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Finland’s globally accepted teaching practices are purely based on common sense, and holistically promote equity over excellence. “New Wine in a new bottle” literally means unlearning old thoughts and relearning new skills updated to changes in the world recouping to new trends and establishing ourselves full-fledged meeting the demand of the hour. The question of why India still doesn’t get enough Noble Prizes in required disciplines is still unanswerable. Still in India, there exist the archaic forms of the classroom setting with little room for flexibility and no educational freedom; moreover, with a highly pressurised testing environment. With the increasing population of Indian set-up, most of the teachers are underpaid and are less satisfied with the amount of effort they put in and their pay scale. A paradigm shift could be expected in India’s educational landscape post the introduction of the National Education Policy 2020; by reducing the academic workload for students and improving their holistic intelligence thereby. The NEP framework has been structured based on certain practical pedagogies from the Finnish context. The 5+3+3+4 model would encourage students to make their communication more effective, prioritising creativity, critical thinking, and personality development; say, various experts. There is a direct connection between education and poverty level in an economy. If the system lacks quality, then it would adversely affect the economic functioning of a nation. This study highlights the cases from both the Indian and Finnish contexts, clarifying the loopholes in our education system and what lessons could be incorporated from the Finnish model; so as to devise a policy at the national level for re-engineering the impoverished situations, keeping in mind sustainable architecture. This chapter is the first of its kind not ever published elsewhere and is original in nature.

The Government of India’s National Policy of Education 2020 stipulates that in the following five years all stand-alone teacher education colleges will be required to convert to multidisciplinary higher education institutions. This calls for a complete overhaul of the country’s vast, diverse, and age-old system of teacher preparation. Evidence-based policy implementation is thus the need of the hour. This chapter attempts to aid the process by presenting insights from a comparative education research on pre-service teacher education (PSTE) of secondary school teachers at stand-alone teacher education institutions (TEIs) in the Indian city of Mumbai and university-based teacher education in the Chinese city of Hong Kong. Documentary sources, field visits, and 57 interviews form the basis of the findings. The dimensions for comparison include academic freedom and autonomy; pathways to PSTE; linkages of teacher education providers; and role and working conditions of teacher educators. The chapter deduces the core differences in teacher education at stand-alone TEIs vis-à-vis that at a university and draws out implications of shutting down the former. It concludes by laying down a road map for the effective universitization of teacher education in India that will result in genuinely improving teacher quality.

The faculties are crucial to education. They should have enough training facilities and be encouraged to actively contribute to high-quality education and successful learning. Faculty engagement and development activities should be explored and included in learning organizations and employee engagement in India. This paper aims to describe higher education as a learning organization. The research will also assess how faculty development programs affect faculty engagement behaviors in these institutions and if professional development mediates this effect, which has not been previously examined.

This study was conducted with quantitative data collected from 267 faculties through reliable and validated adapted questionnaires. Semistructured interviews were conducted with heads and professor-level faculties to gain insights into faculty development and engagement. Partial least squares structural equation modeling technique (PLS-SEM 3.3.6 version) was used to test the conceptually drafted model.

Faculty professional development programs shown to improve higher education faculty engagement and professional progress. The studies also showed that higher education institutions must prioritize faculty development to become learning organizations. Professional development reduced the direct effects of faculty development program (FDP) on faculty engagement. This suggests that professional growth mediates the research.

This research emphasizes and professional development to boost teacher involvement in B-Schools. Management must design faculty development programs to construct professional development and learning organizations, according to the results. Developing and writing rules that encourage faculty engagement in such internal and external programs would also enhance their academic and administrative abilities and assist higher education institutions become learning organizations.

The study is one of the few to examine the impact of faculty development programs and professional development on faculty engagement in higher education institutions, particularly B-Schools, and its competitive mediating role.

After working through the case and assignment questions, students should be able to develop an understanding of how to identify female leadership competencies; analyze social and psychological barriers to developing female leadership; and consider various solutions to build trust in rural settings by overcoming social and psychological barriers.

