People
The POL-NET team has extensive experience and knowledge.
Kirsten Sivesind
Project Leader, Associate Professor
Kirsten Sivesind, Dr. Philos, is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Oslo. Beyond her academic discipline of curriculum theory, her research focuses on comparative policy analysis and the history of educational ideas and reform. Her publications feature in journals including the European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) and the Journal of Curriculum Studies (JCS) where she serves as an associate editor. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator for the five-country study, “Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison,” funded by the National Research Council in Norway
Background:- Associate Professor at the Department of Education, University of Oslo, 2015 –
- Associate Professor (2008-2014), Senior lecturer (2004-2007) and Researcher/Assistant researcher (2003) at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research, UiO
- Research Fellow at the Department of Educational Research, UiO, 1996 – 2002
Berit Karseth
Co-leader, Professor
Educational Background
- 1995: PhD., Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo
- 1988: Cand.Paed. – Advanced Master Degree in Education with specialization within the field of Leadership, Organizational Theory and Didactics, Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo
Academic Interests
- Curriculum theory and curriculum policy
- Curricular changes in higher education
- Educational reforms
- The knowledge work of professions
Academic leadership
- Dean, Faculty of Educational Sciences (January 2013 – Desember 2016)
- Deputy Head, Department of Education 1999-2002 and 2005-2009
Gita Steiner-Khamsi
Co-leader, Professor
For the first ten years of Gita Steiner-Khamsi’s professional life, she worked on multicultural and anti-racist education policies at the Ministry of Education in the Canton of Zurich in Switzerland. By virtue of comparing policies in different countries of immigration (U.K., Canada, USA.), she became involved in comparative education methods and theories. Since then, her experience evolved in three directions:
Comparative policy studies in education:
Education sector strategies and reviews in a development context, school reform (curriculum; student, teacher and school assessment; governance and social accountability), public-private partnership in education, privatization of public education from a critical perspective and teacher education reform, including teacher salary reform.
Theories and debates in international and comparative education:
Transnational policy borrowing/lending, globalization, education and revolution/political change, disenfranchised minorities and schooling, social and institutional network analysis of international organizations, colonial and postcolonial studies in education.
Comparative methodology:
My research relies on multiple case study methodology, mixed methods designs, indicator research, applied program evaluation.
Chanwoong Baek
Project Coordinator, Postdoctoral Fellow
Academic Interests
- Comparative and International Education
- Education Policy
- Globalization
- Governance
- Social Networks
- Sociology of Education
- Sociology of Knowledge
Education
- Ph.D., Comparative and International Education (Concentration: Sociology), Columbia University, US
- M.Phil., Comparative and International Education, Columbia University, US
- M.A., International Comparative Education, Stanford University, US
- B.A., Government and Legal Studies, Bowdoin College, US
Bernadette Hörmann
Postdoctoral Fellow
Academic Interests
- Education policy (school accountability, standardisation, international student assessment) from an international and comparative perspective
- «Didactics», curriculum theory, education theory («Bildung»)
- Students’ lived experience of schooling, theory of the lifeworld
Current activities
- Postdoc-project: “Externalization in curriculum-making processes. A comparative study of the Norwegian “Knowledge Promotion Reform” (LK06-16) and the Austrian implementation of achievement standards for basic education”
- Member of the project “Transnational Knowledge Networks and Policy Coalitions. Social Network Analyses of the 2016 Norwegian School Reform” (led by Kirsten Sivesind, Gita Steiner-Khamsi)
Completed projects
- NOESIS (Evaluation of an Austrian school reform, University of Vienna)
- “All Aboard the Good Ship Schooling? Marginalization in an Era of School Accountability” (PhD Project)
Jón Torfi Jónasson
Professor Emeritus
Education
- 1980, Ph.D., University of Reading, Experimental psychology. Whats in word. Thesis: On word recognition and reading.
- 1973, MSc, The University of Sussex, Experimental psychology
- 1972, BSc, The University of Edinburgh, BSc Hons. Physics
- 1968, , The University of Edinburgh, First year history, politics and philosophy
- 1967, Stúdent. Matriculation, Reykjavík Gymnasium, Mathematics and science track
Professional Experience
- 2013 – , Professor Dept of Teacher education. School of Education, University of Iceland
- 2008 – 2013, Dean of the School of Education, University of Iceland
- 1993 – 2008, Professor of education. Faculty of Social Science, University of Iceland
- 1995 – 2001, Dean of the Faculty of Social Science, University of Iceland
- 1985 – 1993, Associate professor in Education. Faculty of Social Science, University of Iceland
- 1980 – 1985, Assistant professor. Faculty of Social Science, University of Iceland
- 1977 – 1980, Temporary – full-time! Psychology, education, physics, University of Iceland
Jaakko Kauko
Professor
Jaakko Kauko is Professor of Education Policy in the Faculty of Education and Culture, University of Tampere.
The core idea in Jaakko Kauko’s research is to analyse dynamics in politics, the ways in which political action is always tied to longer-term socio-historical developments, constrained or enabled through institutional rearrangements, and actors are both entangled in and empowered by the dynamics that develop in these conditions. Theoretically, he is interested in the questions of power, contingency, and complexity.
