn effect, the decline may be explained by reduced motivation & effort

Three Studies on Learning to Learn in Finland: Anti-Flynn Effects 2001–2017. Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen ORCID Icon &Jarkko Hautamäki. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Oct 22 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2020.1833240

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1320979016493473792

Abstract: Finland is known for its high-performing educational system, but local assessments have shown that performance has declined during the past decade. We report the results of nationally representative learning to learn assessments in which 15-year-olds took an identical test in the same schools in 2001, 2012 and 2017. The results show that the level of both domain-general cognitive performance and learning-related beliefs dropped dramatically from 2001 to 2012, but the negative trend has stopped since then. For learning-related beliefs, the 2017 results were approaching the 2001 baseline level. The findings indicate that we may not be dealing with a true anti-Flynn effect, but the decline can possibly be explained by reduced motivation and effort in low-stakes assessment and schoolwork.

KEYWORDS: Learning to learn, anti-Flynn effect, cognitive competences, learning-related beliefs, decline of test scores