This report projects Northern Ireland's skills base through to 2030 and compares this to a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The report shows that on current trends Northern Ireland will continue to lag many other countries on a number of measures of learning and skills in 2030. These shortfalls can…

This descriptive pilot study investigates and evaluates nursing students' perceptions of their learning gains and the factors contributing to academic integration within a one-week Intensive Programme (IP) course, part of the Nordplus Programme. Nordplus encourages mobility and curriculum development across Nordic and Baltic higher education. The…

Conventionally, quantitative surveys are used for student evaluations in higher education, but the validity of this practice has been questioned. In the present study, we investigated a qualitative method for evaluating a bachelor's programme. Forty-one first-year students and twenty-eight third-year students on a bachelor's programme in Public…

Blending principal education programmes and leadership practice has become a common feature in the education of school principals. However, the need for further research in how programme participants experience learning within an overall structure of a programme has been highlighted since the same programmes are experienced differently. This…

This study compares and contrasts four international faculty development programs for blended learning in order to understand the benefits, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations from such initiatives. The benefits identified for faculty members, who participated in these programs, were that they became more reflective of their teaching…

By examining the effects of a national-scale teacher professional development (PD) program on instructional practices and student mathematics achievement, we contribute to calls for empirical studies investigating the impacts of such programs conducted at scale. The program corresponds well with core critical features of high-quality teacher PD…

In this paper, we investigate a new national collaborative Benchlearning program for principals in Norway and Sweden. Four process leaders have been running the program. The aim is to give the participants the knowledge to develop a leadership practice and school environment that are more innovative. The program includes theoretical inputs,…

This paper reports on the design, development and evaluation of a novel process for quality assurance of assessments for entire educational programmes. The process was developed and tested by multidisciplinary teaching staff and consists of five phases: inventory, analyses, evaluation, planning change and realising change. The process for quality…

This article presents the evaluation of a two-year action research project in biology and mathematics teaching involving a primary school and a university in Sweden. The aim of the study was to contribute knowledge about a school-university intersection as a professional learning arena. The teachers' conceptions about the project implementation,…

This article focuses on the interplay between the concepts of 'educational infrastructure' and 'organisational memory'. Using data from collaboration between a Swedish university and a local municipality, the article draws attention to the interplay between three nation-wide improvement programmes and their educational infrastructures, and the…

This handbook, first published in 2014, aims at helping policy makers and social partners understand some of the ways in which learning in the workplace can be encouraged and how its quality can be improved. It is also intended to help them understand some of the ways that such learning can be organised in a structured manner so that it benefits…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has become a policy priority in many countries. A growing body of research recognises that it provides a wide range of benefits, including social and economic benefits, better child well-being and learning outcomes as a foundation for lifelong learning, more equitable outcomes and reduction of poverty, and…

Joint degree programs have gained popularity in East Asia, due to the growth of transnational higher education in the region since 2000. However, the external quality assurance (QA) and accreditation of joint degree programs is a challenge for QA agencies, as it normally involves the engagement of several institutions and multiple national…

In light of an international policy movement to increase focus on students' academic achievement, the question of how to improve schools has become an important issue at all levels in the school system. Substantial resources have been invested in reforms to improve conditions for pupils' learning. Great expectations and responsibility are often…

The importance of pre-service teacher training regarding environmental education (EE) has been vastly demonstrated. This systematic review examined the existing evidence from studies evaluating and analysing the relationship between EE, including environmental competences and pre-service primary school teacher training. The literature review…