European Educational
Research Journal

ISSN 1474-9041

Volume 8 Number 2 2009

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

SPECIAL ISSUE
Higher Education and Citizenship in Europe:
on the public role of the university
Guest Editors: MAARTEN SIMONS & GERT BIESTA

Introduction. Higher Education and European Citizenship as a Matter of Public Concern, pages 142‑145 doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.142 VIEW FULL TEXT
Gert Biesta. What Kind of Citizenship for European Higher Education? Beyond the Competent Active Citizen, pages 146‑158
Grahame Lock & Hermínio Martins. The European Universities, Citizenship and Its Limits: what won’t solve the problems of our time, pages 159‑174
Pavel Zgaga. Higher Education and Citizenship: ‘the full range of purposes’, pages 175‑188
Vassiliki Papatsiba. European Higher Education Policy and the Formation of Entrepreneurial Students as Future European Citizens, pages 189‑203
Maarten Simons & Jan Masschelein. The Public and Its University: beyond learning for civic employability?, pages 204‑217
Marek Kwiek. The Changing Attractiveness of European Higher Education in the Next Decade: current developments, future challenges and major policy issues, pages 218‑235
Jan Masschelein & Maarten Simons. From Active Citizenship to World Citizenship: a proposal for a world university, pages 236‑248

Gert Biesta, Marek Kwiek, Grahame Locke, Hermínio Martins, Jan Masschelein, Vassiliki Papatsiba, Maarten Simons & Pavel Zgaga. What is the Public Role of the University? A Proposal for a Public Research Agenda, pages 249‑254 doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.249 VIEW FULL TEXT

POSTGRADUATE SECTION: GOTHENBERG, ECER 2008
Best Paper Award of the Postgraduate and Young
Researchers Pre-Conference, Gothenburg, ECER 2008
Halit Öztürk & Katrin Kaufmann. Migration Background and Participation in Continuing Education in Germany: an empirical analysis based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP), pages 255‑275

Selected Postgraduate Network Papers
Gayna Davey. Using Bourdieu’s Concept of Habitus to Explore Narratives of Transition, pages 276‑284
Barbara Theresia Schröttner. The Value of Post-colonial Literature for Education Processes: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, pages 285‑298
Anders Fredriksson. On the Consequences of the Marketisation of Public Education in Sweden: for-profit charter schools and the emergence of the ‘market-oriented teacher’, pages 299‑310
Elisabete Xavier Gomes. Children’s Educational Processes in Contemporary Cities: preliminary findings and insights from a case study developed in Lisbon, pages 311‑325
Carolina Guzmán V. Developing Craft Knowledge in Teaching at University: how do beginning teachers learn to teach?, pages 326‑335
Cosmas B. F. Mnyanyi. Developing Teachers’ Work for Improving Teaching and Learning of Children with Visual Impairment Accommodated in Ordinary Primary Schools, pages 336‑351

What Kind of Citizenship for European Higher Education? Beyond the Competent Active Citizen

GERT BIESTA The Stirling Institute of Education, University of Stirling, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.146

How might European higher education contribute to the promotion and development of European citizenship? In this article, the author addresses this question through a critical discussion of the notions of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘civic competence’, which play a central role in current policy and research on the role of education in the development of European citizenship. The author argues that there is a tendency within the idea of ‘active citizenship’ to depoliticise the very idea of citizenship because it is based upon a consensus notion of democracy and a functionalist understanding of citizenship and the formation of citizens. The author also argues that the idea of civic competence reduces civic learning and political education to a form of socialisation which undermines rather than supports political agency. For these reasons, the author argues that European higher education should not aim to become a socialising agent for the production of the competent active citizen but should seek to support modes of political action and civic learning that embody a commitment to a more critical and more political form of European citizenship than what is envisaged in the ideas of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘civic competence’.

