Supervisor and research community support are among the key determinants of a positive experience for PhD candidates. Yet, empirical evidence of the individual variation in experienced social support among PhD candidates is still limited. In this study, we adopted a person-centered approach to detect distinct social support profiles and their…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the range of sustainability-related discourses by the stakeholders within a particular Finnish Higher Education Institution (HEI); interaction between the discourses and the context of the HEI; and the extent to which different understandings of sustainability cause challenges for the implementation of the…

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…

This study, informed by Vygotskian notion of mediation and reporting on a partnership between a researcher (the first author) and a teacher (the second author), aims at exploring how peers' comments can inform teacher assessment and guidance of learners' L2 (second/foreign language) writing. The participants were 19 L2 English learners in an upper…

In universities, being mobile and international has become ever more important for academics' career prospects. This article explores junior and other insecurely employed researchers' experiences of geographical mobility in relation to their personal life, career, employability and value as scholars. The aim is to discover the gendered strategies…

A considerable scholarship now describes the increasing neoliberalization of universities and the accompanying impacts on academic research and researchers. However, less attention has been devoted to issues of research project leadership, especially for academics with feminist commitments. This article reports results of a qualitative study of 12…

This article is inspired by a recent call for the establishment of "alliances for inter- and transdisciplinarity" issued by Julie Thompson Klein (2021) in this journal. Previously, in 2016, "Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies" published a Special Section devoted to Latin American experiences in interdisciplinarity and…

World-renowned educational theorist Paulo Freire has a decades-long legacy reaching all corners of the world. In this reception study, we ask, is there a Nordic Freire, that is, have the Nordic educators and scholars recognized Paulo Freire's works in the past decades? Our reception study's purpose is not to go into depth to Freire's thinking but…

How knowledge capitalism retools the scope of academic research and researchers is an issue which this article ties to the project market in the ethos of knowledge capitalism. In Finland, academic research has been forced to apply for funding in project-based activities reflecting European Union policies. The project market, which in this article…

This article introduces the art-based action research (ABAR) methodology as part of the international discussion of art-based educational research (ABER). The participatory and dialogical approach of ABAR was inspired by a consideration of the pressure for change in art education stemming from the practices of relational and dialogical…

This narrative study investigated identity, agency and emotions, amongst an under-researched academic group -- those without PhDs with primary responsibility for teaching, who are also expected to do research. In this interview-based paper, we examine the experience of such Finnish academics in a research-intensive university. Thematic and then…

In the present paper, we report on the idea of exchanging educational innovations across European countries aiming to shed light on the following question: how feasible and useful is it to transfer an innovation across different national educational settings? The innovation, in this case, Inquiry-Based Teaching Learning Sequences, is recognized as…

The article describes the author's subjective experience -- as an actor-researcher -- of being part of the performance "Toinen katse." The performance was the first artistic part of her artistic doctoral research conducted for a doctoral degree at the University of Tampere. The article explores carefully two scenes from the performance,…

This article is based on a study of children's experiences of being in care in which children were given the opportunity to choose either their own social worker or an outside researcher to interview them for the purposes of the research. We examine here how the children (N = 15) describe their choice of interviewer and also explore how the social…

The article will analyze the major opportunities as well as the difficulties in providing and applying research- and evidence-based knowledge in the Finnish educational system. It asks what purposes evidence is required for and who provides that evidence. The chapter introduces the Finnish enhancement-led evaluation policy and its main principles…