European Educational Research Journal

Cities: a window into larger and smaller worlds

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: Cities: a window into larger and smaller worlds
Author: SASKIA SASSEN
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-10
ABSTRACT Cities are complex systems. But they are incomplete systems. In this incompleteness lies the possibility of making - making the urban, the political, the civic, a history. The urban is not alone in having these characteristics, but these characteristics are a necessary part of the DNA of the urban. Every city is distinct and so is every discipline that studies it. And yet, if it is to be a study of the urban it will have to deal with these key features - incompleteness, complexity, and the possibility of making. This then also makes cities strategic sites for the exploration of many major subjects confronting society. But cities are not always a heuristic space - a space capable of producing knowledge about some of the major transformations of an epoch. Today, as we have entered a global era, the city is once again emerging as a strategic site for understanding some of the major new trends reconfiguring the social order. Each of those trends has its own specific contents and consequences. The urban moment is but one moment in their often complex multi-sited trajectories.

Why are Migrant Students Better Off in Certain Types of Educational Systems or Schools than in Others?

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: Why are Migrant Students Better Off in Certain Types of Educational Systems or Schools than in Others?
Author: JAAP DRONKERS; ROLF VAN DER VELDEN; ALLISON DUNNE
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 11-44
ABSTRACT The main research question of this article is concerned with the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school composition, track level, and country of origin on the educational achievement of 15-year-old migrant students. The authors focus specifically on the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic background on achievement scores and the extent to which these effects are affected by characteristics of the school, track, or educational system in which these students are enrolled. In doing so, they examine the ‘sorting’ mechanisms of schools and tracks in highly stratified, moderately stratified, and comprehensive education systems. They use data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) wave. Compared with previous research in this area, the article’s main contribution is in explicitly including the tracks-within-school level as a separate unit of analysis, which leads to less biased results concerning the effects of educational system characteristics. The results highlight the importance of including factors of track level and school composition in the debate surrounding educational inequality of opportunity for students in different education contexts. The findings clearly indicate that analyses of the effects of educational system characteristics are flawed if the analysis only uses a country level and a student level and ignores the tracks-within-school-level characteristics. From a policy perspective, the most important finding is that educational systems are neither uniformly ‘good’ nor uniformly ‘bad’, but they can result in different consequences for different migrant groups. Some migrant groups are better off in comprehensive systems, while others are better off in moderately stratified systems.

Urban Education and Segregation: the responses from young people

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: Urban Education and Segregation: the responses from young people
Author: ELISABET ÖHRN
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 45-57
ABSTRACT This article takes as a starting point the segregation of urban areas and discusses schooling in the neighbourhoods typically associated with problems and challenges, in order to explore young people's responses to their schooling and social positions. Such responses include individual acts, such as rejecting further schooling or dismissing the local school in favour of prestigious ones, as well as the development of shared understandings and collective formations. The article focuses in particular on young people's responses through aesthetic practices, informal education and public political actions. Although research suggests that youths in poor areas are increasingly individualised and shows that schools provide them with little help to understand and act upon their circumstances in school, the analyses here also bring to light young people's rather strong belief in collective actions; students' formations of resistance groups and political knowledge appear as crucial resources, and, although scarce, teacher support and teaching about political actions appear as important.

Educational Research and Useful Knowledge: production, dissemination, reception, implementation

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: Educational Research and Useful Knowledge: production, dissemination, reception, implementation
Author: MARIT HONERØD HOVEID
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 58-61
ABSTRACT The overall question which the three of us asked in this roundtable - 'What counts as 'useful knowledge' in educational research?' - is a question that can be interpreted in different ways. I have chosen to interpret it as a question to ourselves: What do we consider 'useful' as research on education - as researchers? This is asking for a self-evaluation by educational research(ers). Giving an answer to this requires a reflexivity; a reflexivity which places us in a position where we need to examine and re-examine, on different levels, what we say and do as researchers. This kind of reflexivity is not uncomplicated to perform and it could lead into a less fruitful self-absorption. Another reason for this being a difficult task to perform is that it asks each of us engaged in the field of educational research to reconsider what we value, what we count as knowledge and what we care about - although it should be noted that, according to the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt (1988), we do not always know what we care about. Under the main question, we have been asked to answer the following three questions: What counts as useful education knowledge, and under which conditions, context and criteria? For whom is it useful, and how do they assert their priority? What is the role of researchers in making their research useful?

Multiple Enactments of Educational Research

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: Multiple Enactments of Educational Research
Author: PAOLO LANDRI
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 62-67
ABSTRACT The article addresses the widespread claim to make educational research more relevant for practitioners, policy makers, potential users and stakeholders, and proposes a problematisation of the notion of 'useful knowledge'. The article illustrates the conceptual, instrumental and legitimative relevance of knowledge and highlights empirically the need to develop detailed descriptions of the local constructions of educational research to understand the non-linear dynamics and the multiple enactments of relevant/useful networks of educational research.

