Studies of global university rankings often assume that rankings as Anglo-American policy scripts have an increasing influence resulting in a convergence of policies and practices, or that the ideas of rankings continue to diverge into national types. In this article, we take a middle ground by arguing that when an idea of ranking is grounded in a…

The reformed Finnish vocational education and training (VET) system is a competence-based, customer-oriented educational programme with two overarching aims: to develop a skilled labour force and to promote social inclusion. Support and guidance have become increasingly important in Finnish VET in recent decades. This study focuses on how…

Swedish compulsory schools are committed to work for equality and social cohesion. Increasing school segregation, however, challenges this commitment. Based on survey data from Swedish municipalities, this article maps and analyses local initiatives that counteract school segregation. We identify three main types of initiatives--reinforcement,…

The reliance on the use of virtual learning environments, particularly computer-supported collaborative learning environments, is increasing in higher education institutions. This paper explores the perceived sociability of a virtual learning environment after it was implemented in an interdisciplinary project-based course in a higher education…

In this article, the assessment practice known as the "grade conference" is analysed using an interactionally oriented narrative approach. The aim is to explore the grade conference and what it entails for students when executed in their fourth year of compulsory school, as part of a trial of an educational reform where students receive…

This exploratory study present findings from semi-structured interviews with 15 Norwegian school principals elaborating on their experiences and learning from the school closures, transition to digital education, and educational leadership in the first six months of the pandemic. Three main themes emerged from the interviews: (1) "We took a…

This article is based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from teachers and pupils in Danish schools in June 2020, as schools reopened following closures in the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It investigates the transformations in school life that took place in this period in response to strict official guidelines to prevent the…

The Swedish educational system is recognized as being highly inclusive. Nevertheless, support in special classes and placing students with intellectual disabilities in special schools have increased after the mid-1990s. The study involves 65 thousand students in seven cohorts (born 1967-2004), participating in the Swedish longitudinal project…

University teachers are expected to continuously improve their practice, but research about their viewpoints of future-ready universities is scarce. The paper contributes to educational research through paired Q methodology and investigates university teachers' shifting views of successful future learning environments, while being forced to move…

Organizational frameworks in Swedish schools have resulted in instrumentality and measurability. To literature studies, this has led to a focus on comprehension and proficiency at the expense of aesthetic aspects of fiction-reading. This study examines how teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools relate the aesthetic experience to literature…

This paper explores school leaders' and teachers' ideas about drivers of improvement at local level in the decentralised Swedish school system. An institutional perspective is applied to investigate how institutional logics at macro level are played out at micro level in improvement processes. The paper draws on a three-year collaborative research…

Health is a resource for pupils' learning. Including health in the curriculum and teaching will enable pupils to understand the connection between health and learning. Action research has proved to be effective from a learning perspective. Our purpose was to explore whether, and how, using action-oriented research methods in a middle school-based…

Quality in higher education (HE) can be considered a floating signifier that lacks a stable meaning due to the many possible interpretations different actors may ascribe to it in different contexts. We investigate how policy makers employ the term quality in HE policymaking attempting to legitimize policy reforms and find that it is employed in…

In this article, a study of combined discursive emphasis on the concepts "culture for learning" and "learning outcomes" in recent education policy messages is presented. These concepts have been individually examined but seldom as parallel or converging policy messages. Inspired by discursive institutionalism, we address the…

In Sweden, compulsory school grades determine admission to upper-secondary school. The article maps grading outcomes in compulsory school for 1990-2017, when three different grading scales were used, in terms of students' distribution across grading steps. Statistics of grades for all Swedish grade 9 students (all school subjects) are used.…