In welfare-policy studies, conditions are often depicted at a national level. This is the case not least in studies of young people's paths and detours to working life. Studies at a high aggregation level have their advantages when it comes to distinguishing differences in living conditions between countries at similar economic development levels…

This paper provides an overview of the homeschooling movement in Finland focusing on the methods used to monitor the progress of compulsory education of home-educated children. Although the child's home municipality is obliged to monitor the progress of compulsory education, there are currently no national uniform instructions on how monitoring…

For many years, teachers have been involved in developing the national curricula in Finland in various ways. Teachers' involvement in curriculum design and implementation has, during the last national curriculum implementation process, increased locally to strengthen their confidence in and knowledge of the national curriculum's multifaceted…

This article concerns the development of education for young students in Sweden who do not attend regular pathways in upper secondary education, and analyses the changes of educational policy and the organizing of teaching for this group of students. The centre of interest is the upper secondary educational reform carried out in 2011. With this…

As an answer to the welfare state's transformation and increased focus on goal- and result-oriented regulation, Swedish educational policy is in a state of change. The matter of the teaching profession's aspirations with regard to professionalisation has come up once again: reminders that reference the introduction of teacher certification in…

The development and expansion of market solutions is one of the most important changes in Swedish education in the last 30 years. The aim of the article is to describe and analyse how students and staff in upper secondary schools perceive the impact of market competition on teachers' work. Three groups of actors in two Swedish regions were…

This article is based on the author's dissertation work on development and change in Swedish municipal adult education (MAE), investigated through occupational life history studies of four teachers in different municipalities who have worked in MAE since the mid 1970s. Three periods of development--three "eras"--in MAE have been…