Moving into 2019 looks good. Towards the end of 2018 I particpated with Ævar Kjartanson in ten hour long programmes under the heading Education and the future, where we invited a number of people to talk about different aspects of education on RÚV, the national broadcasting service. See the link. I found this very interesting. But unfortunately I find my piece on inertia in education becoming gradually more relevant, even if that was not directly reflected in these discussions.
Late May last year I went to the Justice in Education (final conference in Helsinki), where I presented both with Guðrún and Pascale and in September I presented on data and its use at the Northern lights (PISA and TiMSS) seminar in Finland. In October I also particpated in meetings with our colleagues from ATA in Alberta and in the selection of a candidate at the Autonomous University in Barcelona; a task which is part of the Serra Húnter Catalalan universities project. Late in the year JC Couture visited from Alberta and early this year David Labaree and his wife Diane Churchill visited us from California and David presented on his new book, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. NERA 2019 was in Uppsala this time, interesting as always with a pre-conference on a Nordic project lead by UiO on the documentary backup of government policy making in education. I continued there to discuss my ideas where I question the directional value of data, being careful not to undermine its importance for understanding the world. I had two publications in 2018, one with the group lead by Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret at Turku, and it was also a treat to work with Lisbeth Lundahl and Anne-Lise Arnesen on the usefulness of ILSA for educational justice comparisons, especially in the Nordic context. Early in 2019 there was a chapter out with Kristjana Stella and Atli Haþórsson in the Springer book Resisting Education: A Cross-National Study on Systems and School Effects.
