Conference Agenda

The expanding Global Education Industry, GEI, offers lucrative opportunities for private actors to participate in the provision of education products and services to generate profit (Verger et al. 2016). In addition to products and services, knowledge and policies are also created, exchanged and commodified in the GEI (Verger et al. 2016). Education export generally refers to all education‑related business activities for which a foreign entity pays for a specific product or service. This symposium explores how education export from one national context is framed and with what implications when imported to varied global contexts. The context on focus is the Finnish education system, which, due to its past PISA fame, has become an attractive solution to various educational ills globally. For Finland, the interest toward its education was an opportunity for branding and business (Schatz et al. 2017) and the state has indeed promoted structures that are favorable for the education business and especially for education export (Seppänen et al.2023).

Three of the papers discuss how the Finnish education is framed, in and by policy (Kuortti), by edubusinesses (Ahmed) offering services and products for global consumption, and in schools that exemplify what gets exported (Nishimura-Sahi). In his paper, Kimmo Kuortti presents an analysis of European Commission education export-themed ERDF funded projects proliferated in Finland during the programme period 2014 - 2020. The paper studies how education is produced as a hybrid sphere where public education becomes projectized, integrated into temporary structures and governed through the logic of regional economic development. The fundamental question Kuortti poses is “what is education” in these education export initiatives. Afsheen Ahmed again focuses on the edubusinesses involved in education exports. Her paper examines how Finnish Education Export Companies discursively construct and market Finnish basic education for global audiences, with particular attention to how values such as equality, inclusion, and learner autonomy are reframed within market-oriented narratives. Drawing on post-structural and postcolonial perspectives, she critically analyses how Finnish basic education is positioned as a transferable solution to global educational challenges and what ethical and epistemic implications these representations produce. Following Japanese participants visiting Finnish schools, Nishimura-Sahi describes how affective technologies, comprising words for feeling (e.g., happiness, well-being, slow living in Nordics) and objects of feeling (e.g., school interior), operate in the context of education export and consequently contribute to assembling a global model of ‘good education’. In the final paper Salokangas and Kiesi, drawing from two data sets: one involving ethnographic fieldwork in a Finnish international school in South Asia and interviews with Finnish International school teachers from Eastern Europe and South Asia, and another involving a discourse analysis of internet documents produced by edubusinesses discuss central tension prevalent in export activities. Working with postcolonial theory, the paper demonstrates how export initiatives in varied local contexts contribute to racialised and economic hierarchies, prioritise western knowledge over local knowledges, and commodify public education for scalable private profit.

The symposium has broad European and international relevance by discussing how European policies contribute to local interpretations of export from Finland, and again how this export manifests in as diverse contexts as Japan, South Asia, and Eastern Europe. By revealing the generic, hollowed out and idealised nature of the export product, and casting light on the implications of export activities in varied global contexts, the symposium contributes to the field by posing critical epistemic and ethical questions concerning the content, means and implications of export activities.

In this paper I examine how education export is discursively institutionalised through European Social Fund (ESF) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) projects in Finland during the funding period 2014 - 2020. While previous research has predominantly focused on national-level education export policy, less attention has been paid to how these policies become interpreted through project-based funding instruments. Drawing on discursive institutionalism (Schmidt 2010) and Foucauldian governmentality (Foucault 1991, Gordon 1991), this study conceptualises ESF/ERDF project summaries as institutionalized discursive acts that both reflect and reproduce dominant education export rationalities. The data consists of ESF and ERDF project summary documents related to education export, complemented by previously analysed (Kuortti 2024) national education export policy documents. Rather than treating project documents as neutral descriptions of implemented activities, the paper analyses them as discursive sites where institutional ideas about education, competitiveness, and public value are articulated, normalised, and rendered actionable. Analytically, the paper focuses on how cognitive ideas (what education export is and how it functions) and normative ideas (why education export is desirable and legitimate) are realized in project-level discourse. The analysis shows how education export is consistently framed as an economic opportunity, a regional development tool, and a solution to perceived challenges in public education funding and relevance. Through this framing, ESF/ERDF projects operationalise national education export policy by translating political objectives into institutionalised development practices. Foucault’s concept of governmental rationality is used to illuminate how project discourse constructs education as a governable and exportable resource, while simultaneously shaping subject positions for educational institutions, regions, and educators as entrepreneurial and globally oriented actors. The research indicates that the project documents frame public education at all levels from kindergarten to higher education as a partner in business creation. The findings suggest that ESF/ERDF projects do not merely implement education export policy but actively contribute to its institutional consolidation by stabilising particular discursive understandings of education’s public purpose. The paper contributes to education policy research by demonstrating how project-based EU funding operates as a key mechanism in the discursive institutionalisation of education export, thereby extending analyses of education export beyond national policy texts to the level of institutional practice and governance.

Foucault, M. 1991. “Politics and the Study of Discourse.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 53–72. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf: The University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel. 1994. Power. Essential Works 1954 – 84: Volume Three. UK: Penguin Random House. Gordon, Colin. 1991. “Governmental rationality: an introduction.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 1–51. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf: The University of Chicago Press Schmidt, V. A. 2010. Taking ideas and discourse seriously: Explaining change through discursive institutionalism as the fourth ‘new institutionalism’. European Political Science Review, 2(1), 1–25.

