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.
Jaakko is currently involved in two projects analysing knowledge and policymaking. He leads the Academy of Finland-funded Transnational Knowledge Networks in Higher Education Policymaking (KNETS) project. In addition he leads the Finnish team of the Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison (POLNET)project.
Jaakko’s publication list LINK
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).
At the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Jaakko Kauko teaches courses on politics and governance of education for graduate and postgraduate students. His other academic tasks include responsibilities in developing research at the faculty and supervising doctoral dissertations and master’s theses.