The importance of higher education for a region's growth has increasingly attracted international attention in many countries and in all continents, including Russia, Britain, Canada, Turkey, China, and Australia. If countries want to be globally competitive, regional innovation systems need to be strengthened. In order to achieve this, cooperation between higher educational institutions, public authorities, and the business sector becomes vital. Regional engagement, academic excellence, and research are complementary activities. In order to allow innovative efforts in peripheral regions to be as productive as in core areas, they need to be complemented by huge investments and human capital (Crescenzi, 2005). The role of human capital and the creative class as well as technology factors sharpen regional development. For regions to compete, evolve, and survive education is crucial, and there are clear links between education and regional development (From & Olofsson, 2013). Also, a good education system, ranging from preschool through elementary school and high school to university and postgraduate education are vital to development. This mutual relationship is described by Hernandez and Goodsson (2010) and Veugelers and Ziljstra (2010) and emphasizes that initiatives in the classroom or department are influenced by the surrounding context of the school, the district, and the nation. Of course it is important not only from a regional perspective, but also from a national and international context. A further aspect is the concept of regional management, which seems to play an important role for regional headquarters to develop into dynamic competence centers (Ambos & Schlegermilch, 2010).

Even in Sweden, regional educational development in cooperation with academic attention is problematized and researched (e.g., Persson et al., 2003). The majority of the research in Sweden during the last 40 years has focused on higher education, regional projects, and collaboration between industry and universities. Only a few studies have touched on the younger generation's situation (Boström, 2014). An attempt to connect to regional development in the school context is the research project "The Best Regional Education Systems in the World," which is the partnership of one university, huge companies in the region, and three selected schools in the region of Mid-Sweden. The intent behind the project is to make it possible for a region like Mid-Sweden to develop in a positive way for people, companies, and the public sector, and the underlying assumption is that the regional educational system needs to contribute to regional changes, regarding economic growth as well as the public sector. An important background factor is that these counties have lower educational levels and school achievements compared to other parts of Sweden and have a relatively large proportion of out-migration of well-educated individuals from the region. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify regional educational-development research and regional school improvements across a variety of contexts through a systematic review of associated literature published between 1983 and 2013. Such a review contextualizes and is an international background for the research project.

The concepts in the study are based both on research into regional educational development and regional school development.

By virtue of the foregoing, the purpose of this study was, from an international perspective, to identify and classify the published research on regional educational development and school improvements. The objectives were to (a) identify patterns and trends in the research, (b) describe and compare the published findings, and (c) point to a future research agenda.

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