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During the new millennium the Finnish educational system has faced a new challenge: how to explain glorious PISA results produced with only a small variance between schools, average national costs and, as regards the average duration of studies, relatively efficiently. Explanations for this issue can be searched for in many different ways. The purpose of the article is to show what kind of sustainable leadership in the educational governance can be seen behind the high level results in Finland.

The future‐oriented actions are discussed in the article alongside some relevant cultural prerequisites that have enabled effective changing processes. Finally, two cases of recent future‐oriented actions in the Finnish educational governance are given as examples.

Sustainable leadership can be seen as a long series of several future‐oriented decisions and actions, such as uniforming the system, offering highly demanding education to all, strategic decisions concerning the information society, as well as some other great political decisions concerning education.

It may not be easy to reproduce the same high‐level results as in Finland in any other country. However, several developing countries could benefit from the future‐oriented ethos of Finland.

This article gives hints what kinds of future‐oriented actions can be launched at a national level.

Future orientation leads to long‐term policies in education. This enables long‐term development in the educational sector which may enhance the social cohesion in the societies.

Though the Finnish experiences may be unique in the international settings, the future‐orientation is of uttermost importance when wanting to develop the educational systems in any country. Hence the results may give a valuable insight to understand a successful case of educational governance.

This paper aims to explore the support experiences of 381 PhD students within the humanities and social sciences from three research-intensive universities in Denmark (n = 145) and Finland (n = 236). The study investigates the cross-cultural variation in the researcher community support and supervisory support experiences, factors associated with their support experienced and the perceived support fit.

The study used a mixed methods design, both quantitative analyses and qualitative analyses (open-ended descriptions) were used.

The results showed that students in both Danish and Finnish programs emphasized researcher community support over supervisory support. The Danish students, however, reported slightly higher levels of researcher community support and experienced lower levels of friction than their Finnish counter partners. The results also indicated that the only form of support in which the students expressed more matched support than mismatched support was informational support.

The results imply investing in a stronger integration of PhD students into the research community is beneficial for the students’ progress. Building network-based and collaborative learning activities that enhance both instrumental and emotional support and a collective form of supervision could be further developed. The possibility of Phd student integration in the scholarly community is likely to lead to more efficient use of finacial and intellectual resources in academia and society more broadly.

This study offer a unique contribution on doctoral students’ academic and socialization experiences in terms of explicationg the sources of support, support forms and support fit among Danish and Finnish doctoral students. Both invariants and socio-culturally embedded aspects of support experience among the students were detected.

This article studies the tensions between universities' accountability and autonomy in response to the demands of public steering mechanisms coordinating higher education institutions.

Demonstrating the tension between accountability and autonomy, the impact and relevance of public steering mechanisms coordinating higher education are studied via a survey with selected representative Finnish universities. The response rate was an exceptionally high 94%. In addition to the statistical analysis of the survey, open-ended questions were also analyzed to give a more in-depth understanding of the findings. The study uses paradox theory and institutional complexity as its theoretical lenses.

The empirical analysis of this study shows a considerable gap between the experienced impact and the experienced relevance of the steering mechanisms in higher education. The authors’ further analysis of the open-ended data shows that indicator-based funding allocation has undermined the perceived university autonomy. The authors highlight the paradoxical tensions of university autonomy and higher education institutions' steering mechanisms' requirement for accountability. Finding an acceptable balance between accountability and institutional autonomy plays an important role in designing higher education policies.

The authors found that even if a steering mechanism is experienced as impactful, it is not necessarily considered relevant. One of the key aspects in understanding the reasons behind this mismatch is related to university autonomy. Most impactful steering mechanisms become considered less relevant because they also endanger institutional autonomy. In this sense, it could be expected that steering mechanisms should better balance accountability and autonomy.

In Finland there is still much to be done to promote integrated information literacy in higher education. Teamwork between teachers and libraries is well developed in some universities but many are only just beginning to realize what libraries can do for them. Academic libraries have provided user education since the 1950s, but they still have to prove themselves to teaching staff in universities. The Finnish virtual university portal is in the process of integrating library services into their portal, but many negotiations remain before mutual goals are achieved. This article gives an overview of these changes and other information literacy activities in Finnish academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework combining the approaches of the innovation pedagogy, strategic planning of higher education and the research, development and innovation (RDI) in order to support the export of higher education.

The export of education can be included in the framework by taking the innovation pedagogy as a starting point – an approach developed for the universities of applied sciences with the emphasis of efficient leaning in projects and the institution's external impact. Strategic management defines strategic objectives, which take into account the European education policy and the regional and international demand for higher education. The empirical part of the paper is based on the study of the Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS) focusing on the networked applied research and development activities and the combination of the education and the RDI activities using learning in the projects approaches.

The building of the strategic partnerships seems to be one of the main instruments of the export process and to use the support of the external broker organization outside of the universities. The advantages of the student learning in the RDI projects are: the drop‐out rates can be decreased, the length of study can be shortened, the transfer of knowledge can be increased, the supervision of students can be increased, the experience of students from projects increases the employment opportunities and the integrated model of innovation pedagogy can be exported to other countries.

The framework presented in the paper could be developed towards mechanisms of sharing the knowledge concerning different global learning ecosystems.