An Exploration of Differences in Mathematics Attainment among Immigrant Pupils in 18 OECD Countries

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: An Exploration of Differences in Mathematics Attainment among Immigrant Pupils in 18 OECD Countries
Author: MARINA SHAPIRA
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 68-95
ABSTRACT This article presents findings from a comparative study of sources of educational disadvantage of immigrant children across 18 OECD countries, which is based the data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The findings show that disadvantaged family background and lack of host-country-specific cultural capital account for a large part of the attainment gap between immigrants and their non-migrant peers. The findings also show that school characteristics in terms of their size, quality of teachers and educational resources contribute to the understanding of the further part of the immigrant performance gap. Moreover, school characteristics mediate between the immigrant students' family characteristics and their attainment, by reinforcing or diminishing the impact of the family characteristics. Furthermore, the institutional characteristics of immigration countries, such as type of education provision, type of welfare provision and type of immigration policy, also play a part in producing and maintaining educational disadvantage of immigrant pupils, by affecting the attainment level and mediating between the individual- and school-level characteristics and pupils' attainment. It was found that the first generation of immigrant children perform particularly well in countries with a liberal type of welfare regime, more standardised educational systems and more selective immigration policies; there was also some evidence that institutional factors shape educational attainment of the second generation of immigrant children in a way which more closely resembles that of the children from non-immigrant backgrounds - the former perform better in countries with a more inclusive (social-democratic) type of welfare provision, but also in countries with less differentiated and more standardised educational systems.

Socioeconomic Gradients in Eastern European Countries: evidence from PIRLS 2006

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: Socioeconomic Gradients in Eastern European Countries: evidence from PIRLS 2006
Author: DANIEL H. CARO; PLAMEN MIRAZCHIYSKI
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 96-110
ABSTRACT This article analyses educational inequalities related to socioeconomic status (SES) in 12 Eastern European countries that participated in the International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006. Economies and educational systems of these countries have undergone critical transformations since the fall of communism. The authors' analyses, using data collected almost 20 years after this period, help explain how these transformations affected the equity and quality of educational outcomes in the region. For each country, overall inequalities as well as inequalities between schools and within schools are estimated with regression models and represented graphically with socioeconomic gradient lines. A possible trade-off between equity and quality of outcomes is explored, identifying countries that have been relatively successful at attaining both educational goals. The extent to which the school SES explains achievement gaps between rural and urban schools is analysed. The results point to country groupings that are reasonably consistent with regional classifications of educational systems postulated in the literature.

Universities and Knowledge Production in Central Europe

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: Universities and Knowledge Production in Central Europe
Author: MAREK KWIEK
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 111-126
ABSTRACT The article discusses an East/West divide in Europe in university knowledge production. It argues that the communist and post-communist legacies in the four major Central European economies studied (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic) matter substantially for educational and research systems. The differences in university knowledge production may be bigger than expected, and the role of historical legacies may be more long term than generally assumed in both social sciences and public policy studies on the region. The gradual convergence of both higher education and research systems in two parts of Europe cannot be taken for granted without thoughtful changes in both university funding (both modes and levels) and governance. The article discusses links between knowledge production, economic competitiveness and regulatory and other environments in which both universities and knowledge-intensive companies operate. The role of factors other than higher education and innovation systems is substantially more important for competitiveness and growth in Central Europe than in affluent Western economies. The international visibility of universities as knowledge production centres is low and the analysis of the geography of knowledge production at the level of regions may indicate that Central Europe is in danger of being effectively cut off from the emergent European Research Area.

A Case Study of Parents' School Choice Strategies in a Finnish Urban Context

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: A Case Study of Parents' School Choice Strategies in a Finnish Urban Context
Author: JAANA POIKOLAINEN
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 127-144
ABSTRACT This article analyses how Finnish parents of sixth graders in a comprehensive school act in the local 'school markets' of the case city. The parents' subject positions as choosers are reflected on and explored in relation to the discourses and resources they use when discussing their school choices. The data were gathered in 2009 by administering a questionnaire (n = 374) and by conducting interviews with 76 of the respondents. The main data used here were thematic interviews, which were analysed using the discoursive approach. The analysis revealed that the parents used three different types of subject positions and discourses when having conversations about their choices and when considering their options. These discourses used were partly overlapping and unexpectedly social, and cultural resources were capitalised on less than previously assumed. Contrary to earlier European research on school choices, most parents in this study were not eager to choose any other school than their allocated local school, because they trusted the quality of Finnish comprehensive schools. The parents' thoughts and actions were notably guided and governed by the local school authorities, according to whom the local school is good enough.

School Children's Visualisations of Europe

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:00:27 GMT

Title: School Children's Visualisations of Europe
Author: RACHEL MASON; MARY RICHARDSON; FIONA M. COLLINS
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2012 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 145-165
ABSTRACT 'Images & Identity' was a two-year curriculum development project in which citizenship and art educators in the Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Germany, Malta and Portugal collaborated on the production of teacher education materials. The article begins with a critical analysis of educational policy for European citizenship and of the potential contribution visual art and citizenship education might make to understanding what it means to be European. The main body of the article reports on a small-scale survey of school children's visual representations of Europe carried out in advance of the curriculum development. This survey elicited received, recreated and created representations. Whereas many were totemic symbols of European identity downloaded from the Internet, a surprising number were personal artworks in which children explored and developed their personal feelings and ideas. This article describes and analyses the images the children selected, remixed and/or created, focusing on the subject matter, metaphorical meanings and interpretative themes. Findings about their orientation to European citizen identity were that it was dominated by physical and social perceptions, and whilst largely positive, these perceptions varied according to nationality, ethnicity and age.