Recently Jaakko finalised a large-scale research project, Transnational Dynamics in Quality Assurance and Evaluation Politics of Basic Education in Brazil, China and Russia (2014–2017), in which the research consortium aimed to understand how local learning environments are shaped by transnational policies and practices. The multifaceted constitutive effects of quality assurance and evaluation were also analysed. The project has been a consortium between the Education Departments at the Universities of Tampere (Prof. Tuomas Takala) and Turku (Prof. Risto Rinne).
Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir
Professor
Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir (Ph.D. 2014, Univ. of Cambridge), is Associate Professor in Educational Studies at the School of education, University of Iceland. She received her teacher certificate in 1998 and worked as a teacher for five years in the Rural North of Iceland before specializing in Gender and Education (MA) and Critical Sociology of Education (PhD) utilizing Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. Her PhD-thesis examines issues on cultural politics of parental choice in the US, exploring neoliberal choice policies and their effects on parents’ and teachers’ choices and practices to ensure school quality.
Her research interests lie in the fields of sociology of education; education policy; teacher professionalism; amd the intersection of gender, race, disability and social class in relation to social justice in education. Her previous work experiences include being special adviser to the Minister of Education (2009-2011), equal opportunity officer at the University of Iceland (2003-2005) and teaching at the compulsory school level (1992-1995 and 1999-2001). She has worked in academia since 2003 and has been politically involved in education since 2009. Her current research is on globalization, marketization, and differentiation in the Icelandic education system and its impact on social justice, parental choices and practices, teachers’ professionalism, educational quality and in-/exclusion in education. She is currently the department chair of the graduate programme Education and Diversity at the University of Iceland.
Gunnlaugur Magnússon
Postdoctoral Fellow
Andreas Nordin
Associate Professor
Oren Pizmony-Levy
Associate Professor
Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. His scholarship centers on the intersection of education and social movements. Specifically, he is interested in the emergence of movements that challenge schools and education systems worldwide, the role of both transnational and domestic actors in the development of these movements, and the intended and unintended consequences of movements. Much of his work focuses on three educational movements: International assessment of student achievement, environmental and sustainability education, and sexual orientation and gender identity education. His recent work examines the global diffusion Teach For America (Teach For All), and the Opt Out movement in the United States.
Trine Juul Reder
Postdoctoral Fellow
Research
- Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison
- The Rise of an Educationalized World: A Global Analysis of OECD’s Educational Recommendations, Programmes, and Impact
Íris Santos
Doctoral Researcher
Her research interests are Education policy-making, policy transfer, international dynamics and network of relations between international and national actors in education policy-making. Her current research focus is on the use of external references in the Portuguese education policy debates – parliament and media .
Dijana Tiplic-Lunde
Head of Department
Academic Interests
- Organization Theory and Leadership
- Education Management
- Learning, Decision-making and Strategy
Education
- PhD in Leadership and Organization, BI Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, Norway, 2008
- MSc in Business Administration, BI Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, Norway, 2003
Saija Volmari
Postdoctoral Fellow
Projects
POLNET: Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison.
Nordic Centre of Excellence: Justice through Education in the Nordic Countries (NCoE: JustEd).
Intercultural Bilingual Education in Latin America (IBE).
Ninni Wahlström
Professor
Ninni Wahlström is a professor of Education and responsible for the research environment LINNAEUS-SITE (Studies in Teaching, Curriculum and Evaluation).
Her area of research interest is curriculum theory, educational policy, and pedagogy (didactics). Against a backdrop of globalization in for example economical, communicative and everyday domains, she am interested in transnational policy discourses and comparative studies. More specifically, her research interests revolve around the following areas:
- curriculum theory in a transnational and national perspectives
- classroom studies in a curriculum theory perspective
- educational policy
- pedagogy/ didactics; general didactics; didactics with a focus on literacy, civics and mathematics
- educational philosophy; pragmatism (Dewey), ethics (cosmopolitanism)
Recently published: Wahlström, N. & Sundberg, D. (2018). Transnational curriculum standards and classroom practices: The new meaning of teaching. London: Routledge.
Christian Ydesen
Professor
Research profile
MA in History and Philosophy (2007), PhD (2011), professor (MSO) at Aalborg University, Denmark (since 2019). His dissertation is titled The Rise of High-Stakes Educational Testing in Denmark, 1920-1970 and published at Peter Lang Verlag. He is the PI the project ‘The Global History of the OECD in education’ funded by the Aalborg University talent programme and the project ‘Education Access under the Reign of Testing and Inclusion’ funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh (2008-2009, 2016), the University of Birmingham (2013), and the University of Oxford (2019) and published several articles on topics such as educational testing, international organisations, accountability, educational psychology and diversity in education from historical and international perspectives.
Administrative profile
Section Head
Former Head of Study Board
Projects
Evaluering af Hjørring Kommunes Ungegaranti.
Education Access Under the Reign of Testing and Inclusion.
IEAN: International Education Assessment Network of Small Nations and States.
Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison.
The Rise of an Educationalized World: A Global Analysis of OECD’s Educational Recommendations, Programmes, and Impact.
