The professional development of teacher educators is gaining increasing interest globally. However, not so many studies have been carried out in the Finnish context, which is somewhat surprising considering that the Finnish education system and teacher education has gained so much interest worldwide. This study investigates Finnish teacher educators’ concerns, beliefs and values. The results show that teacher educators experienced a variety of concerns in their work, in the beginning mainly dealing with the position and being a novice, and later they became more concerned with heavy workloads and practical teaching-related matters. The teacher educators studied considered the students’ education to be the most important aspect of their work. The research-based nature of teacher education was also felt to be very important, along with its community aspects, and their own specialization. In general, Finnish teacher educators considered their work to be important.

Information communication technologies and media have challenged traditional education and changed teachers’ thinking. These technologies present unique opportunities for supporting creativity, which is the key aim of learning in arts education. Despite the direct and close link between them and arts education, how to integrate these technologies into traditional education has long challenged government and educational experts. Teachers’ digital literacy has been regarded as an important part of information communication technologies-enabled education. Because an arts education uses more equipment than other types of education, it is more dependent on digital media. Thus, arts teachers’ digital literacy has directly affected their teaching, and has played an increasingly important role in education. This paper, having investigated eight Chinese arts teachers’ digital concepts and utilities in their teaching, explores digital literacy in arts teaching in China from different perspectives. It also offers recommendations for research into arts teachers’ digital literacy and arts education research in China for the future. Overall, this study designs a framework of factors for Chinese arts teachers’ digital literacy.

Media education and media cultures should be considered a part of early childhood education, because media has an important role in children’s lives. With a socio-cultural learning approach, children are considered active participants and competent actors with the media. In this paper, media education has been approached as a case study from the viewpoint of active production and participation. The processes of creating media stories included steps from orientation and planning to action and story production. According to the results gained via content analysis, children were able to share ideas and listen to each other’s choices and opinions in participatory learning. They were also social actors motivated to participate in conversations and negotiations. The joy of learning and acting together intensified the social learning.

Education makes a difference and teacher educators are an important part of that circle. However, there is very little research done in Finland on teacher educators’ professional development. The main purpose of this study was to develop and test the psychometric properties of three scales that measure the components of teacher educators’ professional development, namely (a) developmental needs, (b) preferred ways of fulfiling those needs and (c) hindrances to fulfiling developmental needs. The differences between different occupational groups were also discussed. The survey was distributed in May 2019 to all eight Finnish universities that offer teacher education. The final sample size was 354. Using scale development techniques, we succeeded in generating items to all three inventories. We also tested the psychometric properties and the construct validity of the inventories. Our study revealed that teacher educators are not a homogenous group. Different occupational groups have different professional development interests.

Professional development of teacher educators has not been researched very much in Finland, although interest in teacher educators has started to increase globally in recent decades. This study investigates 15 Finnish teacher educators’ views on their professional development. The results indicate that research plays a significant role in the Finnish teacher educators’ conceptions. They considered research to be an integral part of their work, as it is part of their assigned tasks. This differs from many countries, where researching and high-quality scientific contribution is not necessarily a big part of teacher educators’ work. These teacher educators also viewed research as a means to develop professionally, both through producing and consuming research. Formal professional development, such as professional development courses, did not play a significant role for these teacher educators, though studying either by reading research or participating in free-time education seemed to be more important. The results also indicate that Finnish teacher educators are under pressure to produce high-quality research and to advance in their careers. This is due to business ideology in leadership, i.e. management by results in the Finnish university sector.

Digital museums and arts galleries have become popular in museum education and management. Museum and arts galleries website is one of the most effective and efficient ways. Google, a corporation specializing in Internet-related services and projects, not only puts high-resolution arts images online, but also uses augmented-reality in digital art gallery. The Google Art Project, Google's production, provides users a platform in appreciating and learning arts. With the virtual reality, recently after Google Art Project, more and more countries released their own museum and arts gallery websites, like British Paining in BBC, and FINNA in Finland. Pedagogical function in these websites is one of the most important functions. In this paper, we use Google Art Project and FINNA as the case studies to investigate what kinds of pedagogical functions exist in these websites. Finally, this paper will give the recommendation to digital museums and websites development, especially the pedagogical functions development, in the future.