I teleported (or “jaunted” as Alfred Bester would have it) to Iceland yesterday morning to deliver a presentation at the University of Iceland’s yearly conference on educational research and development. In my presentation I described some of my research on educational policy in Finland, in particular, policy regarding information and communication technologies in education. In this research I explored “strategic ambiguity” in Finnish policy communications to allow for, and promote, diverse interpretations of policy to fit specific contexts and deal with rapid change. I find this a very interesting phenomenon because it goes against conventional thinking that policy should be clear, concise, and uniformly measurable.

I’ve included both a recording of the presentation (in English – requires Flash) and a link to the presentation slides. I ended up running over my time limit because I was trying to be mindful of the need to speak more clearly and slowly than I usually would to accommodate the international audience. So, I didn’t manage to speak directly to all of the slides but readers can see those in the presentation that I’ve shared below. If anyone has questions about those feel free to contact me at tryggvi@education4site.org or to post in the comments. Continue reading →