This study aimed to investigate common features and ways of understanding quality culture (QC) within higher education institutions (HEIs) in Nordic countries. While the concept of QC is commonly accepted and often used, its meaning is not always clear. This paper focuses on how Nordic universities frame QC in their internal documentation. The…

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how the Nordic model, featuring highly regulated trade union-employer collaboration, has enabled the building of learning organizations through a co-generative learning model involving both practitioners and action researchers. Design/methodology/approach: A literature search on the Nordic sociotechnical…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how current trends in organization -- government regulation, authoritarian governance and digitalization acts specifically to stop relevant change of a Nordic model. These trends unfold in organizational contexts by revoking mandates, stopping information sharing and eroding trust. When these…

This paper explores policy related to digital competence and the digitalisation of Nordic K-12 schools. Anchored in some key transnational policies on digital competence, it describes some current Nordic movements in the national policies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The concept of boundary objects is used as an analytical lens, for…

Quality is a main issue when practices of validation are developed. In the Nordic countries, a model of quality assurance in validation has been introduced, to be applied in the development of validation practices. The model puts the individual at the centre and introduces eight factors for quality: information, preconditions, documentation,…

This article aims to examine the government-centered lifelong learning model of South Korea using two representative lenses of lifelong learning: Nordic and neoliberal models. By investigating the socio-economic and political backgrounds of lifelong learning in South Korea, we address how South Korea has developed an original lifelong learning…

The Nordic Education Model was an important part of the social democratic welfare state for many years in the second half of the 20th century. Since the millennium, transnational agencies have drawn education from the realm of politics into a global market place by advocating strategies such as efficiency, competition, decentralisation, governing…

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to discussion around the need for improved models for change in a rapidly changing world. It also aims to provide insights for further discussion around how a Nordic management approach can relate to the need for new change ideas. Since Lewin proposed that change requires unfreezing, moving and refreezing,…

Career guidance in Norway has seen major developments over the past two decades. Secondary schools have integrated career education and guidance into an education system which socialises young people to develop citizenship and take part in society. In this article, I explore how Norwegian teenagers' career thinking is influenced by Norwegian…

Current approaches used in educational research and practice to evaluate the quality of written arguments often rely on structural analysis. In such assessments, credit is awarded for the presence of structural elements of an argument, such as claims, evidence, and rebuttals. In this article, we discuss limitations of such approaches, including…

With this study we have a twofold aim. Firstly, to develop a model for identifying and analyzing the status of students' scholarly thinking, and secondly to design and evaluate an educational practice with the aim of supporting these skills. A series of webinars connected researchers and students from Finland, Norway and Sweden and gave the…

Global university rankings currently attract considerable attention, and it is often assumed that such rankings may cause universities to prioritize activities and outcomes that will have a positive effect in their ranking position. A possible consequence of this could be the spread of a particular model of an "ideal" university. This…

In this article, we research and revisit our own experiences of gender equality work to determine the societal and discursive power relations that have shaped gender equality. We conducted our study in Finland, a 'Nordic model of gender equality', but we argue that these results have worldwide relevance, especially since Nordic models of gender…

This article presents the development and application of a model that can be utilized to compare the autonomy of principals in various historical and national contexts. Drawing on former conceptual work on autonomy in education, the model conceptualizes principal autonomy as two-dimensional. The first dimension is the decision making expected from…

The legal framing of national education systems has been subject to substantial change in the past decade, especially in Nordic countries. Earlier research has called for better understanding of the implications of these changes which, in turn, points to a need for conceptual development. With an emphasis on legal and education scholarly work,…