Educational reforms come and go; teachers transcend. Teachers shape lives in whatever context they live. The teacher is the one constant, necessary but not sufficient element in the educational process. For teachers to deliver excellent performance, with equity, in the classroom, they must receive sufficient, excellent treatment with equity in…

Self-regulation in the governance of higher education systems is often assumed to improve institutional performance, accountability, and responsiveness. Although studies of higher education governance have addressed the extent of self-regulation across national systems, there has been less investigation of the links between self-regulation and…

Finland has repeatedly been presented as a "success story" of equality and education, promoter of human rights and included equality and human rights as part of national curricula. However, research has shown the slow progress of integrating topics of equality and human rights in teacher education despite hundreds of project-based…

Despite a global commitment to guarantee access to and participation in high-quality education for all, the acceptance of marginalised pupils into mainstream education and changing policies and practices to support the aim are still contested challenges. This article discusses how inclusive education policy is understood and applied by pedagogues…

The purpose of this study is to determine the direction of causality between the quality of education and technological development for the selected Northern European countries over the period 2006-2017. To this end, we employ the bootstrap panel causality test. The findings of our study indicate that the quality of education leads to changes in…

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…

Finland has been widely regarded as one of the most successful education systems in the world. However, recent trends suggest that Finland's considerable achievements may be at risk. The country's performance in international student assessments has been declining over the past decade, as gaps among student groups and levels of school segregation…

In this paper, we consider pedagogical quality particularly as equal opportunities for participating in decision-making in preschool. Relying on Ferraris' [2013. "Documentality: Why it is necessary to leave traces." New York: Fordham University Press] theory of Documentality, we demonstrate how pedagogical documentation can contribute to…

External accountability policies have spread fast across various educational systems over the past decades. This research examines the relations of internal and external accountability with students' math achievement drawing on PISA 2012. With a sample of 44 educational systems, of which external accountability policies were identified, the…

According to globalisation theories, the importance of international organisations such as UNESCO and EU regarding processes of policy-making is increasing and it is no longer the nation state alone that is regulating policy. Focusing on equity and social justice as central topics of the global discourse, the article raises the question of how…

The PISA for Development brief series is a set of concise monthly education policy-oriented notes published by the OECD which are designed to describe a specific PISA for Development topic. In this brief, PISA's role in monitoring the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal--to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and…

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to the frequent closure of school buildings in most countries in the world and has interrupted the school attendance of at least 1.2 billion students in 2020 and 2021. Although many education systems are adapting to varying degrees, the pandemic is showing that countries' current learning infrastructures…

Over the past 15 years, Finland has performed very well on international student achievement tests. Although Finland's results have slightly deteriorated from those at the beginning of the 21st century, Finnish students still perform very well in all comparative international surveys such as PISA, TIMSS and ICCS. The Finnish school system seems to…

With contributions from Linda Darling-Hammond, Michael Fullan, Pasi Sahlberg, and Martin Carnoy, "Global Education Reform" is an eye-opening analysis of national educational reforms and the types of high-achieving systems needed to serve all students equitably.The collection documents the ideologically and educationally distinctive…

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between increasingly diversified types of schools. Nevertheless, the "Finnish variety of "post-comprehensivism" continues to emphasise…