Policy Futures in Education

ISSN 1478-2103

Volume 6 Number 6 2008

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

SPECIAL ISSUE
European Educational Futures
Guest Editor: PALLE RASMUSSEN

Palle Rasmussen. Introduction. European Educational Futures, pages 662‑664 doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.662 VIEW FULL TEXT
Risto Rinne. The Growing Supranational Impacts of the OECD and the EU on National Educational Policies, and the case of Finland, pages 665‑680
Bengt-Åke Lundvall, Palle Rasmussen & Edward Lorenz. Education in the Learning Economy: a European perspective, pages 681‑700
Carmel Borg & Peter Mayo. Globalisation, Southern Europe and European Adult Education Policy, pages 701‑717
Susan Robertson. ‘Europe/Asia’ Regionalism, Higher Education and the Production of World Order, pages 718‑729
Holger Daun. Islam, Christianity and Secularism in European Education, pages 730‑743
Oskar Negt. Adult Education and European Identity, pages 744‑756
Marek Kwiek. Academic Entrepreneurship vs. Changing Governance and Institutional Management Structures at European Universities, pages 757‑770
Ariane Baye & Marc Demeuse. The European Commission Stepping Up both the Efficiency and Equity of Education and Training Systems, pages 771‑780

The Growing Supranational Impacts of the OECD and the EU on National Educational Policies, and the Case of Finland

RISTO RINNE Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education, University of Turku, Finland

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.665

The trends of globalisation have had unavoidable impacts in steering and guiding the decisions of national policy-makers and the direction of national education policies. In the obscuring processes of supranational homogenisation of education and educational policy, supranational regimes, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU), play a significant role. The traditional idea of meritocratic competition is challenged by globalisation and by the new standard setting of the supranational organisations, and nation-states are losing their power to define standards and to control the key features of educational selection. The process is proceeding particularly in the field of higher education, where the stakes to win reputational capital are at their highest. The message, objectives and language of those organisations are cast in the same mould. They have started to speak in the same words with the same stress, repeating the same phrases about globalisation, economic efficiency and productivity, and swearing that globalisation is inevitable in the name of progress. In this article, historical change in the educational policies of the OECD and the EU and the implication of these policies for national education policies are studied. Special emphasis is laid on the field of higher education and the national case of Finland.

Education in the Learning Economy: a European perspective

BENGT-ÅKE LUNDVALL Aalborg University, Denmark
PALLE RASMUSSEN Aalborg University, Denmark
EDWARD LORENZ University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.681

Innovation is crucial to the competitiveness of the economies of Europe, and learning is crucial to innovation. The most important trend shift is not that knowledge is becoming more important but that it is becoming obsolete more rapidly than before, so that firms and employees constantly have to learn and acquire new competencies. This involves different types of knowledge of which the less formalised, learnt through experience, are often just as important as the formalised, learnt through exposure to teaching. The article opens with a presentation of different categories of knowledge, their consequences for approaches to education and the concept of the learning economy. Drawing on cross-national data it is then shown how European economies are characterised by dramatic differences in work organisation and learning at the workplace. The authors illustrate how such differences are linked not only to inequality of access to workplace learning but also to institutional and cultural differences between different national school systems in Europe. They argue that traditional schooling, isolated from society and organised according to traditional disciplines and educational methods, is insufficient in the context of the learning economy. Educational principles and cultures focusing on collaboration, interdisciplinarity and engagement with real-life problems are needed to prepare people for flexible and innovative participation in the economy and society.

Globalisation, Southern Europe and European Adult Education Policy

CARMEL BORG & PETER MAYO Faculty of Education, University of Malta

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.701

In this article, the authors define some of the most evident features of globalisation from below, which they distinguish from hegemonic globalisation, and draw out its implications for adult education. They draw out the implications for European adult education that emerge from the different features of these two types of globalisations. They then refer to the history of and contemporary provision in adult education in southern Europe and argue that there are elements there that can serve the purpose of a revitalised counter-hegemonic adult education approach. They then explore whether this thinking makes its presence felt in two major European documents, the EU Memorandum on Lifelong Learning and a recent report on adult education, carried out for the European Commission, provided by the European Association for the Education of Adults. They do this given that the international literature on adult education is dominated by ideas and experiences emerging from the central European states and Nordic countries. They highlight the recurrence in the Memorandum of the tendency to vocationalise adult education at different stages of a person’s life. They consider the EAEA report to be more expansive and representative than the Memorandum but they also argue that there is a tendency to uncritically accept the vocationalisation of older adulthood. The issue of migration from south-of-the-equator populations to Europe, and especially southern Europe, is also considered, given that it is a prominent feature of the intensification of globalisation. Its implications for adult education practice are also considered, also and mainly in light of the situation obtaining in the frontier countries of southern Europe.

