Finland has an international reputation as a leader in learning and development, but does this brand truly reflect today's reality? Can our learning systems, organizations and governance structures keep pace with the challenges of a rapidly changing world?

The workshop “Learning Finland? – Systemic Challenges and Opportunities” brings together policy makers, leaders, practitioners, and scholars to discuss how systems thinking can help us understand and improve learning at the individual, organizational, and societal levels.

Together, we want to draw on systems and complexity insights to identify guiding principles for systemic design of adaptive learning systems. These principles will serve as a foundation for informing policy-making and practice to enhance learning across scales.

Key Questions

How well does Finland’s learning capacity address today’s complex challenges?
What can we learn from systems thinking to improve learning processes?
What structures and practices hinder or enable learning in organizations and society?
What systemic design variables foster social learning and institutional renewal?

Target Audience

The workshop is designed for leaders and professionals working in policy-making or organizational change and development who wish to deepen their understanding of systemic learning challenges and opportunities.

Participants are expected to:

Have an interest in and experience with practical challenges related to the topic
Be committed to sharing their own insights and experiences openly
Be willing to examine issues from a systemic perspective

Principles of Discussion and Interaction

The Chatham House Rule applies: Participants may use the information shared but may not attribute statements directly to any speaker or participant without permission.
Dialogue will be conducted using systems thinking principles, supported by participatory methods.

The workshop offers a unique opportunity to explore the systemic challenges and solutions pertaining to the national learning system, as well as to network with experts and practitioners in the field. Join us in building a Learning Finland!

Speakers

Dr. Piret Tõnuris: Public sector innovation capacity: what influences public officials’ ability to learn, innovate and adapt to change?

Dr. Piret Tõnurist is a senior programme manager at the OECD, Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), GOV/INDIGO. She leads OECD’s work on government innovation and is the co-founder of the cross-directorate Mission Action Lab. In previous years she managed OPSI’s work programme on systems thinking and created the work stream on anticipatory governance. Piret holds a research fellowship at the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, TalTech and she conducts research on a variety of topics such as AI governance, machine-to-machine coordination and innovation policy management. She has previously advised the Parliament of Estonia on constitutional reforms and worked as a performance auditor for the State Audit Office. Piret has also extensive experience consulting both private companies, public organisations and innovation labs. Piret holds a PhD and MA from TalTech in technology governance and MSc from KU Leuven in policy evaluation.

Professor Emeritus Ray Ison: Why Finland seems well placed to enact systemic governance?

Systemic goverance arises when a set of key systems principles are enacted and re-enacted by systems thinking practitioners (STPs) acting in situations of uncertainty and complexity deploying an ethos of ‘not knowing’, but wishing to learn via social learning. In their practices the capability of taking ‘design turns’ is necessary so that STPs can create and sustain a matrix of favourable institutions (norms, rules which are invented by humans) and a conducive governance system that fosters their on-going systems thinking in practice (STiP). Ray Ison will draw on his own research and scholarship (including his current systemic co-inquiry with Finish colleagues) and the experiences that have accrued over 55 years at the UK Open University from devloping and delivering learning systems for mature age STPs.

Ray Ison is Professor Emeritus of Systems at the UK Open University (OU), where he has contributed to systems thinking and practice since 1994. He played a key role in OU’s Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) program, leading research, teaching, and the professionalization of Systems Thinking Practitioner Apprenticeships. His research spans sustainability, governance, and learning systems, emphasizing social learning and systemic co-inquiry.

In 2008–2015, he shared appointments at OU and Monash University (in Melbourne, AU), leading the Systemic Governance Research Program at Monash Sustainability Institute. His latest book, The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking (2020), co-authored with Ed Straw, explores governance in a climate emergency.

Prof. Ison is President of the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR) and has held leadership roles in ISSS (International Society for the Systems Sciences) and the American Society for Cybernetics. In 2022, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Systems Society of India ‘for contributions to the transformation of society with a systems approach’. He is currently based in Melbourne, Australia, where he is a Visiting Professor in the Transdisciplinary School at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney).

Tim Logan: How to Co-create Learning Spaces?

Young people all over the world are becoming increasingly aware of the disjuncture between the narrow-boundary learning mandated in their schools & universities, and the wide-boundary learning that they are called to do in the lived complexity and relationality of their embodied and digital lives. The institutions of formal education (like other modern institutional structures) are no longer fit for purpose. So how do we co-create 'spaces' that encourage and value this emergent learning, and which might give rise to the new institutional forms that we need? Tim will draw on practical examples of the International Baccalaureate's Festival of Hope and other innovative educational examples around the world.

Tim Logan is Partner at Good Impact Labs, an education leader, connector and facilitator. Tim moves projects from innovative learning design to effectively executing ideas on the ground, swiftly. Bringing his extensive learnings and insights from a global career in youth work, teaching, school leadership and consultancy, Tim has worked with prominent clients around the world to develop new and innovative approaches to learning, well-being and youth engagement. He has most recently worked with International Baccalaureate, Nordic Bildung and Nora Bateson’s team at International Bateson Institute. Tim is also host/producer of the Future Learning Design podcast.

Janne J. Korhonen and Kari Mikkelä: System of Learning Systems: Logics of Increasing Embrace

As systems evolve—whether cognitive, organizational, or societal—they must be organized according to a logic that matches the complexity of their environment, the epistemological maturity of their actors, and the metaphysical stance appropriate for meaning-making.

In this joint talk, Dr. Janne J. Korhonen introduces the notion of vertical multiparadigmatism: an integrated view on how different levels of social organization—from operational work systems to societal value systems—call for distinct logics of learning and knowing. Kari Mikkelä complements this with a complexity thinking perspective, examining how environments become increasingly entangled and turbulent, and how sense-making within learning systems must match the increasingly complex context. He illustrates how learning ecosystems can be intentionally designed to navigate disorder and emergence across scales.

Together, these perspectives constitute a System of Learning Systems—a progressive, scale-sensitive view that explains why governance and learning at higher levels require more constructive, reflective and integrative ways of knowing.