Football is never just football – education as a global matter of culture and community

More than 100,000 people are roaring in Ohio Stadium as the homecoming game turns into a victory for the home team, the Buckeyes. This is American football, not soccer for a European Fulbright visitor. But it is not actually just football, or even football at all. It is culture. It is a communal gathering. It is the result of decades of learning and education that have led this many people to believe in the same cause— literally, a common goal.

So important is this game and this activity that the football coach is the highest-paid employee at Ohio State University. He earns 100 times more than a professor in the College of Education and Human Ecology. As a teacher trainer at Haaga-Helia and as a Fulbright visitor for institutional collaboration building at the Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology, I would like to believe that educators on a global scale are at least as important in creating culture and community for learning.

Quality education is a series of touch downs

How does one create such a scene — an illusion that making a touchdown is the most important thing there is, at least during the 60-minute game or throughout the football season? In the United States, universities are tightly connected to the country’s sports culture, and sports are an inseparable part of practically every culture. One key feature of a human being needing a team and wanting to take part in events like the football game is the need to belong which is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation (Baumeister & Leary 1995).

We need surrogate heroes and a sense of community — a feeling of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. Could a teacher be someone’s hero? Could education provide with a sense of belonging that would include everyone, have the same power as the football fans’ community, be as motivating as the game? Partly, at least for many, it already does.

What we need is a common goal, both as educators and as citizens of the world — as humankind. The goal of education in Finland is to provide equal, high-quality, and lifelong educational opportunities while fostering well-rounded, responsible, and active citizens (City of Helsinki 2024). In the U.S., the goal is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access (U.S. Department of Education 2025). The challenge is that not everyone experiences these goals as their own, nor has the sense of belonging to the team.

To make it happen requires for the system and the trainers in it to play well, as e team, and choose the kind of pedagogy that facilitates everyone’s’ sense of being a valuable member of a team playing for a shared goal.

Quality education fosters the desire to keep developing

One way of enabling the sense of belonging is designing the educational culture so, that the players in it can flourish.

Basketball is another sport that resonates strongly with American university life. Miikka Muurinen, the young star of the Finnish national basketball team Susijengi (the Wolf Pack), recently decided to leave the American high school league and play for a Serbian team in the Euroleague instead. In an interview (Halonen 2025) he states that he is ready for the challenge as he wants to keep developing. And that, from a Finnish teacher trainer’s perspective, is where all learners should always be. The possibility to keep growing and get experiences of doing well in one’s own zone of proximal development is vital in providing the educates within the system to feel motivated and valuable.

How could a community — even the global community, the entire humankind — arrive at the brink of their zone of proximal development? How could the education systems in the U.S., Finland, or any other country accompany their citizens to their best possible place? Is there a way to combine happy, well-rounded, active citizens with success — a skilled workforce with sustainable values and peaceful communities that share goals, gratify everyone with a sense of belonging, and feel cheerful together on a global scale? As a teacher trainer I need to keep believing it is both possible and attainable. Inclusion is at the heart of training a community of enthusiastic participants.

Quality education includes the entire community (of learners)

Learning happens in a social context. Learning makes the community. Community makes learning. Education creates both the present culture and the desired future. What happens in the masses becomes the default. In this sense, not much has changed since the times of Athens or Rome, from where Western civilization supposedly emerged. Only an education system that genuinely welcomes everyone and offers suitable roles in the team for everyone can sustainably cater for all and keep people in cheering for the team that is on the field playing for the entire community. Funnily, the way to community goes through caring for individual needs.

The student-centred approach that personalises learning paths at Haaga-Helia School of Professional Teacher Education does not happen in a vacuum. It is always in relation to some default that the community considers the mainstream, in this case, of pedagogy. The question for a teacher trainer and for trainers of students in vocational education and training becomes how we can facilitate learning environments and processes that foster authenticity and safe connections within a community of diverse learners.

In the student-centred approach, learners themselves carry the responsibility for their own learning. For them, the fundamental dilemma is how to fit in while staying true to the authentic self in the best and most constructive way. When these two aspects of studying, belonging and authenticity, match and meet in a safe and fruitful social community, something magical happens: we learn from each other, in dialogue, about the world and about ourselves. The Fulbright experience, for me, was such a chance to engage in cultural exchange and shared even if different realities.

Quality education forms the global community

The Ohio Stadium is still roaring. And even though I am obviously an outsider, a stranger, and not usually a fanatic of any sport, the 100,000 spectators involve me in the sphere of humanity. It is not about football — which, in its essence, is just a bunch of fit and skilled human beings running after a ball toward a goal that is an imaginary place agreed upon by everyone present. The rules are a common illusion that becomes real when all participants believe it has meaning and significance.

Some say that only on a football field (or soccer field) do we forget about differences in opinion, appearance, or belief, because we all believe and feel that it is important to get that ball through the gate and win. And even if only one team can win the game, it is amicable. The facilities for playing are maintained together, in agreement with all parties. Whoever wins is happy to have had a skilled opponent, and the team that loses is grateful for the opportunity to play against or perhaps even with the best team.

Fulbright creates global opportunities for the teachers’ and learners’ community

Like life, education and football are about being part of something that makes one feel connected. I, in the audience of the football game, feel awe. If we could get this amount of people, motivation, and engagement connected to other values, the ones that will shape the future of humanity and the globe, we could do whatever we wanted, really. And if any system of education could provide the same sense of belonging to all its participants, we would all be winners.

For my sense of belonging the opportunity to make a Fulbright visit like this was essential. It brought me to my own zone of proximal development as an international teacher trainer and intensified my sense of belonging to the global community of pedagogues. It might even have made me a bit happier about being in the Finnish team, even if we are not often the strongest or winning team in sports.

I guess it will be our teachers’ and teacher trainers’ job to figure out how to keep everyone in the team and give all sufficient time on the field for reaching the shared goals. We will need to work as a team to further develop pedagogies and education systems that allow all kinds of learners to experience a sense of belonging for constantly and consistently finding their authentic place and space in their zone on proximal development. The learners could then be responsible members and enthusiastic supporters of their local cultures and the global community.

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