The role of universities in knowledge production has changed. Although most higher learning still takes place in universities, knowledge is increasingly produced in collaborative networks comprising partners from different sectors (Välimaa, Papatsiba, and Hoffman, 2016. "Higher Education in Networked Knowledge Societies." In…

Interdisciplinarity has become one of the catchwords in current higher education and science policies, with the underlying rationale being that scientific breakthroughs and solutions to today's global challenges require collaboration across scientific fields. However, several empirical studies have shown that interdisciplinary promises are not…

Knowledge creation is at the core of scientific endeavour. As early career researchers, doctoral students take part in knowledge creation through engaging in various knowledge practices and make their original contribution to knowledge, and become experts in their particular domain. However, our understanding of what doctoral knowledge practices…

Interest in higher education institutions (HEIs) as instruments for development has increased in recent years. The main objective of this paper is to address the contribution of HEIs to development through their missions, models, and challenges. With this purpose, we perform a historical analysis and characterise higher-education systems through…

The aim of the current case study is to investigate the master's theses written in 2016 and 2017 by primary school student teachers at a teacher education department in Finland. 111 theses were analyzed focusing on four distinct aspects of the thesis: topic, perspective, research approach and data collection method. The aim is further to discuss…

Doctoral studies are about learning to create new knowledge and to become a researcher. Yet surprisingly little is known about the individual learning patterns of doctoral students. The study aims to explore learning patterns among natural science doctoral students. The participants included 19 doctoral students from a top-level natural science…

Many studies indicate that knowledge and knowledge production are the main predictors of social development, welfare and the ability to face the future with confidence. It could be argued that knowledge production is mainly carried out by universities. This study compares 1266 scientific research projects (SRPs) completed by faculties of education…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate knowledge-creating agency by examining doctoral students' accounts of their pursuits, using structured interviews. We examined all of the talk apparently related to agency of 13 doctoral students taking part in collective doctoral training in two, highly regarded Finnish research communities…

This article addresses the issue of gender imbalance in Finnish universities in the domain of physics as a historical and dialectical phenomenon. Drawing from the Gramscian notion of hegemony and the activity-theoretical notion of contradiction, this paper analyses gendered hegemonic and contradictory forces steering physicists' careers. This…

Traditional multiple-choice concept inventories measure students' critical conceptual understanding and are designed to reveal students' naive or alternate ideas. The overall scores, however, give little information about the state of students' knowledge and the consistency of reasoning. This study investigates whether students have consistent…

This paper focuses on a generational change taking place in the Polish academic profession: a change in behaviors and attitudes between two groups of academics. One was socialized to academia under the communist regime (1945-1989) and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period. Academics of all age groups are beginning to…

Regardless of the increased interest in technological innovation in universities, relatively little is known about the technology developed by academic scientists. Long-term analyses of researchers' technological contribution are notably missing. This paper examines university-based technology in Finland during the period 1900-85. The focus is on…

For the first time, the annual conference of the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) took place in Sweden. The conference took place at the Faculty of Education on historic ground on the old fortification walls of Carolus Dux from the 17th century right in the centre of the city. This year's host comprised the…

This paper examines institutional change in universities from the perspective of the notion of "boundaries". The paper asks: how can some of the most important regulatory and administrative changes in universities be understood in the framework of evolving boundaries? Two areas are studied empirically. First, the third mission of…