As evidence has become the predominant requirement for decision-making on policy in modern democracies, the importance of experts has increased tremendously. Education reforms are no exception. International organizations have gained power globally in national education policy and politics, particularly through the data they produce and the policy…

Ecosystemic cooperation among the state, municipalities, and commercial actors is evident in the public education of Finland. The edu-ecosystems can include firm interdependences, value creation, co-specialisation, and co-evolution with an aim to sell products and services to the global market as well as to open up markets in a particular country.…

This study attempts to explore changes in teaching conceptions after a transnational project to introduce new pedagogical methods in Indonesia. The project involved a consortium of European universities as mentors and Indonesian universities as mentees, piloting methods based on a student-centred learning approach. We analysed vignettes from the…

National-level educational administrators constantly face the question of how to ensure that the basic education system successfully meets complex local, national, international, and global challenges, and what is the best way to initiate and drive systemic changes in education amid such complexity and to create value for society. Studies have…

In this article, we analyse reforms of academic quality assurance in light of organizational theory using the case example of Finnish higher education. Our purpose is to shed light on the processes behind repeated reforms and the motivation to continuously modify quality models that have only been in use for a relatively short period of time. In…

Amidst societal, demographic and educational changes, teachers are expected to engage in professional development and learning (PDL) throughout their careers. This study explores school teachers' mental models about their work in the framework of Senge's learning organisation, aiming to support their PDL during curriculum reform and organisational…

Background: Developing a school as a learning community is a complex process necessitating active engagement from the entire school community. This paper reports on a study from Finland that focused on exploring learning community development grounded in a shared vision. Purpose: We sought to investigate the development of a school community with…

This book offers an original contribution to the area of international research on comparative education policies and the influence of transnational agencies on national school policy and reform. With a focus on grasping what "the Nordic model" or "the Nordic dimension" means in school and educational policy, the book explores…

How parents spend time with their children, what they teach their children and how they raise them in the early years have again become topics of policymaking and public debate. There is an intensive discussion about parental involvement in early childhood education and care (ECEC). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's…

This article studies issues of coloniality in so-called capacity-building projects between universities in Africa and Scandinavia. Even fifty years after independence, the African higher education landscape is a product of the colonial powers and subsequent uneven power relations, as argued by a number of researchers. The uneven geography and…

Higher education helps learners acquire the knowledge and skills they need to lead productive working lives, and it sparks the innovation that fosters economic growth and social progress. However, creating higher education systems that operate at a high level of research and teaching quality, with responsiveness to social and labour market…

The COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant influence on all aspects of society, and it is necessary to comprehend the responses of various stakeholders as well as the challenges that higher education has encountered in the aftermath of the outbreak. This study systematically analyses the measures taken by higher education stakeholders in response…

Recent research and reform efforts in science education have consistently stressed the importance of coherent science instruction, in which learning opportunities are connected and contextualized by meaningful phenomena, focus on a small set of core ideas over time, and generate a need-to-know about new ideas through a set of connected lessons.…

The article starts with the serious question of why educational reforms do not lead to better learning. Although access to education has increased remarkably, the quality of education can be very low. The reality is that by 2030 there will be 800 million young people who do not have basic skills in reading and math. The answers will be sought from…

This book identifies the cultural and moral foundations of country-specific educational governance and school leadership and presents the principles of justice and the diversity of common goods that guide leadership practices in schools. It contributes to an existing research field that studies diversity and ethical leadership in schools. The…