This empirical study examines the effectiveness of learning in a short-term, cross-cultural operative communication training course for police students from five northern European countries. The in-person course is strongly experiential, with a mix of theory and practice. It is based on the Community of Inquiry framework, which is focused on social, cognitive and teaching aspects in collaborative (usually digital) learning environments. Some of the practical scenarios employ professional actors. Reflexivity is a central element; this is aided by the use of body-cameras and mobile phone video footage in practical scenarios. The study uses data from questionnaires (three student cohorts, 75 responses) and focus groups (one cohort, five focus groups). Evaluation of the course suggests the presence of transformational learning, which was surprising given that prior research has tended to focus on longer-term programs. This paper does two things: it introduces the course as a best-practice example in vocational training, and it makes a theoretical contribution by suggesting that a short training course informed by Community of Inquiry principles can lead to transformative learning.
This article examines how Norwegian governmental discourse constructs diversity as a policy problem across immigration, integration, and educational domains, revealing fundamental contradictions that position teachers as “unwilling mitigators” of state-produced tensions between inclusion and exclusion. Drawing on Bacchi's (2009) "What's the Problem Represented to Be?" (WPR) framework and Povinelli's (2011) theory of late liberal governance, I analyze eight policy documents and one government webpage published between 2015 and 2025, including government white papers, integration policy, the core curriculum, and action plans against antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism. The analysis reveals how the same government simultaneously mandates that teachers support students as they maintain and build on their identities within inclusive and diverse environments while also requiring students to conform to Norwegian values – including implicitly held social norms – within a society to which they do not yet fully belong. This contradiction intensifies when examining how the government produces racialized welfare stigma while mandating teachers combat racism. I argue that this is not policy incoherence but rather a constitutive feature of late liberal governance (Povinelli, 2011), where Norway's "peace nation" identity and generous welfare state depend on restrictive immigration policy and exclusionary discourse toward non-citizens. Teachers, positioned at the structural hinge between visible inclusion and hidden exclusion, cannot resolve contradictions they did not create and are not given the language to name. The article contributes to understanding how democratic education becomes structurally impossible when immigration policy produces the very prejudices educational mandates charge teachers with dismantling.
This paper provides a summary of a doctoral dissertation that explores how Chinese in-service teachers and Finnish teacher trainers experienced Finnish education export programmes and how the Chinese participants subsequently adapted Finnish pedagogical approaches in their schools. Based on data obtained through semi-structured interviews, the findings suggest that professional development was facilitated through experiential learning and intercultural dialogue. However, language barriers, mismatched expectations, and contextual differences complicated programme participation and educational borrowing.
Student councils are widely recognised as an integral part of school life across the Nordic countries, reflecting a strong social-democratic tradition in education. Yet few studies examine how these councils are operated in terms of selection processes, focus and student influence across the Nordic countries. Drawing on a range of data collected across five Nordic countries, this study analyses student councils through Lundy’s participation model along with theoretical concepts concerning certain contradictions in democratic education. The findings indicate that, although most systems mandate student councils in basic education and emphasize democratic selection processes, implementation remains uneven. Participation opportunities are often limited to older and more socially advantaged students; selection procedures are frequently opaque; and council agendas tend to focus on social events and minor school improvements, with limited follow-through on students’ proposals. Yet, the study also identified promising practices including hybrid access models, structured feedback loops, and important links to municipal youth councils, which may support more meaningful and inclusive democratic participation. We argue that student councils risk remaining symbolic unless schools embed inclusive access, transparent processes, reciprocal communication, and a wider and globally relevant agenda. These conclusions are brought together in a design-principles model aimed at strengthening the meaningful participation of children and youth in Nordic schools.
This study examines post-pandemic changes in professional development, teaching practices, and well-being in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden using data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 and 2024. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework and informed by governance typologies as a comparative contextual lens, the study uses a repeated cross-sectional design to compare indicators of professional development, teaching practices, job satisfaction, and work-related stress before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show distinct post-pandemic adaptation patterns across the four Nordic systems. Denmark combined reduced participation in professional development on core pedagogical competencies with increased participation in inclusive classroom practices, lower work-related stress, and improved job satisfaction. Finland experienced the sharpest decline in participation in core pedagogical competencies alongside rising work-related stress and lower job satisfaction. Norway substantially increased professional development but also recorded the largest increase in work-related stress and the sharpest decline in job satisfaction, suggesting that resource expansion alone did not offset growing demands. Sweden showed comparatively stable patterns, with modest increases in work-related stress and largely stable job satisfaction despite changes in professional development and classroom management practices. Interpreted through the JD-R framework, Denmark reflected gain-spiral resilience, Sweden equilibrium stability, Finland demand-expanding strain, and Norway loss-spiral vulnerability. Overall, the findings suggest that post-pandemic adaptation followed distinct patterns across the four Nordic systems and depended less on professional development alone than on how education systems balanced professional resources and work-related demands over time.