‘Europe/Asia’ Regionalism, Higher Education and the Production of World Order

SUSAN ROBERTSON Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.718

From the early 1990s onwards, various European Union (EU) reports have commented on the low level of European exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Asian region, and the invisibility of Europe in the Asian imagination in comparison with the United States. To overcome this problem, a series of policy and programme initiatives have been launched that include higher education as a platform, that are funded by the EU’s development agency EuropeAid, and that use the inter-regional institutional structures of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM). Initially, the focus for higher education was on generating European visibility and Asian capacity through the creation of networks and curricular initiatives. However, since 2000 the higher education initiatives in the successive Asia–Europe inter-regional policies have been reoriented towards realising the Lisbon 2000 Agenda of developing a globally competitive European knowledge-based economy. Asia–Europe inter-regionalism is now being used to facilitate an explicit competitiveness agenda for Europe through (i) prioritising the development of a European market in higher education that is attractive to Asian students; (ii) synchronising Asian higher education structures with those that have developed in Europe as a result of the Bologna Process; (iii) recruiting ‘talent’ from within the Asian region; and (iv) the development of research collaborations, such as funded research institutes. Whilst funded by the EU’s development agency EuropeAid, these initiatives have as their target not the very low-income countries in ASEAN and ASEM, but China and India. This generates tensions in the foreign-policy mix of education, trade and development, making the EU vulnerable to charges of imperialism and neo-colonialism, whilst the inter-regional structures themselves carry their own politics which in turn shape the terrain of higher education.

Islam, Christianity and Secularism in European Education

HOLGER DAUN Institute of International Education, Stockholm University, Sweden

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.730

At a very general (‘civilisational’) level, compulsory and upper secondary education in Europe is based in the Christian tradition and does not easily tolerate other types of education. Europe is the only continent that has been able to combine modernisation and secularisation, and this has continuously favoured religious schools of the Christian type but disfavoured Muslim initiatives. Also, during the past decade all the education systems have been required to produce competitiveness and social cohesion. The first requirement has made education more focused on intellectual, technical and cognitive features and less on values and morals. The second requirement derives from the cleavages resulting from the drive for competitiveness as well as flows of immigrants and minority demands for their rights. However, none of the pressures, drives and requirements has resulted in any deep-going change in the multicultural direction of European education.

Adult Education and European Identity

OSKAR NEGT Department of Sociology, University of Hannover, Germany

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.744

Europe is coming together. This is a historic project; for the first time in modern history, will and consciousness are used for bringing political, social and cultural unity to the European continent. In this process lifelong learning and hence adult education are gaining in importance. The European project takes place in an age characterised by radical changes and crises in work, civil society and the human existence as such. In this situation citizens need new key skills to cope. Also, identities need to be strengthened and reshaped and new types of solidarity need to be developed. Learning must not be restricted to the acquisition of technical and vocational skills, but will increasingly become learning to cope with the world and to establish new hierarchies of values which enable individuals to create a democratic Europe. To achieve this goal adult education must cease to be the responsibility of the individual and rather become an institutionalised and shared responsibility.

Academic Entrepreneurship vs. Changing Governance and Institutional Management Structures at European Universities

MAREK KWIEK Center for Public Policy, Poznan University, Poland

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.757

This article discusses academic entrepreneurship in the context of ongoing changes in university management and governance in European universities. The comparative perspective is provided by the European Union (EU) research project ‘European Universities for Entrepreneurship: Their Role in the Europe of Knowledge’ (EUEREK) comprising seven European countries, and it draws heavily from ideas and research results of Burton Clark, Michael Shattock and Gareth Williams. It views transformations in university governance and management in the context of the recent emphasis by the European Commission (EC) on the vital role of changes in institutional governance and its ‘modernisation agenda for universities’. The article presents a general discussion of the EC’s prioritisation of areas of transformation of European universities in which governance structures figure prominently, discusses the role of risk-taking at entrepreneurial institutions and shows the role of risk management. It also discusses the clash of old academic and new managerial values at entrepreneurial universities and the traditional academic idea of collegiality. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding the future of public institutions in Europe.

The European Commission Stepping Up Both the Efficiency and Equity of Education and Training Systems

ARIANE BAYE Education & Training Department, University of Liège, Belgium
MARC DEMEUSE Institut d’Administration scolaire, University of Mons-Hainaut (UMH), Belgium

doi:10.2304/pfie.2008.6.6.771

This article analyses the Communication of the European Commission (EC) devoted to efficiency and equity of European education systems. It shows the Commission’s difficulties in integrating the multiple dimensions of education equity and the confusion between pedagogical and economical notions of efficiency. The authors also analyse the means proposed by the Commission to foster equity and efficiency at different education levels. Under the guise of a specific interest in pre-schooling, the arguments concerning compulsory education were rather lightweight and incomplete, and those on higher education worrying. This article raises the concerns and questions that remain after the reading of this Communication

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