The first seven articles of the book provide an overview of how Estonian educational scientists, collaborating with colleagues from Finland and Sweden on one of the articles, have empirically studied the quality of learning environment, teachers’ professionalism and their perceptions of their own teaching as well as their professional role and students’ coping at school. When dealing with the educational reality, a wholeness-centred educational thinking is represented. Therefore, one of the articles is devoted to the question of how to define youth and interpret the development of the concept of youth. One article deals with creativity in relation to the social field. The last article compares the semantics of the concepts Paideía and lifestyle as expressions of the wholeness-centred educational thinking.

Airi Liimets is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology of Education and Head of the Centre for Philosophical and Pedagogical Anthropology at Tallinn University (Estonia). Marika Veisson is Professor and Head of the Department of Preschool Education and Head of the School for Doctoral Studies in Education at Tallinn University (Estonia).