Browsing by Author "Günther, Mira"

Objectives. Earlier studies have shown that international education policies are increasingly spreading, and that transnational organizations such as OECD play a key role in this development. This study focuses on locating the main educational policy themes from OECD’s publications and compares them with the educational policy objectives of the government programs of the Finnish governments in the 2010s with the aim of locating the similarities between the educational policy objectives of the government programs and the main themes of the OECD's education policy. The research questions guiding the research are: 1. What are the main educational policy themes that can be identified in OECD educational publications? and 2. What are the similarities between the educational policy themes of the OECD and the educational policy objectives of the Finnish government programs for the 2010s? Methods. The research was carried out as a qualitative study. The research material was collected from the OECD educational publications and from the educational policy objectives sections of government programs of the 2010s. An analysis method used in this study was data-driven thematic content analysis. The analysis first highlighted the main educational policy themes from OECD's educational publications, and then compared these themes with the educational policy objectives of the government programs of the 2010s to identify the similarities between them and the OECD’s main educational policy themes. Results and conclusions. In response to the first research question, seven main educational policy themes themes emerged from the OECD’s publications. The main themes are competitiveness and work life, equality, educational performance, innovation, lifelong learning, educational coverage and internationality themes. In response to second research question, the main educational themes of OECD’s publications in comparison to the educational policy objectives of the government programs of the 2010 government of Finland revealed several substantive similarities between the main themes and the educational policy goals of government programs. The purpose of the results is to stimulate an education-related debate on transnational educational policy guidance.