This paper examines how Finnish basic education is presented and marketed in global education export by Finnish Education Export Companies (FEECs). Finland’s comprehensive school system is internationally recognised through its core values such as equality, inclusion, autonomy, and education as a public good. Together with Finland’s strong performance in international PISA rankings, these values have contributed to the increased global demand for Finnish education and its positioning as an exportable good/service. While previous research on education export has focused largely on policy frameworks, national branding, and higher education, less attention has been paid to how private education export companies present Finnish basic education and how its values are framed for global markets. This paper addresses this gap by analysing how FEECs discursively construct Finnish basic education as a solution to global educational challenges in export contexts. The study draws on post-structural and postcolonial perspectives. We apply Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” (WPR) approach, guided by a Foucauldian discourse analysis and informed by Andreotti’s postcolonial critique of global education. This framework is used to examine how educational problems are defined, what assumptions support these definitions, which perspectives are foregrounded or silenced, and what effects these representations produce. The empirical material consists of marketing content collected from the websites of six FEECs in May 2025, including service descriptions, company introductions, and promotional texts related to basic education exports through school benchmarks and franchising. The analysis focuses on how the importer education systems are portrayed by the FEECs, how Finnish education is positioned as a transferable solution, and how values such as equality and inclusion are communicated within market-oriented narratives. Preliminary findings suggest that marketing texts frequently portray education systems in export destinations as lacking quality, expertise, or future relevance, while presenting Finnish basic education as optimal, scalable, and universally adaptable. At the same time, structural inequalities and ethical tensions related to the commercialisation of education and the connection of the Finnish system with the local education systems are largely absent. From a postcolonial perspective, these discourses risk reproducing epistemic hierarchies by privileging Western educational norms and positioning Finnish education as globally normative. The paper contributes to international and comparative education research by highlighting how educational models and values are reshaped through market logics and by advancing critical discussions on the ethics of education export.

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This paper explores how affective engagements—such as aspirations for ‘happiness’ and ‘well-being’—shape global education policy movements (e.g., Edwards Jr. et al., 2024) , focusing on their role in education export. Empirically grounded in a Finnish case of education export, this paper explores how ‘words for feeling, and objects of feeling’ (Ahmed, 2004, p. 14) circulate and generate effects: specifically, it observes a tour to Finnish schools targeted to international (Japanese) visitors to describe how affective technologies, comprising words for feeling (e.g., happiness, well-being, slow living in Nordics) and objects of feeling (e.g., school interior), act upon individuals’ thoughts and actions, and consequently, contribute to assembling a global model of ‘good education’. In so doing, the paper seeks to shed light on the affective dimension in the analysis of policy movement, a perspective largely overlooked in prevailing global education policy scholarship (e.g., Phillips & Ochs, 2004; Rizvi et al., 2022; Steiner-Khamsi, 2021). The central pillar of the conceptual framework of this study is affect theory (e.g., Gregg & Seigworth, 2010), particularly Sara Ahmed’s work on the politics of emotion (Ahmed, 2004, 2010). Affect theory is employed to analyse how feelings, emotions, and atmosphere serve as a technology of mobilising individuals for transnational policy transfer (Rappleye, 2012) or policy borrowing and lending (Steiner-Khamsi, 2021), and what the outcomes of such affective transfer are. To that end, I conducted observations during a two-day tour to a daycare centre (päiväkoti) and three schools in south-western Finland in autumn 2025, and interviewed the Japanese participants (N = 11) two months after the tour. I then analyse the collected data to illustrate the process through which ‘Finnish education’ is constituted as an ideal model of education, drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005; Law & Hassard, 1999). The sociomaterial approach informed by ANT enables an analysis of how affect emerges in the constitution of ‘Finnish education’. In this analytical framework, ‘Finnish education’ is conceptualised as an assemblage of material objects, bodies, and an ideal of ‘good education’. The paper explores how affective technology, in the process of making ‘Finnish education’, contributes to shaping educational ideals, desires, and actions, which in turn brings about change in global education movements. By empirically investigating the elusive domain of the politics of emotion (Ahmed, 2004), the paper seeks to advance both theoretical and methodological discussions in studies of globalisation and policy movement in education.

Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge. Ahmed, S. (2010). The promise of happiness. Duke University Press. Edwards Jr, D. B., Verger, A., McKenzie, M., & Takayama, K. (Eds). (2024). Researching global education policy: Diverse approaches to policy movement. Policy press. Gregg, M., & Seigworth, G. J. (2010). The affect theory reader. Duke University Press. Phillips, D., & Ochs, K. (2004). Educational policy borrowing: Historical perspectives. Symposium Books. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press. Law, J., & Hassard, J. (1999). Actor network theory and after. Bloomsbury Publishing. Rappleye, J. (2012). Educational policy transfer in an era of globalization: Theory–history–comparison. Peter Lang. Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Rinne, R. (2022). Reimagining globalization and education. Taylor and Francis. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2021). Policy-borrowing and lending in comparative and international education: A key area of research. In T. D. Jules, R. Shields & M. A. M. Thomas (Eds.), The Bloomsbury handbook of theory in comparative and international education (pp. 327–344). Bloomsbury Publishing Pls.

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