The European Universities, Citizenship and Its Limits: what won’t solve the problems of our time

GRAHAME LOCK Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands; Leiden University, Netherlands; University of Oxford, United Kingdom
HERMÍNIO MARTINS University of Oxford, United Kingdom; University of Lisbon, Portugal

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.159

This article attempts to weave together in an original manner a number of themes regarding citizenship and higher education in Europe. Thus, the authors look critically at the notion of citizenship itself; its role in Aristotle and in Hegel’s state-versus-civil-society contrast; its relation to the world of work or labour; its connection with the concept of Bildung (‘general edification’); the originally divergent strands of the twentieth-century American assault on Bildung in higher education, an assault now extended to Europe, especially in European Union policy and (in a more complex and contradictory manner) in the Bologna process; the marketized university as a psychotic organization; and – a twist in the story – the reaction to some of these developments in the ideology of citizenism, which the authors problematize.

Higher Education and Citizenship: ‘the full range of purposes’

PAVEL ZGAGA Centre for Educational Policy Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.175

This article discusses citizenship education in the context of the purposes and roles of higher education. The social and political changes in Europe of the last two decades have had an immense impact on the understanding of these roles and purposes, defining the university’s mission and steering the national systems of higher education. The dichotomy of economic competitiveness and social cohesion has been transferred into higher education discussions and provoked new dichotomies like the ‘Europe of the euro’ versus the ‘Europe of knowledge’. A call from the 2007 London Communiqué to focus on the ‘full range of purposes’ of higher education is taken as an indicative statement in recent policy debates and analysed. For this reason, four ‘archetypal models’ of understanding the purposes of higher education are developed against the historical background of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Napoleonic, Humboldtian, Newmanian and Deweyan. Dewey’s criticism of the ‘educational state’ in the early twentieth century is confronted with the later decline of the nation state, and with the processes of the internationalisation and globalisation of education and education policy. We are witness to the progressive instrumentalisation of higher education, but higher education’s potential contribution to citizenship lies beyond this: in recognising the ‘full range of its purposes’.

European Higher Education Policy and the Formation of Entrepreneurial Students as Future European Citizens

VASSILIKI PAPATSIBA School of Education, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.189

In this article, the author argues that European education policies and rhetoric are imbued with orthodoxy of agency and models of empowered, entrepreneurial actors, striving to surpass the limits of national boundaries. Free circulation of citizens has progressively underpinned a new construction of ‘the European’, who is entrepreneurial, flexible and mobile. Ideals and practices of mobility have been premised on two competing agendas: one that focuses on economic imperatives, and the other that relates to a tradition of forming the citizenry. European Union higher education policy via student mobility programmes has been an effective vehicle for conveying images and models of the European citizen, untied from national bounds and with a thirst for new ventures and learning opportunities apt to convert into skills and capital. Arguably these policies, as rationalities with governing ends, aim to form identities and subjectivities. Although it can be argued that new facets of agency are made available to those who are willing to embrace entrepreneurial models, the question is whether and how these ‘talk back’ to a society and a polity in search of common good.

The Public and Its University: beyond learning for civic employability?

MAARTEN SIMONS Centre for Educational Policy and Innovation/ Centre for Philosophy of Education, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
JAN MASSCHELEIN Centre for Philosophy of Education, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.204

Instead of asking how universities can contribute to active citizenship and democratic participation (and seeking for ways to improve their contribution), this article asks what it is that universities, due to their specific mission, have to offer. After describing the transition of the historical university (and its focus on modernisation) to the entrepreneurial university (focused on innovation), the authors discuss the current framing of the university’s public role in terms of civic employability. The notion ‘strategies of immunisation’ is introduced to point to the implications of the current focus on citizenship. Finally, an alternative conception of the public role of the university is introduced: the university can be regarded as a space and time to constitute a public by gathering people around matters of concern, and to make something a public concern for people.

