Background: Despite a global policy push toward the advancement of family- and community-based care, residential care for children and youth remains a relevant and highly utilized out-of-home care option in many countries, fulfilling functions of care and accommodation as well as education and treatment. Objective: As part of a larger project…

Background: Although the contexts, structures and administrations of early childhood education (ECE) may differ internationally, effective pedagogical leadership remains an essential component in supporting young children's development and learning. This paper reports on a comparative study which considered ECE in two different settings, Finland…

Even though quality assurance has played a role in European higher education for decades by now, it is still a topic of great discord. While several studies have focused on the initiation phase of quality assurance, little attention has been paid to the question on how attitudes towards quality assurance in higher education change over time. This…

This article reflects on the meanings of comparing and contrasting in international and comparative education, using two education utopias as case studies. It is inspired by our visits to schools in rural China and Finland and by our interest in issues of social justice, equality/equity. The article also discusses the meanings of the fashionable…

This paper analyses how three European countries produce and use data within a specific educational policy field, that of school leaving and graduation. It compares how stakeholders in England, Finland and the Netherlands know what happens to the leavers from schools and universities. Through gathering evidence about the methodological…

The article reports on a case study of impact evaluation of external quality assurance, i.e. EUR-ACE programme accreditation, which was carried out by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences in the form of a methodological before-after comparison. The results show mainly positive and stable attitudes of…

This study sought to explore the ideological and implementational spaces for mainstreaming multilingual pedagogies (MPs) in initial teacher education (ITE) policies and curricula across the European Union. The concept of linguistically sensitive teaching (LST) was used as a lens to examine inclusive, equity-centred MPs in ITE. A multi-sited…

Some students perceive that online assessment does not provide for a true reflection of their work effort. This article reports on a collaborative international project between two higher education institutions with the aim of researching issues relating to engineering student perceptions with respect to online assessment of mathematics. It…

The objectives of this dissertation include describing and analyzing the patterns of inequality in ALE participation at both the micro and macro levels. Special attention is paid to social origins of individual adults and their association with two groups of macro-level factors, social inequality (income, education, and skill inequality) and…

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…

This article presents a comparative case study on the ways in which children's school ecologies facilitate their adjusting positively to first grade in risk-filled contexts in South Africa and Finland. The insights of two children (one South African, one Finnish) from socio-economically disadvantaged communities, their teachers, parents and…

Although there is an increased interest in overseas training for educational leaders in China, little is known about the value of such programs. This qualitative case study explores Chinese school principals' perceptions of leadership practices and professional development after undertaking a Finnish training program. The article also explores…

The importance of sales management as an interface between a company and its customers is widely recognized. However, the teaching of strategic sales management has not received enough attention in marketing education literature. This study analyzes an experiential client-based method for teaching a strategic sales management course. The authors…

Transparency and comparability of higher education institutions especially in terms of their academic programmes and research activities are important issues for today's working environment. This paper is an overview of a recently completed PhD thesis which outlines examples of selected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development…

GeoCapabilities is a transatlantic collaborative project for researching the purposes and values of geography education through a "capabilities approach." Inspired by the writings of philosopher Amartya Sen and economist Martha Nussbaum, the capabilities approach provides a normative framework for understanding the broader aims of…