Leadership in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is changing globally. We investigated ECEC leadership and leaders' interpretations of power and its realization between leaders and followers, a little researched topic in the field. Our theoretical framework consists of ECEC contextual knowledge and prior research attached with Michel…

This study examines educators' experiences of implementing research--practice partnership (RPP) in three schools in Finland's capital area. The data consisted of educator interviews (N = 12) and self-report questionnaire responses (N = 101). Teachers' experiences were traced by data-driven thematic analysis of the interviews and quantitative…

Principal autonomy has been identified as an important ingredient in effective and healthy schools. However, little is known about the various dimensions of the phenomenon and how it takes form in different contexts. This article presents an analytical device contributing to further understand the complex nature of principal autonomy. The device…

This study critically examines gender equality planning (GEP), which has been obligatory in all Finnish comprehensive schools since 2015. GEP has been welcomed as a promising method of systemizing perspectives on gender in Finnish basic education. A regionally representative, discretional sample of gender equality plans (N = 140) was analysed…

This study seeks to understand how children express themselves socially and emotionally in play negotiations in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. It addresses the following research questions: What strategies do children employ in play negotiations? How do these strategies manifest themselves socially and emotionally? The study…

School environments in Finland are changing from traditional classrooms towards more flexible architectures. This change invites designers and commercial organizations to take part in re-thinking these environments by creating narratives of desirable educational environments. Their comprehensive furniture solutions promise flexible entities,…

High-quality early childhood education (ECE) is widely regarded as an essential right, with leadership playing a vital role in its delivery. Effective pedagogical leadership significantly enriches children's learning, development, and overall well-being by nurturing collaborative settings and promoting shared decision-making processes. Limited…

Mud pants have protected Finnish preschool children from dirt and water for many years. However, children do not like to wear them and educators in preschools feel that mud pants cause hard work. This contradiction made us wonder with mud pants. Drawing on relational--material approaches, we understand mud pants as material agent and ask the…

This book discusses principals' prerequisites and work within the five Nordic countries and focuses on schools as formal institutions that carry out functions delegated to them by the social collective. It includes a discussion about what kind of state policy demonstrates autonomy in Nordic schools, as well as the ways in which school leaders as…

New materialisms have informed an array of creative methodologies, inviting scholars to rethink ethics in the practices of research with children. Participating in this rethinking, this study elaborates on ethical practices in creative research where new materialist and arts-based methodologies intra-act with children and the sensitivities of…

Purpose: This study examines the social organizational structure of one early childhood education (ECE) center in Finland and the relationship between this structure and the roles and the responsibilities of the members of the organization. Design/methodology/approach: The research is a qualitative case study with ethnographic features. Its…

In the process of higher education choice, the prospective students compare and organise universities into a preference order, which indicates status hierarchies among institutions. In this study, the aim is to investigate how (and based on what) recent business graduates construct institutional hierarchies in the national higher education…

Finnish queer teachers work in an esteemed profession but also belong to a marginalized minority group. This article analyses interview data focusing on non-heterosexual teachers' understanding of their language use in schools, drawing from sociolinguistic research with queer linguistics. Methodologically, Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to…

This article analyses intergenerational research encounters when collaborating with children. It contemplates the possibilities of applying participatory research methods in situations where the research agenda and main research methods have been decided before contacting the research subjects, as these must be explained in the ethical statement…

Student self-assessment has been framed as a way to address the issues of power in assessment in higher education. However, rarely has self-assessment been used to challenge the broader political issues of grading. In this study, I introduce the concept of summative self-assessment, drawing on self-grading as a practice that seeks to disrupt the…