Description: The Finnish education system can be seen as an application of the Nordic/Scandinavian model of education. The Nordic strategy for building up high quality and equality in education has been based on construction of publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking or streaming students during their basic education until the age of 16. The majority of pupils continue into secondary level education. In Finland, training of primary school teachers and nursery teachers is also a Master's degree (M.A., Master of Education), which has been internationally noted in attempts to pinpoint reasons for the high success rates of Finnish youngsters in PISA studies. This training of teachers for a research-based professionalism has proved on average to correspond well to such new policy developments as school-based curricula and local decision-making (Westbury, Hansen, Kansanen & Björkvist 2005). Based on this background, it is interesting to compare Finnish teachers with teachers from other welfare state contexts namely with Sweden as a model example of the Scandinavian welfare state model, Ireland as a case of liberal welfare state model and Spain as a case of the Southern European welfare state model (Goodson & Norrie 2005; Beech 2005). What are their differences in terms of social background, professional expertise, professional status and work organization?