Finnish education has received worldwide attention due to the country's performances in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Research investigating Finland's positive outcomes in the assessment has highlighted not only the strength of teachers, but also the rigour of Finnish teacher education. Finnish student teachers must…

Educational systems change in top-down and bottom-up processes. One example is when authorities introduce a new curriculum, but it can also be changed by agents active in the system. In education, agents of change include educators, students and institutions. In this article, we explore the narratives of educators (n = 4) in the bachelor's…

A consensus exists in applied linguistics that agency and identity are key concepts in understanding teacher development. Although a large body of research has focused on studying language teacher and learner identity and agency separately, less attention has been paid to the relationship of these concepts in individual development. In this…

Teacher education needs to facilitate the development of student teachers' capacity for active and skilful learning in classroom interaction, referred to as sense of professional agency in the classroom. It consists of motivation to learn, self-efficacy beliefs about learning, and strategies promoting one's own and pupils' learning in the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of studies on antecedents of the corporate reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) from the perspectives of employees. Design/methodology/approach: The approach is an examination of previous literature on antecedents of corporate reputation in HEIs, published between…

This article discusses the work of mid-level management at Finnish universities of applied sciences. Based on in-depth interviews with 15 line managers, this study investigates how the standardized management ideas of rational management and employee empowerment are used in the leadership of lecturers at these institutions. The findings indicate…

As with most dynamic activities that are based on social and cultural contexts and rely on interactions, education is a complex and often ambiguous endeavor. Despite this complexity, scholars and educators are often required to find ways of defining and explaining what "good" teaching is and to incorporate these conclusions into teacher…

The aim of this study is to gain better understanding of the dynamics of the social support system adopted in teacher education and its significance for the student teachers' experienced well-being. The focus was on exploring the extent to which empowering "emotional," "informational" or "instrumental" support is…

Purpose: This study was framed with an explorative approach in which preservice classroom teachers (PCTs) participated in physical education learning activities. The purpose was to investigate the construction of their practical knowledge. Methods: Data collection was integrated into a methods course and included a written text assignment in which…

This study explores Finnish first-year primary teacher students' (N = 244) sense of professional agency in the classroom. In addition, the interrelation between student teachers' sense of professional agency and the perceptions of teacher education as a learning environment is explored. The sense of professional agency in the classroom…

This article presents a model for teacher education based on an ongoing action research project at a Finnish university. This model draws on the educational theory of Dewey and the pedagogical sensibility of Bakhtin to critically consider the concepts of teacher identity and agency and to highlight the role of community in teacher development. Our…

Fostering agency as a core component of professionalism is seen as a critical task of higher education. However, the tools for assessing university students' agency, and the pedagogical and relational resources needed for its development, are lacking. The present study describes the theoretical foundations and factor structure of the newly…

This article analyses performance dialogs (PDs) in the university context in Finland. These are held annually between employers and employees. The study was carried out to assess the efficacy of this technique. Research methods included an electronic questionnaire over two different years delivered to the whole staff of the Department of Teacher…

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 study examines Finnish higher education students' perceptions of whether students are customers, based on qualitative interview data. The article contributes to the discussion on students as customers by giving attention to students' own voices from a country where tuition fees are not generally collected. The data are presented and analysed…