European Educational
Research Journal

ISSN 1474-9041

Volume 4 Number 4 2005

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

ECER KEYNOTE
Marek Kwiek. The University and the State in a Global Age: renegotiating the traditional social contract?, pages 324‑342

ARTICLES
Stavroula Philippou. The ‘Problem’ of the European Dimension in Education: a principled reconstruction of the Greek Cypriot curriculum, pages 343‑368
Sara Fürstenau. Migrants’ Resources: multilingualism and transnational mobility. A Study on Learning Paths and School to Job Transition of Young Portuguese Migrants, pages 369‑381
Carina Holmgren & Jörgen From. Taylorism of the Mind: entrepreneurship education from a perspective of educational research, pages 382‑390

INVITED ADDRESS
AARE Conference on Quality in Education Research, Cairns, 2005
Lyn Yates. Is Impact a Measure of Quality? Some Reflections on the Research Quality and Impact Assessment Agendas, pages 391‑403

The University and the State in a Global Age: renegotiating the traditional social contract?

MAREK KWIEK Poznan University, Poland

This article is based on the Keynote Address to the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Dublin, Ireland, 7‑10 September 2005. It argues that we are facing the simultaneous renegotiation of the major post-war social contract (concerning the welfare state) in Europe and the renegotiation of a smaller-scale modern social pact: the pact between the university and the nation-state. It suggests that the current, and especially future, transformations of the university are not fully clear outside of the context of transformations to the state (and to the public sector) under global pressures. These pressures, both directly and indirectly, will not leave the university as an institution unaffected. Thus it is more useful today than ever before to discuss the future of the university in the context of the current transformations of the state. The study is divided into four sections: a brief introduction; a section on the university and the welfare state in Europe; a section on the university and the nation-state in Europe; and tentative conclusions.

The ‘Problem’ of the European Dimension in Education: a principled reconstruction of the Greek Cypriot curriculum

STAVROULA PHILIPPOU University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

The European dimension in education has been a term increasingly used by the European Union and the Council of Europe to denote some of their educational policies and initiatives. It has also been a contested term in academic writing, as some researchers critique the elitist, exclusionary and Eurocentric educational implications it may have, while others welcome its pedagogic and intercultural potential. This article explores the possibilities of using the European dimension as a tool to alleviate ethnocentrism and traditional pedagogies in curricula and textbooks. To achieve this, the essay presents some principles which have been used for the development of History and Geography curricula with a European dimension in Greek Cypriot state primary schools in Cyprus. The curriculum development process drew upon the literature around the ‘political’ history of the European dimension, as well as upon academic discussions of social constructivist approaches to the notion of Europe. The principles employed to guide the curriculum development process were structured under the perspectives of curriculum location, content and pedagogy. The curricular location principles were concerned with the European dimension as a cross-curricular innovation, the question of its form within subject-based curricula and of its contextualisation within existing educational localities and contexts. Concerning content, it is proposed that such curricula need to acknowledge the constructedness and fluidity of the frontiers of nation-states and of Europe, the multiplicity and hybridity of identities, as well as Europe’s socio-cultural and conflictual past. Finally, the pedagogic principles encourage critical approaches to knowledge, the development of concepts and active learning through cooperation.

Migrants’ Resources: multilingualism and transnational mobility. A Study on Learning Paths and School to Job Transition of Young Portuguese Migrants

SARA FÜRSTENAU University of Hamburg, Germany

In this contribution, the results of an empirical study on young immigrants’ learning paths and school to job transition are presented. The study focused on the strategies of successful students from the Portuguese immigrant minority in Hamburg. One aim was to find out whether the young people could profit by their migration experiences and multilingual skills. Increasing the multilingualism of individuals is an official goal of the European Union, and it is predicted that the labour market will give increasing importance to the ability to communicate and work in contexts of linguistic and cultural diversity. The question was, though, whether students from an immigrant minority, whose parents had come to Germany in the course of the labour recruitment, could benefit from this development. Interestingly, the young people of the sample turned out to be highly flexible during their future orientations, considering options in Germany as well as in their country of origin. Their strategies and orientations during school to work transition were analysed on the basis of Pierre Bourdieu’s model of the linguistic market and from the perspective of the sociological concept of transnational migration.

Taylorism of the Mind: entrepreneurship education from a perspective of educational research

CARINA HOLMGREN & JÖRGEN FROM Mid Sweden University, Härnösand, Sweden

The aim of this article is to explore and discuss entrepreneurship education, and to raise some critical questions inspired by the work of Basil Bernstein. The discussion is based on writings on entrepreneurship education and thereby gives one picture of the intellectual debate on entrepreneurship education. In contrast to traditional education, viewed as transformation of knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship education is said to be about changing attitudes and motives. There is a consensus in the field that students can be successfully endowed with an entrepreneurial culture, when their attitudes are changed in the desired way. The focus on fostering a certain identity in entrepreneurship education might be seen as a part of the ongoing neo-liberal oriented educational restructuring process, which is sweeping through Europe.

Is Impact a Measure of Quality? Some Reflections on the Research Quality and Impact Assessment Agendas

LYN YATES University of Melbourne, Australia

This article uses the development of a ‘Research Quality Framework’ in Australia as a focus for reflection on the way in which quality is assessed in relation to education research, and a consideration of the role and situation of a national association of education research in relation to that. The study examines ways in which ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ are being defined in particular practices, and how the broader context of the status of education research impacts on debates and strategies with regard to quality. It is argued that the current focus on measures of quality assessment need to be re-coupled with more attention to contexts of production of education research and the issue of how quality research can be developed. It is argued too that education research associations do need to engage with the quality assessment exercises, but that doing this will pose some real tensions for them.

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