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The paper contrasts two different approaches to the educational challenges of the ubiquitous, rapidly developing information and communication technologies (ICT). The first is the constructivist 'knowledge building' theory spearheaded by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia and recently further developed by Kai Hakkarainen and Sami Paavola; the second is a pragmatist standpoint drawing in particular from John Dewey's ideas about learning as a natural part of human social actions and transactions. The knowledge builders have set their approach out as a suitable answer to the challenges of the present-day, ICT-characterised 'Knowledge Age'. But here it is argued that a pragmatist approach can be advanced that avoids the over-intellectualisation of education characteristic of knowledge builders and thereby offers a viable alternative for improving present-day educational practices in ways that promote appropriate utilisation of ICT in schools in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on constructivist learning theory. We contrast the constructivist notion of activity that identifies 'active' with 'conscious' and 'intentional' with John Dewey's habitual conception of action, knowing and learning by doing. As regards language and truth, we defend an anti-representationalist conception that sees words as tools of communication and coordination rather than representations reflecting reality. To compare our Deweyan pragmatist conception of learning with contemporary viewpoints associated with constructivism, we examine and criticise the notions of 'knowledge building' and 'metacognition'. Finally, we consider what Deweyan ideas about learning and growth might mean for education in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the European Union's campaign to create a common European Higher Education Area against a set of comparative results on the state of university education within the region in the early part of the 21st century. Similarities and differences between the countries in the relationships between education and the world of work, degree, structures, quality of education and student mobility.

This article starts out from the postmodern critique on higher education, which presents a challenge to discard the contemplative conception of knowledge and promotes a pragmatic conception of inquiry, knowing how and higher learning. Experimental everyday inquiry and scientific research do not differ from each other in this respect: both entail learning by doing as the experience accumulating through action shapes both the actor's habits and the knowing how on which they are based. Under the conditions in which the special nature of traditional scientific knowledge is questioned, students should be acquainted with unprejudiced action that experiments with and questions everything we are used to, and yet is based on consideration even in doubtful situations. The article offers a starting point for embedding learning that is achieved by inquiring, experimenting and doing in the higher education curriculum. Although questioning conventional production of contemplative knowledge, the article calls for a strong academic community which allows researchers themselves to decide in their scientific discussions what is science and what is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors' response to the comments on the article "Expanding Education and Improving Odds?" The article focused on the differences in participation in higher education in Finland in the 1980s and 1990s. The comments were made on two bases. The divergent conclusions of empirical analyses depend on the choice of statistical measure for the comparison of class-by-education tables. The discussion concerns how to explain the contents of a class-by-education table.

This article analyses the mechanisms of a state-organized educational system as it functions between households and the labour market, regulating the passage of age cohorts from the home via school to the labour market. One question is what outcomes the educational system actually produces and what mechanisms are at work in the distribution of educational advantage. In terms of disadvantage, the paper assesses solutions for overcoming the skill gap and entrapment problems of post-industrial society by means of education. In addition to describing how the educational system worked in the conditions of a mature Nordic welfare state and an industrial society based on paid work, feasible ways of reorganizing education in the changing work conditions of an increasingly crisis-ridden post-industrial society are also sought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses mainly on the key results of research on the differences in participation in higher education in Finland in the 1980s and 1990s. The recent discussion surrounding the methods of measuring participation in higher education is also considered. The results show that, in 1980, the odds for children of the well educated participating in higher education was 13 times greater than that of children of fathers with only a basic level of education. Since then, the trend has decreased slowly from 12 in 1985 to 10 in 1995. Despite the various egalitarian policy measures applied by the State, the difference in participation, indicated by the odds ratio 10, is still enormous, and the actual situation for youth with poor family backgrounds has not changed during the past decades. The persistent inequality of educational opportunity in relative terms revealed by the odds ratio, which the authors argue to be the appropriate measure for changes over time, is analysed further by exploring regional differences and the differences between various fields of study. It is shown that the real competition for higher education is among the well off. This is illustrated by a metaphor from bicycle racing: even if the tail-end cyclists reach the main pack, the front-runners widen their gap between the main pack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the spread of sports culture, both from a historical and comparative point of view, using British ice hockey as a case study example. Development of British ice hockey in Europe; Influences of the North America in the European ice hockey; Role of Great Britain in the North American and European ice hockey culture.

Examines the attitudes of employers, employees, and the authorities towards various pathways of acquiring vocational competencies in Finland. Institutionalization of schooling; Assessment of the forms and content of vocational training; Interrelations between education and work.

The article delineates a line of development in which special education and the increasing need for it are connected with the gradual institutionalisation of the modern school model in the school system. In a model of this type the teacher must use the limited time available efficiently to attain the set objective; which means that any interruptions or disturbances jeopardize the possibility of achieving important goals with the time-limit, and diversity among students becomes a problem. In other words, the more modem the school, the stricter the criteria for normality, the finer the evaluation system, the finer the screening used and, as a result, the greater the amount of deviance which must be handled by special measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our article, we first interrogate the prevailing monolithic concept of the State, and introduce the concept of 'governmentality' originated by Michel Foucault. We then explore how governmentality has historically been linked with education, and specifically with the evolution of "civilizing the rabble" inculcating deference, and more recently with the development of the Scandinavian 'Caring State'. Finally, we explore the changing tasks of education in a society increasingly characterized by risks and uncertainty, and explore the nature of the social contracts which could correspond to the new conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the historical development of teachers training in Finland against the context of the professionalization tendencies of modern society . The expansion of education is a worldwide historical phenomenon which has taken place in all industrialized countries in an accelerating speed especially since the second world war. It seems that this basic phenomenon including the strong faith on education is going on mostly regardless of political or economic systems of societies. As the result more and more occupational groups have become educated occupational groups qualified by many years of professional graduate training. Gradually school evolved into the basic national school attended by virtually the entire population, the requirements for teachers' recruitment, qualifications and training came to be applied more and more strictly. Finland was the last of the Scandinavian countries to introduce compulsory education, in 1922. Compared with many other countries, Finland accords its primary school teachers relatively high status.

This article traces the shifting profile of the elementary‐school teaching profession in Finland over a period of 130 years, in relation to changes in the model of citizenship. In particular, it is focused on the process by which mass education has assigned teachers a crucial role in the initiation ceremonies characteristic of modem society, examined in relation to the changing citizenship models prevailing at each stage of history. The approach to the investigation is historical and sociological, with the aim of seeing the formation of the teaching profession and the image of citizenship projected by teachers as elements in a wider process of structural change in society, and as components in the characteristically Scandinavian welfare‐state project, which appears in the 1990s to have reached a culmination point [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Adult education has often been marketed as a ‘Second chance’ system, offering the opportunity of a second beginning for those who have been held back in social status through inadequate education and training. Indeed, it is in accordance with the ideals of democracy that adult education can provide students with a means of enhancing their social status, participation and liberation. This article offers an examination of adult education in Finland as a ‘second chance’ route, on the basis of interview material relating to the year 1990 (N = 3990). When adult education in Finland is examined in relation to the ideology of the second chance, it seems to be clear from sociological perspective that this ideal is not being fully realized. In the sharply differentiated cultural worlds in which the heavy consumers of adult education and their counterparts, non‐participants, live, education and training take on virtually inverse significance. The drive for social differentation characteristic of the highly educated emerges clearly in their career‐oriented approach to adult education, and stands in stark contrast to the passive or educational immune world of the non‐participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]