Leadership in Educational Contexts in Finland Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

Raisa Ahtiainen
, PhD (Ed., title of docent), is a researcher, university lecturer, and a project leader at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland, and a visiting researcher at Tallinn University, Estonia. Her background is in special needs education, and she is a qualified teacher in that area. Raisa has contributed to the establishment of the Leadership in Educational Contexts research group (LeadEd) at the faculty, and she is the coordinator of the LeadEd research seminar. Her recent publications discuss leadership group work in schools, and leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic in schools and early childhood education centres.  

Eija Hanhimäki
(ThD, M.A. in education) works as a university teacher in the Department of Education at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Previously, she has worked in research, development and teaching positions in the Institute of Educational Leadership and Department of Teacher Education at the University of Jyvaskyla and Helsinki. Her publications, main research interests and projects include articles, book chapters and presentations on, for example, ethical educational leadership, adult education, career counselling and qualitative methods, especially narrative approach and case study method.  







Jaana Leinonen
(D.Sc. Admin, title of docent), works as a senior lecturer of administrative sciences at the University of Lapland, Finland. Her academic work focuses on wide areas in public management such as digitalization and welfare services, citizen participation, and community partnerships and collaboration. She has experience in working and leading several research projects focused on public management, especially local government, and she has actively reported her research findings in scientific publications and forums. Recently, she has focused on studying the conditions and prerequisites of the children’s and adolescents’ healthand wellbeing promotion in educational and local community contexts. 







Mika Risku
is the Head of the Institute of Educational Leadership at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has been involved with the Institute from its very beginning in 1996 in various roles. The first role was as a student in the piloting core study educational leadership programme as a fresh secondary education principal. While working as a principal for fifteen years, he was also involved in the development of the Institute to extend its operations into research and development of educational leadership as well as into intermediate, master, doctoral and professional development education in educational leadership. He joined the Institute as a full-time member in 2008 and has worked as its head since 2013. His research has included various scopes on educational leadership from education policy and governance to how to develop educational leadership and educational leaders in Finland. 

Ann-Sofie Smeds-Nylund
, PhD (Ed.), works as a university teacher in Pedagogical leadership and development at Åbo Akademi University in Vaasa, Finland and is involved in National and Nordic Educational leadership- projects. Previously she has worked as a teacher, principal, with development and national evaluation. Her area of interest is educational leadership in institutional, municipal and society contexts.