Approaches to play and learning in early childhood education and care (ECEC) range from child-centered to academically focused pedagogies. These different perspectives shape how ECEC teachers support children’s learning in play-based contexts, reflecting a continuum in how child-initiated learning during play is encouraged. At one end is free play, initiated and directed by children, while the opposite end represents teacher-guided activities, often designed with specific learning objectives in mind. In this scoping review, we explore existing research on play-based pedagogies in science education within ECEC. It includes 48 peer-reviewed qualitative and quantitative studies published in English between 2010 and 2024, focusing on children aged 0-6 years in ECEC institutions. The analysis combines descriptive and content methods. We found that most studies focused on play activities planned and/or structured by teachers that were closely linked to specific learning objectives. In contrast, only a few studies (10) explored children’s free play and how children learn science in such settings. Notably, toddlers were largely absent from the research, with very few studies including this age group. These findings provide insight into how play and learning science are framed in research, revealing limited attention to how ECEC teachers support children’s learning during free play. Finally, we highlight both the importance of play in early science education and the critical role of ECEC teachers in fostering children’s engagement with science through play.
Research-Based Teaching and Learning strategies have come to the fore in recent years to better engage students from all levels with research. As in any novel area in teaching, practices and experiences are needed for the teaching community to eventually implement this approach. Hence, this article presents and appraises several activities with the potential of engaging university students with research. Three extracurricular proposals are analyzed within the framework of Research-Based Teaching and Learning. These are: the scheme ‘Young Researcher Seedbeds’ in Colombia, the student activities at the CONPEHT Tourism Conference in Latin America and the thoughts and experiences of one of the authors about publishing with students in Sweden and in Colombia. The authors use case study techniques to report the first and second initiatives, whereas the third initiative is presented under an auto-ethnographical point of view. In the final section, some thoughts about transferring these ideas to the Nordic context are put forth. The studied extracurricular activities and schemes are found to have potential in promoting ‘hands-on’, active learning, as they bring students in contact with research early in their education. These activities bring about not only an interest in science but also a range of related soft skills, such as collaboration, communication, and presentation competencies. Students get to experience the ‘social’ side of science by producing or disseminating it. A thorough evaluation of these activities and their transfer, however, remains a pending issue. Practitioners interested in expanding their portfolio towards research-based activities may find in this paper inspiration from international, innovative sources to eventually transfer to their contexts.
This explorative study compares early childhood education (ECE) in Bangladesh and Sweden using a most-different systems design, aiming to identify common challenges and to examine how comparison itself can proceed as a relational practice across very different systems. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka and Stockholm, on notions of comparison as active connections and productive juxtaposition, and on commensuration as a social process, the paper uses vignettes as a representational form holding together space, time, and scales to analyze common challenges across contexts. The analysis works through paired ethnographic vignettes, approaching comparison as a relational process enacted through productive juxtaposition and multi-scalar analytical movements. Empirical findings suggest similarities in the function of teachers as time-brokers, in the function of pedagogy as a forum for negotiation between colliding value systems of pedagogical aims and societal norms, and in ECE functioning as an absorptive margin at the periphery of educational systems. The study shows that challenges in ECE are not reducible to questions of development, resourcing, or governance capacity alone, but are tied to how ECE is structurally organized and positioned in relation to wider institutional, cultural, and societal demands. Through reconsideration of juxtaposition, the study further problematizes 'where' difference may be located within a 'messy' system and discusses the scale and scope of the unit of comparison in ECE.
Within the context of the Norwegian curriculum, the recent curriculum reform - The Knowledge Promotion Reform 2020, incorporates the “interdisciplinary themes” – public health and life skills, democracy and citizenship, and sustainable development. This article seeks firstly, to gain insights into how three exemplary case studies promote Education Sustainable Development (ESD) adopting a Whole School Approach (WSA) and secondly, what the perceptions of school stakeholders are on both enabling factors and challenges to this WSA. These aims are explored using a qualitative approach, and through the purposeful selection of three case-study schools that offer different approaches towards implementing ESD. Findings suggest that school leaders consider ESD to be important, however understandings of ESD still largely lean towards the environmental and social dimensions. Within each school, there is some clarity over the purpose, value, and implementation of ESD, but this is not necessarily shared by all, and each school has a different entry point to a WSA to ESD. The institutional structures and norms of the school still appear to be a challenge in the work towards a WSA. The authors recommend further professional development for in-service teachers/leaders.
