The research question of this doctoral dissertation is: which evidence-based policy recommendations should be established for preparing the transnational basic education politics for future pandemics? This study builds on the traditions of comparative education and sociology of education, although it is not limited to educational or social sciences.

In contemporary history, the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of a kind. It is “the first disease event since the 1918–20 H1N1 Spanish influenza (flu) pandemic to demand an urgent global healthcare response, propagated by the speed and likelihood of potential transmission” (Patterson & McIntyre & Clough et al. 2021, 1). However, the existing scientific literature of transnational pandemic management in basic education is predominantly young, shallow, and disjointed – offering primarily partial views rather than systemic and systematic understanding of the broader implications. The transnational approaches are geographically, thematically, and methodologically limited and fragmented, especially considering the Global South (Wisenöcker & Helm & Große et al. 2025; Alkhnbashi & Mohammad & Bamasoud 2024, 16; Betthäuser & Bach-Mortensen & Engzell 2023, 375). Still, there is an abundance of acute and fundamental research gaps that should be addressed pedantically. This study fills a part of these gaps with transnationally comprehensive, evidence-based insights in pandemic management.

The acuteness of the research question may be described in two ways: Firstly, education is a right of the child (UNICEF 1989, article 28), whose human value is beyond replacement also during severe crises, such as pandemics. Secondly, it has been estimated that a global school shutdown of five months may “generate learning losses that have a present value of $10 trillion” (Azevedo & Hasan & Goldemberg et al. 2021, 29). Therefore, solving the research question of this study in a sustainable manner is a trillion-dollar question.

This dissertation argues that key to understand global pandemic management in education, is analysing 1) the connection between pandemic management and transnational flows of information; and 2) the potential use of pandemic management in governance by diverse political actors as a way to transform education (cf. Kauko & Takala, & Rinne 2018, 5).

The dissertation is conducted within the dynamics framework. The definition of dynamics is the following: the complexity of interactions between political institutions and actors as well as other systemic discursive formations (Kauko & Simola & Varjo et al. 2012, 214; Simola & Kauko & Varjo et al. 2017, 16). The analysis of dynamics is traditionally divided into three descriptive dimensions: the political situation, the political possibilities, and the use of political space (Kauko & Centeno & Piattoeva et al. 2018, 21). The political situation describes the structures and positions as well as changes of different political actors. The political possibilities define how the relevant actors see the potential opportunities and threats. The use of political space illustrates how the actors transform ideas stemming from the first two dimensions into action. Effectively, to understand these three descriptive dimensions, five core research themes are formed: the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, future pandemics, actors, change dynamics, and other potential issues.

On the whole, the emphasis of this study is on holistic, normative questions of future pandemic policy recommendations. Nevertheless, socio-historical contextualisation is key in forming the policy recommendations as applicable and universalisable as possible in the real world.

Philosophically, a logically deductive path from descriptive to normative statements is all but self-evident. The is–ought problem claims that normative judgements cannot straightforwardly be deduced from descriptive statements (Hume 2019, 518–519). Therefore, the logical deduction of this study bridges a descriptive premise with normative judgements for being able to deduce a normative conclusion (cf. Singer 2015, 23; Kodelja 2013, 15–16).

This research is executed as a comparative case study. The composition of countries was based on the COVID-19 response strategies and diversity across ethnic, cultural, geographic, and socioeconomic dimensions. More specifically, to ensure the heterogeneity of the geographic regions included in the study, the starting point was to select one country from each of the following continents or regions: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. The five core research themes (the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, future pandemics, actors, change dynamics, and other potential issues) were used to classify the interview questions. The main data of the research was collected by conducting twenty-eight semi-structured interviews with thirty-four educational leaders, political actors, experts, administrators, teachers and other relevant professionals and representatives of interest groups. The interviews were organised in 2022 in South Africa (5th–20th of January), Ecuador (1st–17th of February), Finland (11th of June – 23rd of September), Taiwan (16th of October – 4th of November), and New Zealand (9th–27th of November). To diversify the representativeness of the interviewees, different minorities, such as indigenous peoples, were emphasised. The informants were carefully picked so that the interviewees, as a whole, represent a broad transnational network of educational professionals, political actors, and interest groups. The extensiveness of the informants was particularly important because of the complexity of the research question; holistic policy recommendations require involvement of diverse relevant stakeholders in education politics. At present, the audio recordings are transcribed, coded, and analysed. The method of analysis of the research data is qualitative thematic content analysis. Two central approaches of qualitative content analysis are implemented in this research: inductive category development and deductive category application (Mayring 2000). The five core research themes (the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, future pandemics, actors, change dynamics, and other potential issues) are used to form the deductive main categories in the coding process of the transcriptions. In other respects, the analysis is predominantly conducted in an inductive, data-driven manner. As a field research approach, a rigorous reflexivity of ethnographic interviewing was implemented throughout the process. As a result, a digital field research diary was produced, especially reflecting the contextualisation of the research and the positionality of the researcher. The diary will be cited within the research results to transparently examine the research stages and the interpretation of the findings.

Preliminarily, the analysis of the gathered transnational research data in this study is expected to yield the following educational pandemic-policy recommendations, which aim to make transnational basic education systems more robust in the face of pandemics: 1. The societies should proactively and holistically prepare both for the pandemic elimination strategy and the pandemic mitigation strategy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the elimination strategy was not always even seriously considered. For the future, both strategies require systematic preparations, practice, and pedagogical development, e.g. regarding distance education preparedness. 2. The coordination of pandemic management cooperation between countries should be genuinely transnational. To date, globally, pandemic preparation is fragmented, insufficiently communicated, and overly Global North-oriented. Genuinely global pandemic preparedness measures should be considered in order to prepare the humankind, and every education system, for future disruptions. 3. Besides macro level problems, the transnational pandemic management should proactively analyse and repair the meso and micro level issues, such as the pandemic measures for borderland residents and their educational needs. 4. The representation of local, national and transnational minorities should be enhanced in pandemic planning and decision-making processes in order to prevent exacerbating inequalities in education during disruptions. 5. The conditions for crisis pedagogy, such as pandemic pedagogy, should be implemented, regularly practiced, and developed with a pedagogy-first approach. For instance, critical educational digital infrastructure, such as internet connections and open-source educational software, should be considered for unexpected crises. Ideally, transnational public institutions, such as the United Nations, would initiate development of critical educational infrastructure for the whole humanity in order to be ready when the next crisis mode is triggered.

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