1 Professionalizing in and through research – Research studies and active learning promoting professional competences in Finnish teacher education Hannele Niemi The presentation is shortened and modified from the article: Hannele Niemi & Anne Nevgi: Research studies and active learning promoting professional competences in Finnish teacher education, published in the Teaching and Teacher Education journal (Volume 43, October 2014, Pages 131– 142). Link to the article: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X14000821 Highlights: • Research studies promote student' professional learning in teacher education. • Student teachers regard research studies as an important part of their education. • Active learning experiences in teacher education reinforce the positive effect. • The positive effect can be seen in all professional competences. • Research studies should be integrated with other parts of teacher education. Abstract The Key Note lecture presents how student teachers in Finnish teacher education programs benefit from authentic researcher experiences as part of their pre-service education. The data were collected by electronic questionnaires (n = 287) at two Finnish Universities. Teacher education programs guided student teachers to use and conduct research in the teaching profession. The results indicate that student teachers value research experiences. Research studies promoted professional competences and supported students' growth toward evidence-based practice and 21st century skills. Active learning experiences reinforced this positive effect. The implementation of research studies, quality of supervisors and integration with other studies were crucial. 1. Introduction 1.1. Teaching and learning for the future All over the world, 21 st century skills have become an urgent topic on the agenda of educational systems (e.g., Binkley et al., 2012). Rapidly updating knowledge and changing work life require that learners are ready to learn continuously. They have to understand how knowledge is created. Technology development, automation, and robotics will substitute simple works. Employees need higher order thinking. Scenarios of the future emphasize that workers need analytical and research-oriented skills and they must be able to inquire and assess the validity of knowledge and its different information sources. They also need competences for setting problems, arguing, and drawing conclusions (Binkley et al., 2012; Griffin, McGaw, & Care,