| European Educational | ISSN 1474-9041 | ||
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Volume 7 Number 1 2008 | |||
Other issues available | Journal home page | Publisher home page | |||
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] | |||
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ECER GHENT KEYNOTE
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Effects of International Comparative Studies on Educational Quality on the Quality of Educational Research |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.1 |
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Large-scale survey studies of educational achievement are becoming increasingly frequent, and they are visibly present in both educational policy debates and within the educational research community. One main aim of these studies is to provide descriptions of inputs, processes and outcomes, and another aim is to provide explanations of how different factors interrelate to produce educational outcomes. These aims are difficult to reach, which in combination with the fact that the comparative studies are typically more policy driven than theory driven, are reasons why these studies are contested on quality grounds. In this article, a set of fundamental methodological challenges related to the validity of the measurement instruments and to the possibility of making inferences about causality are identified and discussed in relation to examples of different studies. Strengths and weaknesses of different research approaches are discussed, and it is proposed that the dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative approaches should be replaced with distinctions between low- and high-level inference approaches with respect to data, generalization and explanation. It is concluded that while the international studies easily invite misuse and misinterpretation, they also offer possibilities for improving the quality of educational research, because the high-quality data generated by these studies can be taken advantage of in research on causal effects of factors in and out of educational systems. |
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Race, Ethnicity and Difference versus Imagined Homogeneity within the European Union |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.23 |
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This article argues three things. First, it argues that the perception of diversity being problematic in Europe has been generated largely by non-European immigration into urban areas. This has been Britain’s experience for 50 years and Spain’s for barely 15, but whether the immigrants are ex-colonial, Turkish or Balkan migrant labour, or Africans escaping economic despair, they are likely to be seen as troublingly ‘other’. The second argument is that partly in response to this there is a degree of policy convergence about protection from discrimination, although it is complex, has several motives and is subject to many local variations. Thirdly, the article reviews the existing diversity within Europe before the immigration of the late twentieth century and argues that historic ‘indigenous’ minorities have received less recognition and legal protection, primarily because of the very notions of national identity now troubled by immigration. |
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Taking Identity Seriously: dilemmas for education policy and practice |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.39 |
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If we are to fully understand and adequately respond to the multicultural question in European education, it is necessary to develop rich empirical descriptions and theoretically rigorous explanations of policy processes and effects. For example, we need to be able to characterise and explain the differentiated ways in which education policies and practices do or do not recognise, support or undermine diverse cultural identities and do or do not reproduce various kinds of educational and social inequality. But we also need to be able to produce some kind of account of what ought to be going on. The latter involves confronting a number of important questions: Why does identity matter? What is ethically entailed by – and what are the limits to – recognising and supporting diverse cultural identities? In what ways are the various currents of multiculturalism an adequate response to these complex normative questions? In this article, the authors begin to respond to these questions by mapping out some of the dilemmas involved in taking both identity and equality seriously. |
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Education and Diversity in the Netherlands |
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YVONNE LEEMAN Department of Educational Studies and the SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut of the University of Amsterdam, and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Zwolle, The Netherlands |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.50 |
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This article sets out the Dutch approach to the multicultural question. It focuses on how national policies, schools, teachers and teacher educators are addressing and making sense of questions of cultural and religious diversity. The article shows how the Netherlands has partly accommodated itself to greater cultural diversity through compulsory reforms like intercultural education and citizenship education and through its long-established structure of public funding for pedagogically and religiously diverse schools. It also shows the double standards applied to Christian and Islamic schools in the media and public debate. Drawing on interview data with teachers and case study material on teacher educators, the article describes their daily dilemmas with regard to diversity and commonality in contemporary classrooms and concludes that these teachers do not have the professional expertise needed to respond effectively to such dilemmas. |
