The main aim of the proposed symposium is to contribute for understanding the processes of implementation, acceptance and adoption of educational reforms and innovations, carried out during about 20 years from the fall of the Berlin wall, and opening two separated parts of the Europe to each other.

 In countries of CEE-s the radical/systemic societal reforms and grassroot innovations started at the end of 1980s following major structural and institutional changes in education. “Western” countries enjoyed rather stabile context for educational changes, issues of educational changes concerned the problems and effects of introducing the principles of neoliberal education paradigm.

 However, it has been often argued that despite of increasing rate of change-related initiatives, little has been changed in education reality; many reforms have left school systems, schools´ culture and teachers’ habitus untouched and furthermore, education systems do not develop in accordance with societies´ developmental needs. (Fullan 2001, Hargraves 2005,). Some time ago, the implementation of reforms and/or innovative ideas in education was not considered as problem and policy was expected to be self-implementing if necessary regulations and resources are provided (McLaughin, 2008). Today, the educational changes are understood as very complex, multilayered, and –dimensional process, involving different level actors. Thus, also the theoretical approach for explaining educational changes should enable to explain how the changes can to make a difference and can be interconnected with wider transformations in society.

 In symposium papers, the concept of social innovation (Hämäläinen, Heiskala, 2007; Moulaert et al., 2005; Schienstock & Hämäläinen, 2001; Mumford 2002; Pol, Ville 2009) is applied. The concept of social innovation is relatively new concept in innovation research, being applied so far mainly to understand the changes in economic domains. Most importantly, the notion of social innovation includes many highly important mechanisms of social change (e.g. learning and networking, attributing of meanings to changes, collective learning, changes in institutions and norms etc) enabling, restricting and modifying the implementation of educational innovations and thus, might contribute to better understanding of reform and innovation processes in education. One of most important mechanisms of social innovation – the regional networks in education is main focus of the symposium.

 The two quite different contexts of educational changes – the Estonian and Finnish – are introduced.  Estonia as a transition country has passed through the “revolutionary”, regime changes. Finlands´ education has developed in a rather stable socio-cultural and economic environment, being at the same time one of the most innovative education systems in the world. In the papers, the reforms and changes and their relations with emergence of networks, particularly in  VET, will be analysed.

 The symposium summarises some of the outcomes of the research project funded by the Estonian Research Council “Education Change as Social Innovation“ (SF0130018s09).