The Changing Attractiveness of European Higher Education in the Next Decade: current developments, future challenges and major policy issues

MAREK KWIEK Centre for Public Policy, Poznan University, Poland

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.218

This article focuses on the different senses of the attractiveness of European systems and institutions for students, academics, the labour market and the economy, drawing attention to emergent tensions between different university stakeholders. Universities not only need to be attractive to increasingly differentiated student populations, but they also need to be attractive workplaces and provide attractive career opportunities for academics. Both public and private institutions are under multifaceted pressures to change today. At a time of imminent reformulation of current welfare state systems in most parts of Europe, attractive systems will be able to balance the negative financial impact of the gradual restructuring of the most generous types of welfare state regimes in Europe on public funding for higher education. Ironically, the more successful public entrepreneurial universities are today, the greater the chances are of them following this entrepreneurial direction in the future. The promotion across Europe of a more substantial inflow of both private research funds and student fees can be expected. The possible redefinition of higher education from a public good to a private good is a tendency which may further undermine the idea of heavy public subsidization of higher education, as the economic rationale for higher education is changing. The expected developments may fundamentally alter relationships between university stakeholders, with the decreasing role of the state (especially in funding) and the increasing role of students and the labour market. The expected differentiation-related developments may alter the academic profession in general, and have a strong impact on the traditional relationships between teaching and research in European universities.

From Active Citizenship to World Citizenship: a proposal for a world university

JAN MASSCHELEIN Centre for Philosophy of Education, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
MAARTEN SIMONS Centre for Educational Policy and Innovation/ Centre for Philosophy of Education, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.236

This article explores how universities can function as spaces where a world citizenship takes shape. First, Kant’s distinction between the ‘private use of reason’ and ‘domestic gathering’, on the one hand, and the ‘public use of reason’ and ‘public gathering’, on the other, is elucidated. This distinction is used, secondly, to argue that the actual university organises ‘domestic gatherings’. In the name of excellence, it requires an entrepreneurial ethos of its staff, i.e. an ethos of obedience to a permanent quality tribunal, implying a permanent (self-)mobilisation confining the entrepreneur to a domestic gathering and the private use of reason (‘private citizens’). Based on this understanding, the third section develops a proposal for a world university inhabited by ‘learned individuals’ acting as world citizens. It is a habitat in which an experimental and attentive ethos is present and where the public use of reason is ‘finding (a) place’. This public use of reason is not just about making things known, but of making them present. The aim of the final section, then, is to make the proposal more specific, based on an exploration of ‘public lecturing’ as the time and space of public (world) gathering where things are made public.

Migration Background and Participation in Continuing Education in Germany: an empirical analysis based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP)

HALIT ÖZTÜRK & KATRIN KAUFMANN Faculty of Educational Science and Psychology, Further Education and Educational Management, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.255

Europe as an ‘immigration continent’ is going to become an ‘integration continent’. Within this context continuing education has acquired an increasing meaning. Based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study data from 2001‑04 the authors examine a broad spectrum of possible factors which may influence participation in continuing vocational education. They focus on the heterogeneity of migrants in Germany and analyse their participation in continuing education in contrast to Germans without a migration background. First, some information on the concept and definition of continuing education in Germany is given. Then, the current status of research regarding participation in continuing education in Germany with a focus on migration background is presented. Human capital theory constitutes the theoretical framework for the analysis. The majority of the hypotheses derived from human capital theory are confirmed by the empirical results. Especially formal qualifications, job position and age turned out to be the parameters that showed the most explanatory results. By estimating the influence of migration background on participation in continuing education the results show that migration background does not generally negatively affect the probability of taking part in continuing vocational education.

Using Bourdieu’s Concept of Habitus to Explore Narratives of Transition

GAYNA DAVEY Division of Sociology and Social Policy, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.276

Written as part of a doctoral thesis exploring young people’s educational decision making, this article focuses on the stories of three of those students. The study on which the article draws is located in two institutions: an independent school and a sixth-form college. It follows 12 middle-class young people through their two years of A level study prior to university. The thesis argues for educational decision making as a classed practice, using Bourdieu’s trilogy of habitus, capital and field to develop a more nuanced understanding than that offered by occupationally defined social class. This article focuses on the narratives of three of those students. Drawing on their narratives of transition, the article aims to explore how far the concept of habitus can be used in empirical research. It is concluded that whilst there are limitations to what habitus offers as a research tool, it is a concept worth grappling with. If its promise is partially fulfilled, at the very least it accentuates the inadequacy of defining individuals through the labels of social class. Above all, habitus embraces continuity and change, offering a more fluid and dynamic understanding of classed identities.