In 2022, Mrs Anjaria, the Managing Director, and Mr Anjaria, the Chairperson of the Rangoli Group of Institutions in Gandhinagar, Gujarat (India), were facing the challenge of how to empower thousands of females in the preschool venture in the rural area as they could see the impact of their female edupreneurs in the urban area. Both had worked up the ladder in the preschool venture after quitting their professional careers in the corporate world. They now wanted to create female edupreneurs to empower women and bring about social and educational change at the grassroots level. They needed to make an informed decision about how to scale the preschool offerings at rural sites to bring educational change and increase revenue simultaneously; however, they were unsure how to execute this vision into a tangible profit-making social edupreneurial reality. Government preschools (Anganwadis) and social structures in rural Indian contexts were a major consideration. It was important to increase their hiring efforts to empower women with their franchise model. However, issues such as leadership competencies, psycho-socio-cultural barriers, and creating trust in rural economies challenged their vision.

The case is suitable for MBA students or postgraduate-level courses on development communication, business communication, entrepreneurial communication and gender communication seeking to develop female competencies through communication models. This case illustrates how to create trust through communication among female eduprenuers by overcoming social and psychological barriers in rural settings.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CCS 3: Entrepreneurship

Through a thematic analysis, this research study aims to examine the role of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and self-help groups (SHGs) in empowering rural women and their contribution to financial inclusion in India. Sustainable development can be achieved when resources are equally available and accessible for all, irrespective of gender differences.

For qualitative research, the response was collected through focused group discussion and gathered responses from members working in SHGs in Uttarakhand in India. Thematic analysis was done to analyse the data till the saturation level was reached.

Despite several socio-economic developments worldwide, women still fall among some of the most vulnerable communities, unable to access resources at par with men. Thus, women’s empowerment emerges as a theme central to sustainable development. MFIs are looking to empower women by increasing their savings habits. There are consistent efforts on the part of the government to formalize the system of SHGs and give them additional financial support by creating a proper link between the banking system and SHGs. We also need technology and innovation for creating financial literacy among women. Women’s empowerment cannot be achieved unless they are involved in financial inclusion by creating awareness.

The research focuses on people’s socio-economic development, especially women living in hilly and rural areas within the specific context of Uttarakhand in India. This research will provide an opportunity for strategic approaches and reveal the areas where government needs to focus for sustainable development.

Since the spread of mass education around the world in the mid- to late-twentieth century, teacher quality has been heralded as the key factor to improve education quality nationwide. National education systems worldwide are also engaged in ongoing and often high stakes cross-national comparisons. As a result, policy-makers and educators in most national education systems are looking at and implementing new ways to improve education overall by raising teacher quality levels, and India is no exception. In India, teacher quality is publicly blamed for both perceived low education quality and demonstrated low average student performance, especially following Indian students’ performance on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment. Indian education policy-makers are, therefore, looking at teacher quality as a key factor to improve student performance. Little is known about the impact or implementation of Indian policy frameworks on teacher quality and associated student outcomes in India. This introductory chapter identifies and analyzes various measures of teacher quality and how teacher quality varies in India both in response to and in spite of national policies related to teacher quality. It begins by providing evidence regarding the global importance of teacher quality on student outcomes and then addresses the ambiguity of the term “teacher quality.” This chapter then briefly discussed national education policy in India and the role teacher quality has played in these national policies, especially in the early twenty-first century, including NCF 2005, NCFTE 2009, Draft NPE 2016, Draft NPE 2019, and NPE 2020.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a learning-based approach to portray the impact of Covid-19 on state school services in Italy, with a specific focus on the role of street-level bureaucrats and the triggering of co-creative processes.

The study proposes a qualitative system dynamics (or SD) approach describing the implementation of Covid-related educational policies in Italy. An insight model, made of causal loop diagrams, integrates the selected multi-disciplinary literature and institutional sources, secondary data from national and local reports (about Palermo, the fifth largest metropolitan city in Italy) and insights from a panel of school street–level bureaucrats.

