In this paper we examine the objectives and meanings of the career guidance provided in comprehensive education as set out in discussions in the Parliament of Finland. We approach the topic through an exploration of parliamentary sessions concerning three major legislative proposals for reforming compulsory education in Finland. The premise is…

Parents play a vital role in identifying children's needs for support and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) features that support children's well-being. This study examined parental perspectives on features of ECEC that foster young children's well-being under and above the age of 3 years by interviewing 359 parents across nine European…

This article explores the positioning of dual qualifications (DQs) in the Finnish education policy and the education system since the late 1980s. The analysis is carried out in the context of academic-vocational divide. At the end of the 1980s, Finland questioned the functionality of the strict academic-vocational divide in post-compulsory…

This article argues that women's vocational education needs to be viewed in relation to the development of vocational education and training (VET) more broadly. The history of women's VET is also a history of the term "women's education" itself and how, almost a century after it was introduced, this term is hardly used. Instead, we see…

Recent European and global trends in education have been to promote inclusive education and expand education, resulting in the increased provision of special education. In promoting inclusive education, recent special education reforms have also aimed to curtail the rise in identification rates for students in special education, for example, by…

International degree programmes (IDPs) act as focal instruments for the internationalization of higher education in many non-English--speaking countries serving a variety of national objectives, with the commercial objective becoming increasingly common. This study analyses how IDPs have developed in one Nordic country, Finland, from a marginal…

Applicants' suitability for the teaching profession has been underlined in admissions to Finnish primary teacher education. Nevertheless, hidden agendas beyond teacher competence frameworks and attribute definitions have also influenced primary teacher admissions, particularly in the last three decades (the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s). This article…

Illustrating the rising trend across education systems, the article examines the socio-historical constitution of the "politics of pupil self-evaluation" in the case of Finnish compulsory education assessment policy discourse. By studying self-evaluation as a 'politics', which, drawing on studies in governmentality, engages in the…

Over the past forty years, media education research has emerged as a historical, epistemological and practical field of study. Shifts in the field--along with radical transformations in media technologies, aesthetic forms, ownership models, and audience participation practices--have driven the application of new concepts and theories across a…

Educational equality has been a central tenet framing educational policy in Nordic welfare states and stimulating school reforms in the 1960s and 1970s. However, the conceptualisation of equality has fluctuated, reflecting the changing economic and political climate within which policy statements have been made. In this article, we analyse policy…

Throughout history educational leaders have looked to other countries and have attempted to learn by borrowing useful examples to implement in their own educational systems. As recent comparative policy research shows, processes of policy lending and borrowing have their own socio-historically defined dynamics. In this paper, the authors approach…

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…

This book offers an original contribution to the area of international research on comparative education policies and the influence of transnational agencies on national school policy and reform. With a focus on grasping what "the Nordic model" or "the Nordic dimension" means in school and educational policy, the book explores…

Finland continues to lead the world in the global Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016). Much has been written about Finland's common basic curriculum for all (grades one to nine), however little has been shared regarding Finland's secondary vocational education programs. Finland has…

This article analyses the construction of linguistic value and recognition of linguistic resources in educational spaces in Finland, where Swedish is the second national language and in Sweden, where Finnish is one of five official minority languages. Drawing on ethnographic methods, critically informed notions of language policy and spatial…