This conceptual paper explores what I term epistemic educational futures, utilizing a reparatory framework. It argues that this is possible because deglobalization and the polycrisis have created new geocentric spaces in which we can rethink the role of education in addressing epistemic injustice. Historically, education has served as a tool of dominant epistemes, but it is now time to redefine it to focus on eradicating coloniality. While most reparations studies from the US have advocated the material redistribution of resources to address epistemic violence caused by historical economic disadvantages, this paper calls for a realignment of education toward reparatory justice. It asserts that epistemic education futures should acknowledge histories of racism, exploitation, and epistemic violence that have disproportionately affected different social categories. Focusing on Black knowledge history as an example, the analysis presented in this article represents a forward-looking paradigm shift in educating the next generation. Building in part on Afrofuturist scholarship, the article concludes that the concept of “reparative futurism,” in which the future perpetuates the inequities of the present if not disrupted, offers significant potential for shaping how we think about epistemic educational futures.
Shared leadership has gained impact in educational research and policy, and is often portrayed as key to quality enhancement in schools. However, intricate soft governance strategies, increased focus on school leaders’ responsibility for results and external quality assessment can all cause dilemmas due to differences in professional cultures, traditions and expectations of involvement in decision-making processes. In the Nordic countries, school leadership is often characterised as shared; however, these countries use different governance strategies to ensure quality, and research on shared leadership practices within quality work is limited. This comparative, mixed-method study aims to investigate and compare conditions for school leader autonomy in Sweden and Norway through exploring characteristics of shared leadership and school leaders’ experiences of governance in quality work. The two countries share a social-democratic background but have developed different approaches to education governance. Results show that governance and shared leadership in quality work in Sweden is characterised by comparatively clearer task division and roles. Governance strategies in Norway are more diverse, with more actors involved in sharing leadership, highlighting how different governance strategies can contribute to creating different conditions for school leader autonomy in the two countries.
This study explores the significance of using the Sámi mother tongue in the learning process for Sámi-speaking nursing students in Finnmark, Norway. Established in the context of a unique nursing education program that incorporates Sámi culture and language. The research employs a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, utilizing focus group interviews with seven students. Findings indicate that students experience enhanced learning outcomes when instruction occurs in Northern Sámi, leading to increased participation, confidence, and engagement in academic discussions. Participants reported that using their mother tongue facilitated effortless communication, reduced anxiety, and allowed for a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Conversely, when instruction was conducted in Norwegian, students felt silenced and less inclined to participate, highlighting the challenges posed by linguistic barriers in a predominantly Norwegian-speaking healthcare system. The study underscores the need for the development of Sámi nursing terminology to empower students and enhance professional communication. Ultimately, the research advocates for the recognition of Sámi as a legitimate language in nursing education, positing that such recognition not only enriches the educational experience but also serves as a form of decolonization, affirming the cultural identity and rights of the Sámi people. This study contributes to the discourse on indigenous education and the importance of mother tongue instruction in professional training, suggesting that linguistic capital is vital for the empowerment and self-determination of indigenous communities.
This paper argues that a decolonial response is needed in Southeast Asia to challenge the persisting neocoloniality of the higher education landscape in the region. Southeast Asia’s regional higher educational project is strongly influenced by internal (e.g., the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN) and external (e.g., European Union) forces that influence how higher education cooperation and collaboration are conceived. Due to the evidence of neocoloniality in the functioning of ASEAN, this paper argues that there is a decolonial imperative to challenge the existing modernity/coloniality dynamic in Southeast Asia’s higher education landscape. Utilizing an epistemic decolonization lens, this paper critically examines the role of Western (American and European) and non-Western (East Asian) neocolonial forces in charting Southeast Asia’s current higher education landscape. With decoloniality as the framework of analysis, this paper posits pluriversal possibilities grounded in three indigenous philosophies — namely, Malayan sejahtera, Papuan social ecology, and Filipino kapwa. These regional philosophies reflect a localized, collaborative, and sustainable vision for Southeast Asians that runs counter to the dominant higher education narratives of hyper-productivity and free market-oriented outcomes. Finally, this paper argues that a rethinking of the ASEAN Way is critically needed. The following three principles through which the ASEAN Way can be reimagined are proposed: the championing of equitable skills and knowledge redistribution, the development of each nation’s higher educational defining strength/s, and the investment in localized human capital. The new ASEAN Way posits a critical reimagining of existing policies to chart a decolonial Southeast Asian higher education regionalism identity.
