Wieland Wermke

Wieland Wermke is a Professor at the Department of Special Education at Stockholm University. His research focuses on special educators', teachers' work and school leaders' work and professionalism from a comparative perspective. He has conducted extensive research on teacher autonomy, school leadership, and special education across different national contexts, particularly comparing Nordic countries and Germany.

His research interests include:

• Comparative Education
• Teacher Autonomy and Professionalism
• Special Education and Inclusive Schools
• School Leadership and Principal Autonomy
• Education Policy and Reform
• Curriculum Development and Implementation

Wermke's scholarly work reveals a consistent analytical focus on understanding autonomy in educational settings. His research demonstrates how national contexts shape educational practices and professional roles, with particular attention to the Nordic model of education. He has developed several influential analytical frameworks, including a multidimensional device for examining principal autonomy across educational, social, developmental, and administrative domains, and a 9-dimensional matrix for analyzing special educational needs support across individual, group, and organizational levels.

His recent publications (2023-2025) address contemporary educational challenges including governance dynamics in educational funding, leadership during crises like the Covid-19 pandemic, and the implementation of international law in national school systems. His work consistently emphasizes context-specific analyses that recognize the particularities of different educational systems while identifying cross-national patterns.

Wermke leads significant research projects including 'From Salamanca to PISA,' which examines the professionalization of special teachers since 1990, and 'Leadership autonomy in inclusion and school improvement,' which investigates how school leaders' autonomy has evolved in Sweden, Finland, and Iceland over the past two decades.