The study provides an insight into the impacts of governmental decisions (school closures and the subsequent need to activate distance learning during the first wave of Covid-19) at a local level. Specifically, it portrays the influences of managerial and professional discretion, infrastructural equipment and socio-economic factors favouring/deterring co-creative educational processes.

The SD model highlights vicious/virtuous circles in policy implementation and suggests new managerial paths for education, more routed towards public value creation and less attached to bureaucratic procedures and the unquestioning application of performance culture.

The paper proposes an original and holistic approach to dealing with policy making in education and its managerial features. The research findings are considered important, not only to face the current emergency, but also to pro-actively think about the post-Covid era.

Based on a description of the national features of the Israeli society and educational system, this chapter will briefly describe various attempts conducted since the 1970s to decentralize the Israeli educational system and promote school autonomy. It will focus specifically, on the School-Based Management (SBM) policy, borrowed by educational policymakers and implemented in the Israeli educational system during late 1990s. The decision to borrow this policy did not follow policymakers’ recognition in the limitations and shortcomings of the centralized structure of control, which characterized the educational system since Israel became an independent state in 1948. Rather, it followed pressures coming from various stakeholders who considered centralized policy plans irrelevant and not enough sensitive to the variety of local circumstances and needs (David, 1989; Hanson, 1984; Nir, 2002; Nir et al., 2016). Therefore, more than 20 years later, it appears that the implementation of SBM created limited effects in terms of teachers and school leaders’ degrees of freedom and that the educational system still maintains its centralized structure and features. The main argument the present chapter will attempt to make is that borrowed policies have a limited capacity to promote significant change in the borrowing system when policymakers do not fully believe in the policy’s values and ideas and are reluctant to abandon current patterns of organizational behavior. Specifically, it will describe the process that characterized the borrowing and implementation of the SBM policy in the Israeli educational system and will discuss the main symptoms that characterized the policy borrowing process when policymakers were not fully committed to the values and mode of operation brought by the borrowed policy.

This chapter begins with an examination of the complexities, challenges, and contradictions that are presented by policies and practices associated with the College Entrance Examination (CEE) and higher education admissions during the three decades of China's reform era. It then focuses on recent reform polices as outlined in the national education 2020 Blueprint (National Educational Reform and Development Plan, 2010–2020), which deepens the debate about the role of the CEE in shaping the mission of education and distributing opportunities and “talents” affecting social mobility, university autonomy, and national development. The CEE stands at the epicenter of educational reform, criticized for hamstringing institutional autonomy and innovation; reducing schooling to a soulless competition; and unfairly advantaging urban children with greater educational opportunities. This chapter explains the staying power of the CEE and concludes that China's examination culture will intensify in the short term, as the CEE is clung to as a last bastion of meritocracy and is reinforced by the state's desire to cultivate what the 2020 Blueprint labels elite “selected innovative” and “pragmatic” talents. Content and policy analysis is used to explain CEE reform since 1978 and provide a backdrop for discussion of pedagogical, market, and compensatory reform strategies that tinker at the CEE's margins. To take into account micro-institutional processes involved in the CEE's creation, maintenance, and resistance to change, we examine stakeholders' frames of common perception through 2010 interviews with exam candidates and their parents, and faculty and administrators from four Gansu Province universities. These interviews illustrate what the CEE means to diverse families and reveal how admission policies impact students, teachers, and university faculty and administrators at both elite and non-elite higher education institutions. The slow change of CEE reform discourse and practice as China inches from examination-based selection criteria to ability-based selection criteria has begun to redefine the trajectories of recognized “elites,” whose actions are motivated by and reflect the changing needs of society and economic development. Friction and resistance on the ground, therefore, point to the ways in which the changing needs of the labor market, the policy mandates of the national agenda, the meritocratic ideal and the educational desires of China's citizenry intertwine to shape, and be shaped by, CEE policies.