The Value of Post-colonial Literature for Education Processes: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

BARBARA THERESIA SCHRÖTTNER Department of Education, Karl-Franzens-University of Graz, Austria

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.285

The author Salman Rushdie’s post-colonial essay, Midnight’s Children, highlights a different perspective on the problems created by the colonial power where place and displacement are central themes and migration is a painful but emancipating process; both are expressed through the life of the writer, Salman Rushdie. The primary aim of this discourse is to show that post-colonial narratives have a huge impact on educational settings and conceptions, and, thus, on identity formation processes. This study concentrates on the spaces where formerly colonized people have regained power, or where they have attributed value to their own discourse by displacing the standpoint of normative social behaviour, and thus recovering their own voices. One of the major purposes of this piece of writing is to look at the ways in which the discourse of Otherness privileges direct and indirect (structural and cultural) violence towards the Other, concentrating especially on processes of exclusion from educational settings.

On the Consequences of the Marketisation of Public Education in Sweden: for-profit charter schools and the emergence of the ‘market-oriented teacher’

ANDERS FREDRIKSSON Department of Political Science and Centre for Education Sciences and Teacher Research, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.299

The entrance of for-profit charter schools into the public educational system is one of the most recent manifestations of market-based reforms in public education. Previous studies raise concerns over the marketisation of education and suggest that market reforms clearly change teacher attitudes and behaviour. Taking a public administration theoretical approach, this article discusses how for-profit schools influence the behaviour of teachers. This article develops an index (the Market Orientation Index) for measuring market orientation among teachers. Analyses of differences in scores on the Market Orientation Index among a sample of Swedish teachers working in public schools and for-profit charter schools also shows that charter school teachers are more market oriented. The result indicates that for-profit school ownership led to the emergence of the ‘market-oriented teacher’.

Children’s Educational Processes in Contemporary Cities: preliminary findings and insights from a case study developed in Lisbon

ELISABETE XAVIER GOMES New University of Lisbon, Portugal

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.311

This article discusses preliminary findings of the author’s doctoral research on children’s educating networks in contemporary cities. The research problem is introduced in the theoretical framework composed by issues of formal, non-formal and informal education, contemporary children’s studies, and contributions from the debate around the projects and characteristics of education in the city. The research design and methodology will be briefly presented – a case study, within the guidelines of the interpretative paradigm and with a participatory approach. This aims to frame the specific dimensions, techniques and instruments that constitute the main focus of the article. In this context, the preliminary findings focus on children’s perspectives of their own educational processes and contexts taking place inside and outside school in the city of Lisbon. In conclusion, the article tries to establish some links between this particular case study and some contemporary educational policy options.

Developing Craft Knowledge in Teaching at University: how do beginning teachers learn to teach?

CAROLINA GUZMÁN V. Department of Teaching and School Organisation, University of Barcelona, Spain

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.326

This study addresses how university teaching as a craft is learnt and developed. More specifically, the analysis examines how beginning university teachers begin to develop and reinforce teaching practices that encourage student learning. A qualitative research approach has been used, looking at two beginning university teachers from different disciplines. Data was gathered at the University of Barcelona during one academic year and the content is being analysed through an inductive and comparative method. Preliminary conclusions and some reflections related to teaching practices are also put forward.

Developing Teachers’ Work for Improving Teaching and Learning of Children with Visual Impairment Accommodated in Ordinary Primary Schools

COSMAS B.F. MNYANYI Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.336

The study investigated how to facilitate teachers in developing their work in improving the teaching and learning of children with visual impairment (CVI) accommodated in ordinary classrooms. The study takes the form of collaborative action research where the researcher works in collaboration with the teachers. The project is being conducted in the three ordinary primary schools accommodating CVI in Tanzania. The findings for the first phase of the project indicate that there are qualitative differences in views about the challenges facing CVI in their learning. Teachers indicated lack of skills in preparing teaching aids, and knowledge and skills in managing classrooms as main challenges. As a result CVI were of the opinion that lack and use of teaching aids and classroom communication were the main barriers to their learning process. On the other hand, parents of CVI had views that learning is of value if their children will be employed later on, otherwise, they learn so that they will later forget. The teachers, parents and pupils agree that inadequate resources are a setback in ensuring quality learning for CVI.

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