Tampere University and Tamk launch professorship to boost vocational education research

Tampere University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences (Tamk) are establishing a joint work-life professorship in vocational education. The chosen professor is expected to start in September, Aamulehti reports.

The post is intended to unite fragmented vocational education research and accelerate the transfer of findings into teaching and workplace practice. At Tamk the role will be titled leading researcher; at the university it will be work-life professor. The appointee will lead a research group and build an ecosystem where research questions come from the field rather than being set solely by academics.

Tamk rector Mika Hannula highlighted the position's scale, noting vocational education serves as many students as the entire higher education sector and saying the new professorship should benefit not just Tampere but the whole country.

Hanna Ilola, head of Tamk's pedagogical unit, said the initiative aims to move development away from ad-hoc, experience-based changes toward systematic, research-based improvement that supports decision-making at teacher, institutional, regional and national levels. Tampere University rector Keijo Hämäläinen described the post as the first step in a larger joint competence centre and said an ongoing fundraising campaign aims to create an additional university professorship to enable doctoral training and strengthen opportunities for national and international competitive research funding.