Privatisation of public education is becoming more and more common across the world. As much current research presupposes causal links between the degree of privatisation and issues of competition and student's free choice, we see a need for research on other ways of organising the presence of private providers in public education. In this…

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…

This article recounts how municipalities from border regions in mainland Portugal interacted with the population in the face of the new social order brought about by COVID-19. Our aim is to interpret new educational spaces, beyond schools, emerging from community-level strategies to build trust during the pandemic lockdown and state of emergency.…

This article discusses the rhetorical strategies in Finnish educational policy documents dealing with digitalization. The documents argue that the national education system is in dire need of digital technologies in order to modernize its pedagogy and secure national economic competitiveness. Finnish municipalities, schools and teachers have high…

In 2010, the Swedish Education Act introduced new provisions stating that education at all levels should 'rest on scientific grounds and proven experience'. These requirements led to greater policy activities at the state level and enhanced the cooperation emerging between the municipality and higher education as well as between teachers and…

Due to its complexity, size, diversity (internal or external) and meanings, it is possible to analyse the city from various points of view, which are, ultimately, references for the construction of knowledge about the urban space, and the logic of apprehension and appropriation used by individuals and organizations in relation to the place they…

Cities are complex systems. But they are incomplete systems. In this incompleteness lies the possibility of making--making the urban, the political, the civic, a history. The urban is not alone in having these characteristics, but these characteristics are a necessary part of the DNA of the urban. Every city is distinct and so is every discipline…

Drawing on the analytic concept of imaginary, this study investigates policy hybridisation in the Finnish early childhood education. Specifically, it illuminates how the interplay between different imaginaries enabled the neoliberal imaginary to oust the social-democratic imaginary through a tripartite process in a case of local productivity…

A number of studies in the past few decades address how the governing of educational systems are changing as a result of intensified measurement and use of statistics. This article suggests that another consequence may be the construction of solutions, tools, and methods which target the problems constructed through comparable indicators and…

This article discusses preliminary findings of the author's doctoral research on children's educating networks in contemporary cities. The research problem is introduced in the theoretical framework composed by issues of formal, non-formal and informal education, contemporary children's studies, and contributions from the debate around the…

The restructuring of adult education in Goteborg was first initiated experimentally with respect only to SFI education (an education in beginning Swedish for ethnic minorities living in Sweden). This was done on the basis of decisions in the Goteborg Municipal Council in 1999. But restructuring came into full force for all municipal adult…