Finland has traditionally had a universal early childhood education and care (ECEC) system like the other Nordic countries, but in the last 15 years this system has undergone considerable marketisation and privatisation suggested to enable parental choice of ECEC. Much of the existing research on parental ECEC decisions has been conducted in…

Due to COVID-19, schools closed in Finland for eight weeks in the spring of 2020, and teaching was conducted using distance education. Teachers used their professional agency to ensure a continuation of their students' learning. This study focuses on the experiences of teachers who taught pupils with intellectual disabilities during the distance…

Having breakfast is associated with improved diet quality, cognitive- and academic performance and can therefore positively impact learning and health, although the impact on reading literacy is unknown in the Nordic countries. The aim of this study was to assess the association between having breakfast often versus rarely and reading literacy…

Drawing on a sociocultural approach to learning, this article highlights comprehensive school pupils' perspectives on working style and classroom pedagogy based on the integrative approach to learning. Using the diamond ranking method, seven groups of 8th grade pupils ranked classroom practices according to their importance for succeeding in…

The Moving Maths study was conducted to increase third grade pupils' physical activity and support their learning in Finland. Altogether 397 children (mean age 9.3 years) and 22 teachers took part in an intervention with two types of physically active maths lessons for five months. One group carried out lessons in which PA was integrated into…

Competence-based education is a widely implemented educational approach, but more research is needed into the relationship between transversal competences and individual disciplines. In this article, we present the results of a study focusing on how the transversal competence of multiliteracy is contextually defined in Finnish local curricula in…

This survey-based study (N = 161) investigates the direct and indirect effects of teacher- and school-level factors on subject-teachers' use of ICT in Home Economics (HE). Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypothesised relationships between perceived usefulness of ICT in Home Economics, age, digital competence, ICT infrastructure,…

Although many studies have investigated teaching in one-to-one computing classrooms, not many have considered the material dimension as equally important to the human dimension. Thus, by using a sociomaterial perspective, we aim to broaden the discussion about emergent teaching practices in Nordic classrooms where students use tablets as personal…

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…

Co-teaching has been highlighted as a possible response to classroom diversity. This study investigated the use of co-teaching by general education teachers and special teachers in Swedish-speaking schools in Finland. The data consisted of special teachers' (N = 126) responses to a questionnaire. On average, the respondents co-taught for 13% of…

Finnish education has recently experienced reforms with respect to guidelines forming the curriculum framework for basic education and school architecture. Since 2016, all new schools incorporate open and flexible design, at least to some extent. The more open school design challenges the conventional organisation of space and pre-defined…

Amid increasing global and national interest in the built educational environment, this editorial considers developments within the Nordic countries that are investigated and discussed within the articles in this special issue. We discuss commonalities and divergences in the experiences of transition and change in the schools, located in a range…

Drawing on a cross-cultural, qualitative study in Finnish and Korean comprehensive schools, we explore how teacher control and student agency are manifested and exercised in the teaching and learning practices of the "official school" and in the student-teacher interactions of the "informal school". We also elaborate on how…

Teacher education (TE) plays a pivotal role in fostering student teachers' teacher identity development, and furthermore, their readiness and motivation for continuous professional development. In this article, we explore the differences in student teachers' teacher identity during TE. For this purpose, we investigated personal practical theories)…

Decreasing performance in several core subjects among students in Sweden and the increasing segregation of schools are urgent issues in relation to equity in education, which has been a long-term goal in Sweden. The aim of this study is to identify factors in the school environment associated with student performance in PISA in mathematics at…