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Teachers’ Ideas about Multicultural Education in a Changing Society: the case of the Czech Republic |
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DANA MOREE Faculty
of Humanities, Charles University of Prague, Czech Republic |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.60 |
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This article draws on Czech teachers’ ideas about multicultural education at a time when the teaching of multicultural education has become obligatory for primary and secondary schools. After describing the broader context within which this reform has taken place – specifically, the transformation of the educational system and the changing ethnic mosaic of the Czech Republic – the authors present results of a qualitative research study of Czech teachers’ ideas about multicultural education. |
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Culture-Blind? Parental Discourse on Religion, Ethnicity and Secularism in the French Educational Context |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.74 |
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This article examines policy mediation and adaptation in a context where religious, ethnic and other cultural identities are not officially recognised in the public sphere but considered part of the private sphere. French educational policy is firmly rooted within a secular Republican framework which relies on a colour-blind approach to promote equality. The article draws on 53 interviews with parents in Greater Paris, which were undertaken as part of a comparative study of urban parents’ values and attitudes regarding education and school choice, conducted in collaboration with the London Institute of Education in 2004‑05. The focus is on parents’ perceptions of religious and ethnic diversity at school, and the interview data is contrasted to the Republican ideology dominant in official rhetoric. What is seen playing across and through these interviews is how the range of discourse available to parents is embedded in and constrained by cultural, political and educational traditions and values. However, far from endorsing official rhetoric wholesale, many parents question, adapt and mediate secular Republican ideals, raising the issue of the relevance and durability of the French model of integration. |
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The Impossibility of Minority Ethnic Educational ‘Success’? An Examination of the Discourses of Teachers and Pupils in British Secondary Schools |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.89 |
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This article argues that in Britain dominant educational discourses of ‘the ideal pupil’ exclude minority ethnic pupils and prevent them from inhabiting a position of authentic ‘success’. It suggests that ‘the successful pupil’ is a desired yet refused subject position for many minority ethnic young people – even for those who are (to some extent) performing educational success. The article draws on interview and discussion group data from teachers, minority ethnic parents and minority ethnic pupils (aged 14‑16 years) that were collected across four separate studies. All the studies were conducted in British secondary schools and focused on the identities and experiences of British Chinese, British Muslim and ethnically diverse samples of young people. The article engages in an unpicking of the multiple ways in which minority ethnic pupils are Othered in relation to the dominant identity of the ‘ideal pupil’ as White, male, middle class, and so on. The article moves beyond the notion of a singular Other position, engaging with the slipperiness of power and entanglements of ‘race’, gender, class and sexuality through the conceptual device of a trichotomy. This integrated model moves beyond notions of simplistic ‘stereotyping’ to explain how complexly located minority ethnic pupils are always-already positioned as ‘other’ within British educational discourse, such that even ‘high-achieving’ minority ethnic pupils may experience success as precarious. |
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From Foreigner Pedagogy to Intercultural Education: an analysis of the German responses to diversity and its impact on schools and students |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2008.7.1.108 |
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Germany has been reluctant to adapt its education systems to the growing number of minority ethnic students, and politicians and policy makers have only recently officially acknowledged that Germany is an immigration country despite decades of mass immigration. This article first provides a socio-historical analysis of the German responses to migration-related cultural and religious diversity by tracing the development of educational policies from assimilationist notions of ‘foreigner pedagogy’ in the 1960s and 1970s to intercultural education, which slowly emerged in schools in the 1980s and 1990s. However, unlike European education, intercultural education still lacks official support in some German federal states. Drawing upon qualitative data collected in two Stuttgart secondary schools, the article then discusses the ways in which schools and students have mediated such macro-level policies. Goethe Gymnasium (a university-track school) promoted European values alongside multicultural values whereas Tannberg Hauptschule (a vocational-track school) was close to being Eurocentric and positioned minority ethnic students as the ‘Other’. The findings suggest that Germany still has some way to go to overcome cultural insensitivities, to increase minority ethnic representation amongst teachers and to promote both diversity and civic cohesion. |
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