This article explores collaboration between educators with complementary yet distinct relationships to racial capitalism and its role in pedagogical disruption of Nordic exceptionalism in sustainability education. The discussion is specifically situated within Norwegian higher education, where denaturalising 'imagined sameness' (likhet) requires tailored pedagogical strategies. Through counter-storytelling and collaborative autoethnographic reflection on our ‘tinkerings’ with the curricula of the jointly taught course ‘Globalisation and sustainable development’, we tell a story of our pedagogical strategies and the affective labour needed in sustained decolonial collaboration within predominantly white institutional spaces. Our reflection indicates that strategic collaboration has the potential to strengthen resistance to systems of oppression. Secondly, incremental ‘tinkering’ may be more effective in the long term than a dramatic curricular overhaul. And finally, context matters. Decolonisation of education must be a pluriversal effort – specific to the situatedness of the educational environment.
This article examines the European Union’s (EU) higher education initiatives, particularly Erasmus+ and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), through an “EU-as-empire” perspective, revealing how policies framed as cooperation and modernization often reproduce normative imperialism and soft colonialism. While promoting compatibility, transferability, mobility, and exchange, these frameworks embed Eurocentric epistemologies, hierarchical governance, and conditionalities that privilege EU states, marginalizing peripheral and non-EU partners. Participation typically requires alignment with pre-set European norms, sustaining a civilizing logic under the guise of partnership. Such asymmetries consolidate the EU’s position as a soft hegemon in the global knowledge economy. Adopting a decolonial perspective, the article calls for pluriversal approaches grounded in reciprocal norm-setting, equitable resource distribution, and recognition of diverse knowledge systems. In doing so, it challenges prevailing narratives of EU benevolence in education and outlines pathways toward more just, pluralistic forms of transnational collaboration.
This article presents a systematic critical literature review examining how policy overload and related concepts such as policy accumulation, layering, and administrative burden are defined, applied, and studied in Sub-Saharan African education research. Drawing on thematic synthesis, the review analyzes forty peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2025. The analysis identifies three central patterns: fragmented conceptualization of policy overload, predominantly qualitative and descriptive empirical approaches, and limited integration of street-level bureaucracy and policy implementation complexity perspectives. The findings show that policy overload in African education systems is most often treated as an implicit condition rather than an explicit analytical construct, with reforms accumulating faster than institutional capacity to implement them. The review highlights key research gaps, including the absence of a shared conceptual vocabulary, limited longitudinal and comparative designs, and insufficient theorization of agency in mediating overload. The article concludes by proposing an interpretive framework that conceptualizes policy overload as both a structural governance condition and a lived implementation experience, offering directions for future theory-building and empirical research.
This article examines how English-language dominance shapes epistemic hierarchies in Comparative and International Education (CIE), focusing on ‘semi-peripheral’ European higher education. It asks how internationalization policies and English-medium instruction (EMI) affect whose knowledge is recognized as legitimate and what this means for linguistic justice and epistemic pluralism. Methodologically, the study combines qualitative document analysis of national and institutional policy texts with a small-scale qualitative questionnaire among university instructors teaching in English at Polish higher education institutions, with particular attention to the University of Warsaw. Policy documents are read for how English is discursively linked to quality, prestige, and competitiveness, while instructor narratives illuminate everyday experiences of EMI and internationalization. Findings show that English operates as a gatekeeper to academic legitimacy not through overt exclusion, but via subtle forms of epistemic filtering embedded in rankings, publishing expectations, and EMI policies. Instructors report institutional ambiguity, limited pedagogical support, and tensions between local linguistic commitments and Anglophone performance demands. The article argues that these dynamics constitute a ‘soft coloniality’ of English, which risks marginalizing local languages and intellectual traditions while reproducing global prestige economies. It calls for reimagining internationalization through plurilingual, context-sensitive practices that treat linguistic justice as integral to epistemic justice. By foregrounding a Central and Eastern European case, the study extends CIE debates on coloniality beyond a simple North–South binary and speaks directly to NJCIE’s focus on critical, context-aware analyses of education, language, and power in and beyond the Nordic and European regions.