There has been very little empirical research for the need to identify the importance of an inclusive territory of commonality for “invisible” students with disabilities in Australian education testing, such as the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The research methodology used a cross-sectional mixed methods, deductive quantitative, an inductive qualitative, functionalist perspective and interpretivist perspective from internet secondary data analysis. This was undertaken to investigate the government functionalist macrosociology of Australian education to the detriment of the microsociology debate of students with disabilities, for inclusive education and social justice.

This finding showed vastly underestimated numbers of students with disabilities in Australian schools experienced through “gatekeeping”, non-participation in NAPLAN testing and choices of schools, resulting in poor educational outcomes and work-readiness.

The research findings showed that functionalism of Australian education is threatening not only social order, well-being and resilience of an innovative Australian economy through welfare dependency; but also depriving people with disabilities of social equality and empowerment against poverty brought about by a lack of education and of the human right to do a decent job.

The study provided a critical evaluation of the weaknesses of government functionalism; specifically the relationship between the dualism of macro and micro perspectives, which promotes the existence of “invisible” students with disabilities in education, despite government legislation purporting an inclusive education for all students.

This study aims to explore student craft teachers’ conceptions of sustainable craft. This is an important issue because the Finnish National Curriculum of Basic Education emphasises sustainability, especially in craft education, and teachers play a vital role in preparing pupils to meet the future challenges. Because the concept of sustainable craft is open-ended, there is a need to rethink pedagogy in craft education and higher education.

The data were collected in the form of essays from future craft teachers (N41) studying craft science in the Finnish higher education system. The essays concerned both general conceptions of sustainable craft and reflections on the student teachers’ craft practices. The data were analysed using grounded theory to gain a deep understanding of how student craft teachers conceptualise sustainable craft. The data were quantified and statistically assessed for dependencies between variables and transferability of results.

The study revealed that sustainable craft is conceptualised as a system and that student teachers approach sustainability from different orientations: practice, product, immaterial and holistic.

The emerging theory offers a new concrete tool for understanding the abstract concept of sustainability in higher education and suggests that sustainability can be addressed through tangible methods of craft. This theory proposes craft as a tool to conceptualise of sustainability for broader use in education for sustainability (ESD) and as a concrete tool for developing pedagogy for ESD.

This paper aims to analyse contrasting discourses on education and competitiveness from four countries to show the different national values that are a key driver in economic development.

The paper uses content analysis to compare and contrast the newspaper discourse surrounding the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in four countries with above OECD average performance: Japan and South Korea (improving performance) and Australia and Finland (declining performance). PISA has attracted much government and public attention because it reflects education and the economic value of that education.

There are key contrasts in the discourses of the four countries. Despite shifts to globalised perspectives on education, strong national and cultural differences remain. Educational competitiveness and economic competitiveness are strong discourses in Japan and South Korea, while in Australia and Finland, the focus is on educational competitiveness. The media in Finland has few references to economic competitiveness and it does not feature in Australia. The discourse themes on PISA from 2001 to 2015 are presented with trends in educational attainment and shifting national perspectives on education.

Analysis is limited to the top two circulation newspapers in English language in each country over 2001 to 2015. These newspapers in Finland, Japan and South Korea include translated content from local language papers.

The paper provides longitudinal perspectives to understand the contrasting societal values placed on education and how these relate to perspectives on competitiveness. This media evidence on national discourses can inform education policy orientations in the four countries examined.

This study aims to present a general conceptual framework which can be used to evaluate quality and institutional performance in higher education.

The quality of higher education is at the heart of the setting up of the European Higher Education Area. Strategic management is widely used in higher education institutions and is a strong candidate for the general framework of management. The balanced scorecard approach has been designed as a mechanism to communicate and implement the strategic plan and make it more understandable to stakeholders.

The concepts of quality and strategy maps provide the tools that can be used to describe the conceptual framework to describe the quality assurance system and institutional performance.

The quality and performance of a higher education institution are evaluated by national quality assurance agencies and many other stakeholders having various objectives and interests. The evaluation is based on the backgrounds and subjective experiences of the evaluators. Therefore there is clearly a need for a common and rational framework for the evaluation.

Finland had a legislation-based centralized collection policy until the mid-1990s. The main components were national resource centers (selected higher education libraries) and provincial libraries (selected public libraries). This paradigm changed during the recession of the 1990s when new public management ideologies were adopted by the government. This ended the centralized model and a new policy favoring a decentralized collection management which demanded resource sharing. The models designated for the print-only age became obsolete also when the digital dissemination of especially scientific documents began to be the norm. The Finnish libraries have started to implement a new strategy consisting of different elements including a new model of library automation systems, the National Repository which is the hub for the resource sharing of print materials, digitization projects (to be especially implemented by the National Library) and with new policies defining the roles and responsibilities of each of the libraries involved. This article aims to describe the history of the Finnish centralized collection policy, its shift to the modern management of the collection as well as the philosophy and tools used in this work.

The paper describes the evolution of the Finnish national collection policy and its main trends.

The National Repository Library has enabled Finnish university libraries to focus their collection policies and to make savings in the cost of premises. A new business model for the digital era is needed for document sharing between libraries.

The paper is based on Finnish experiences.

Models for national and international collection and preservation policies are presented.

The paper provides proposals for the building of global division of work in the long-tail management of documents.