Stepping into other people’s shoes proves to be a difficult task for high school students: assessing historical empathy through simulation exercise

In 2011, the Finnish National Board of Education assessed the learning outcomes of history with a study whose results raised doubts about the fulfilment of the goals of history education. This article seeks to expand awareness about Finnish adolescents’ understanding of historical empathy. The study assessed twenty-two 16–17-year-old high school students’ ability to understand predecessors’ actions in particular historical situations. The study also examined how well a simulation exercise works as a tool of empathy teaching and evaluation. Students participated in the simulation and afterwards the students were interviewed. They also participated in a survey that measured their attitudes before and after the exercise, and wrote an essay at the end of the course. The results of the study show that most of the high school students did not reach the goals set for history teaching. The weak performance of students is explained by the strong tradition of history teaching which has been continuing in Finnish schools despite the curriculum reform. Teaching still concentrates on passing a meta-narrative on to students who have not yet enough experience of explaining historical events from a multiperspective point of view.     

Trapped in university rankings: bridging global competitiveness and local innovation

ABSTRACT

For over a decade, global university rankings have played a growing role in the status competition in higher education. More recently, we have seen a proliferation in rankings of innovation and urbanization. In this article, we argue that while these new measurements bring with them some conceptual adjustments, they draw heavily on existing rankings and embrace the embedded competitive logic. Local rankings of innovation objectify higher education as an element of global competitiveness. Furthermore, we argue that this logical shift is made with the help university rankings that now come to bridge global competition and local innovation; the existing global university rankings are directly used in the composite indicators of local innovation or their methodology is copied. Consequently, political imaginaries of global competition are now projected to regional and city level.     

Assessing historical literacy among 12-year-old Finns

The new national core curriculum has been put into operation in Finland. Teaching and learning is intended to focus on historical literacy. In this paper, we study how it can be assessed with a pen-and-paper test, and what that reveals in regards to the mastering of historical literacy among elementary pupils. To study this, we designed a test where pupils analysed sources, answered open-ended questions, and filled out weighted multiple-choice questions. Furthermore, we implemented the test with the think-aloud method. The results from this indicate the way 12-year-olds read historical documents and formulate their own interpretations. The results demonstrate that most of the pupils succeeded in acquiring historical information from different sources, as well as understanding the interpretative nature of historical knowledge. The test also revealed that pupils can identify some intentions of the sources’ producers, as well as reasoning through their own interpretations using a single source. Some pupils, however, could not process the cognitive noise inherent to the test (i.e. conflicting sources). Some of them also considered an authoritative source to be principally more reliable than other sources. Our study sheds light on which kind of task can be used at the elementary level to assess historical literacy.     

Openness in developing inter-organizational innovation

The paper describes empirical findings on how openness is realized in practical innovation projects involving different organizations. The purpose of the study is to increase the understanding of how openness should be managed in the various forms of inter-organizational innovation development. The main research interest is in how openness is manifested in developing innovations with different organizations involved in inter-organizational innovation projects. Subsidiary research questions are: ‘What is open?’, ‘To whom is it open?’ and ‘How open is it?’. The study applied qualitative case study methodology, and empirical data were collected by semi-structured interviews with management personnel in 40 organizations in Finland and the Netherlands. The findings reveal that openness in innovation is a multifaceted issue that can have very different meanings in different contexts. In the context of the study, the answer to the first sub-question (‘What is open?’) is obvious. It is the innovation project; its input, process and outcome. As for ‘To whom is it open?’, interviewees made a clear distinction between projects with known actors and projects that may include unknown actors. Answering ‘How open is the project?’, one can distinguish between different projects according to which attribute best describes the openness of the project – readable, usable, or modifiable. Answers to the three sub-questions conceptualize the issue of openness in inter-organizational innovation development and can be considered theoretical conclusions of the study. By combining the answers, five characteristic levels of openness in inter-organizational innovation were derived as practical implications of the study for R&;D and innovation management.     

Quality assurance and its impact from higher education institutions’ perspectives: methodological approaches,experiences and expectations

This paper reports on methodological approaches, experiences and expectations referring to impact analysis of quality assurance from the perspective of three higher education institutions (students, teaching staff, quality managers) from Germany, Finland and Romania. The presentations of the three sample institutions focus on discussing the core characteristics of quality assurance procedures applied and their expected and observed impacts, and how intended and non-intended undesirable ones are measured. It turns out that all sample institutions have already some instruments and sub-procedures in place for impact analysis of quality assurance and all of them are striving for further improvement by applying internal and external quality assurance procedures and impact analyses. Finally, a closer look at the recently revised Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area shows that the European sample institutions are on their way towards coherent quality assurance policies, while there is also room left for further improvement and investigation (for example, in implementing systematic methodologies of impact evaluation and quality policies in general).     

Shifting fundaments of European higher education governance: competition,ranking, autonomy and accountability

In the present study we provide an interpretation of a general narrative of transnational governance of higher education. All the elements of the narrative – competition, ranking autonomy and accountability – are visibly present in contemporary higher education policy agenda. We examine these not as separate ideas and practices but as an interlinked whole, bringing an amount of coherence to transnational governance of higher education in Europe. All the elements, as they are currently represented in policy statements by the European higher education establishment, are premised on social atomist ontology and ideology of competition. Consequently, drawing on textual evidence we argue that the recent trend for increasing universities' institutional autonomy and accountability has been justified by reference to competitive logic, which, in turn, has been strengthened by the practice of comparative ranking. The article contributes to diagnosing potential misconceptions that frame the current higher education policy-making in Europe.     

Children as consumers of historical culture in Finland

The article examines the reception of history by 7–10-year-old children in Finland and the role of historical culture in the formation of children’s conceptions of the past. It scrutinizes how history is used to build individual and collective identities and bring significance to the past in children’s everyday lives. Interviews with 174 pupils in a primary school in Helsinki constitute the basis of the research. The study reveals that children’s perceptions of the past are compounded above all by active reminiscence by their parents and grandparents, who in particular are retelling stories of the wars between Finland and the Soviet Union (1939–1944). Through these stories the older generations are trying to connect their families to the national Great Tradition. The study also claims that women are more active mediators of the past than men.