To achieve sufficient pedagogical content knowledge on nature of chemistry related issues, teachers need structured opportunities for reflection and discussion. One way to provide those opportunities is through teacher-scientist interaction. This study is based on reflective essays of thirty prospective teachers who participated in a new course…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the research methodology of analyzing learning in inter-organizational networks based on an object-oriented approach. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws from the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), specifically from the concepts of the object of activity, developmental…

The purpose of the study is to describe the evaluation and quality assurance practices employed in the basic units of Finnish and Italian universities and analyse the impact of the Bologna process on quality assessment. The data consist of interviews (n=30) conducted in Finland and Italy. The results suggest that: (1) evaluation and quality…

This paper draws on a comparative study of the growth of data and the changing governance of education in Europe. It looks at data and the "making" of a European Education Policy Space, with a focus on "policy brokers" in translating and mediating demands for data from the European Commission. It considers the ways in which…

With the failure of the No Child Left Behind policies of the 1990's, educational reformers wished to establish a "new and improved" set of standards for the United States to follow. However, since their inception in 2006-2007, the new Common Core State Standards have become increasingly unpopular due to the fact that they remain largely…

The European intTT project "An Integral Teacher Training for Developing Digital and Communicative Competences and Subject Content Learning at Schools" deals with initial teacher training in primary and secondary School. The general objective of the project is to train future school teachers in order to improve the development of…

Issues that will shape the future of higher education institutions and new trends in campus architecture were the themes of a recent international seminar. Francisco Marmolejo, former consultant to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), presents here an overview of the seminar, explaining changes taking place in the…

In this article we will present a reflexive way of producing a narrative analysis on teaching and learning that involves all participants of the pedagogical process. Our theoretical contribution rests on the concept "lived pedagogy", adapted from Max van Manen's term "lived experience". Like van Manen, we start by asking the…

The article analyzes the construction of national reactions to a transnational higher education policy from the point of view of the representation of social actors in policy documents. The data are provided by the so-called Bologna Process, particularly the development of comparable quality assurance systems, and Finnish responses to those…

The international academic success of Finnish secondary schooling in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the triumph of the Finnish technology company NOKIA have stimulated national ambitions to improve higher education institutions in Finland. Because secondary schooling and technology in Finland receive world recognition,…

In the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment of science learning, the equivalent of six school years separate the achievement of 15-year-olds in Finland, the best-performing country, from their counterparts in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic. Still more than a school year lies between the neighboring countries Canada,…

Teachers' learning and occupational well-being is crucial in attaining educational goals both in the classroom and at the school community level. In this article teachers' occupational well-being that is constructed in teaching-learning processes within the school community is referred to as pedagogical well-being. The article focuses on exploring…

This article presents the authors' critique of lessons proposed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21). The authors initiate a discussion about content that they hope will play out in schoolhouses and statehouses across the country. They take on a different task: they present a handful of lesson ideas from P21 that could enhance studies…

Fiste is a three year Comenius project based on a need for innovative and effective ideas for in-service teacher education. The Fiste project is funded by the European Comenius and deals with the use of new web based educational technologies for teaching in-service teachers in Europe. The Fiste's main task is to create a common in-service…

The five Nordic countries and their respective quality assurance agencies have convened annually for over a decade to exchange experiences and discuss issues concerning quality assurance in higher education. In recent years this has resulted in a regional network for the quality assurance agencies (NOQA). During this period, methodological issues…