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The paper examines the role of PISA in the globalisation of education policies. It approaches the question by assessing the effects of PISA on the ways in which new legislation was debated in national contexts in the period 1994-2013. The study asks: Has there been an increase in the number of references to the international community in debates on education policy due to PISA, and, if so, is this change confined to debates on education policy? Our analysis shows that education policy debates feature an increasingly global discourse in which organisations such as the OECD have an authoritative role. Yet, our findings do not support the claim that PISA is the cause of a change in this respect. Debating national policies in a global context and utilising the same transnational discourses regardless of the policy issue area in question has long been with us, yet there is a global trend in which national policies are increasingly often debated through appeals to models and policy advice promulgated by international organisations.

In this article we attempt to analyse how OECD knowledge production is integrated with the process in which Finnish education policy takes shape. This is done by analysing the "uses" of the OECD PISA Study by Finnish central government officials. The main question posed is: How do these officials interpret the PISA results so as to justify the decisions made in Finnish education policy in the past or to point out new areas of development concerning basic education? The analysis shows that the interpretations of the PISA results tend to favour those responsible for actions within the central government. In the texts analysed, the scientificity of the PISA programme is presented as beyond question, while the direct usefulness of the research results for the further development of national education is also proclaimed. As to the specific results of PISA, the excellent learning outcomes of Finnish students are claimed to be due to educational reforms conducted and decisions made by the central government, whereas shortcomings and areas in which the officials see a need for improvement are argued to be dependent on the actions of other agents. Thus, the analysis shows that the conclusions drawn from the PISA results in texts representing the views of central government are biased and serve to justify its policy agenda. (Contains 25 notes.)

In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which is an international comparative learning assessment measuring young people's knowledge and skills, Finland has been ranked at the top in the two rounds conducted and reported so far. In this article, the authors examine the discourses within which Finland's PISA results have been interpreted by the teaching profession in Finland, and how these interpretations of Finland's PISA success together with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's PISA may affect national education policy in the future. The main question posed is how do teachers interpret excellence so as to support their attempt to improve their working conditions, when the international success of Finnish education could also be used as proof that all is well. The data comprise editorials published in the official organ of the teachers' trade union in Finland, "Opettaja-lehti." The analysis shows that in the editorials, success is explained mainly by the expertise of Finnish teachers and their university education. However, the editorials also argue that there is a discrepancy between the good PISA results and the present meagre investments in the education system, the deteriorating school network and the poor appreciation of the education system in Finland. Thus, the editorials use the national PISA results to demand more resources for the Finnish education system. (Contains 8 notes.)

This article examines Sweden's COVID-19 strategy from the perspective of the global epistemic field. We propose that the policy choices of national governments are conditioned by the global epistemic field that constitutes the problem, the range of potential techniques to handle it, and relevant viewpoints used in assessing their advantages and risks. New, innovative techniques can emerge, and choices can vary, but they are debated and justified in terms of the evolving global set of discourses premised on the fundaments of the epistemic field. In this article, we examine to what extent deviant policies are part of the global set of discourses that evolved at the outset of the pandemic. To address this question, we take Sweden's COVID-19 strategy as an example and study how it was constructed and justified in the national public in 2020. The results of our empirical analysis show that the argument of epistemic field also applies to deviant policies. Even though Sweden's corona strategy deviated much from other countries, including its neighboring countries, the grounds of justification used in debating the strategy were consistent with the global epistemic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces sociological institutionalism and proposes a discursive addition for enhancing its utility for the study of religion. The article reviews neoinstitutionalist social theorizing and underlines its argument that agentic actorhood is constituted by and embedded in a world-spanning culture. We point out that the potential of this line of scholarship for the study of religion remains unexplored partly because it does not say much about the actual discursive practices that motivate actors to behave in concrete situations. We illustrate how a discursive approach to sociological institutionalism can fill this gap by highlighting the relational context that all actors intuitively take account of. We then offer a brief programmatic agenda for the study of religion under the rubric of epistemic governance, indicating the potential for new theoretical insights into the category of religion, some methodological implications, and empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on a case study of second generation Karelian migrants, whose parents had to move to other parts of Finland from the region of Karelia that was ceded to the Soviet Union at the end of World War 11. The article poses the question, how long-lived diasporic identities are, and what are the conditions that affect assimilation or maintenance of a diasporic identity. In the Karelian migrants' case, already the first generation was quite successful in integrating with the rest of the Finnish society, and with the second generation, the integration has been practically complete, largely because of a short cultural distance between the evacuees and other Finns. A recent resurgence of interest in their roots by Karelian evacuees or their family members is primarily due to end of the Cold War and the possibility to freely and openly visit Karelia. Visiting Karelia has a ritual-like function for them. To that concrete, bodily experience of going there they can attach the abstract idea that in some ways they are Karelians and thus strengthen the emotional attachment to their roots. In that sense, visiting Karelia can also be described as a pilgrimage. Key Words: Diasporic identity, narration, ritual, Karelia, Finland, ethnicity, pilgrimage

This article examines how metaphors act as a semiotic resource for managing conflicting institutional logics. Due to their polysemic nature, metaphors help to bridge contending logics and facilitate their long-term co-existence without a need for a battle over dominance. Hence, metaphors provide a similar tool for reconciling competing logics as images and polysemic targets have been shown to offer in earlier studies. The study looks at the workings of metaphors by analysing discourse concerning science and technology parks (STPs) from the UK and Finland. The dataset includes interviews with park managers and representatives of client companies, parliamentary debates and self-presentations by the parks. The article shows how the six key metaphors used to describe STPs (the garden, the incubator, the accelerator, the conduit, the village, and the landlord) are utilized by various actor groups to reconcile the two conflicting institutional logics prevalent in the STPs: instrumental rationalism and romanticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a moral hierarchy of TV viewing, as revealed by a study of TV viewers in Finland. Shows with redeeming social value such as news are not justified by viewers, yet shows with lesser obvious redeeming social value, such as soap operas, are explicitly justified in the conversations of viewers. However, single women living alone do not justify watching soap operas, indicative of less defensiveness when men are not present.

Why is it that when debating the economic crisis, actors in the Portuguese parliament invoke more frequently countries affected by the crisis, whereas actors in the Spanish parliament invoke economically well-off countries more often? This article explores this mystery by studying how and why certain countries are evoked in the decision-making process. The analysis reveals that the actors mention different countries to contextualize the nation. We argue the actors in these two countries resort to different reference groups to identify or distance the nation in this concrete period even if they present similar challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]