Anu Toots

Anu Toots is a Professor of Comparative Public Policy in the Institute of Politics and of Governance, Tallinn University. She has worked as a visiting professor in Universities of Tampere (Finland) and Vienna (Austria).

Anu’s earlier work is focused on social policy and welfare regimes, including several publications on pension policy reforms. Her current research interests include transformation of the welfare state in the era of post-modernity. Within welfare state research she focuses on e-governance and education policy. Amongst her recent publications are articles on Europeanisation of Estonian education policy, contemporary challenges of citizenship education and on evaluation of current outcomes of e-learning policies in secondary and tertiary education. Since 2009 Anu is a member of the research team that works on educational change as innovation. Her special task in this team is to analyze process of policy making in circumstances where innovation and social sustainability have became main challenges of education policy.

Her research contacts in the area of educational research have increasingly expanded both at European and global level. In 1998 Anu became involved in activities of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievements (IEA). She has served as the National Research Coordinator for three IEA Civic Education studies; the last one (ICCS 2009) is currently going on. When Estonia became a full member of the IEA in 2003, Anu was appointed the Estonian representative at the General Assembly. www.iea.nl

Two-three last years she participates in debates on education policy research in the framework of the European Consortium for Political Research, including Joint Session of Workshops 2007 and General Conference 2009. http://www.ecprnet.eu/ecpr/potsdam/.