Introduction. Discourse and Identity in Education, pages

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Introduction. Discourse and Identity in Education, pages
Author: Carola Mick
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 467-471
ABSTRACT Not available

Agency as the Acquisition of Capital: the role of one-on-one tutoring and mentoring in changing a refugee student's educational trajectory

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Agency as the Acquisition of Capital: the role of one-on-one tutoring and mentoring in changing a refugee student's educational trajectory
Author: IRIS E. DUMENDEN
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 472-483
ABSTRACT Current research into the experiences of refugee students in mainstream secondary schools in Australia indicates that for these students, schools are places of social and academic isolation and failure. This article introduces one such student, Lian, who came to Australia as a refugee from Burma, and whom the author tutored and mentored intensively during his final year of schooling. The article provides an empirically derived understanding of how one-on-one tutoring and mentoring became a platform through which this student was able to succeed in a structure which systematically tried to exclude him. Here, agency is conceptualised in terms of Bourdieu's concept of capital. The analysis highlights the ways in which one-on-one tutoring and mentoring provided the necessary platform by which this refugee student was able to acquire the necessary capital that effected a positive change in his educational trajectory.

The Construction of Performative Identities

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: The Construction of Performative Identities
Author: BOB JEFFREY; GEOFF TROMAN
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 484-501
ABSTRACT The influence of policy texts upon learners depends largely on how much influence such texts wield. Policy discourses are one of the main means whereby policy texts, in the settings in which they operate, influence the value, the implementation and the inscribing of those texts on learners. The Economic and Social Research Council-based research project described in this article examines the ways in which Lyotard's performative practices affect the identities of primary school learners and how they are constructed by Key Stage exam process; it also examines performative progression through a system of learning targets. It uses a Foucauldian approach to show how learners are influenced by performativity discourses and how they take part in constructing these performative identities. Employing an ethnographic approach, it illustrates how Foucault's social relations characteristic of extra/intra/inter dependencies is explicated through governmentality and the construction of knowledge and subjectivity, which act as major relays through which learners' performative identities become embedded.

'Non-servile Virtuosi' in Insubordinate Spaces: school disaffection, refusal and resistance in a former English coalfield

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: 'Non-servile Virtuosi' in Insubordinate Spaces: school disaffection, refusal and resistance in a former English coalfield
Author: N. GEOFFREY BRIGHT
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 502-515
ABSTRACT This article reviews excerpts from a body of ethnographic data examining some young people's disaffection from, and refusal of, the education project as a whole in a UK coalfield area. Key examples are used to illustrate intergenerational continuities and disjunctions in attitudes to formal education in these exceptional and sometimes 'insubordinate' localities. It is argued that reviewing such data in the light of concepts emerging from the literature on Italian autonomist politics of the 1970s - particularly Paulo Virno's work - is potentially fruitful in reclaiming a politics of educational refusal from the dual grip of a middle-class imaginary that abhors it as pathological and dangerous and a body of scholarship that seems incapable of moving beyond either lionising it as heroic or loathing it as nihilistic.

Enacted Agency as the Strategic Making of Selves in Plurilingual Literacy Events: framing agency and children as contributors to their own and others' learning

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Enacted Agency as the Strategic Making of Selves in Plurilingual Literacy Events: framing agency and children as contributors to their own and others' learning
Author: DOMINIQUE PORTANTE
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 516-532
ABSTRACT 'This article is about the understanding of how children, using different conceptions of literacy as means to construct their social reality and their social roles in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, are enabled to enact agency in terms of their strategic making and remaking of selves. The research approach is informed by a sociocultural conception of literacy and draws on a conception of agency as multisourced, distributed and mediated through human interaction, mediational means and discourses. The author uses a microethnographic approach combining ethnomethodology and conversational analysis as well as discourse analysis to make visible how the children are reached by more or less distant meanings and conceptions of literacy conveyed and stabilised through the locally acting devices. The analysis also shows how material objects like written texts produced by children mediate the participants' agency in different ways, constraining or enabling it with respect to how the children contribute to their own and to others' learning. The article ends with conclusions on perspectives for organising learning with regard to subject formation in terms of empowering participation designs and for designing analytic frames for investigating processes of formation of multisourced agency.

Agency as the Ability and Opportunity to Participate in Evaluation as Knowledge Construction

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Agency as the Ability and Opportunity to Participate in Evaluation as Knowledge Construction
Author: ASTRID BIRGITTE EGGEN
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 533-544
ABSTRACT School communities find themselves within an overall ideological and epistemological controversy with regard to a drive for goal-oriented and 'evidence-based' practices on the one hand and emancipative bottom-up developmental strategies on the other, treating empirical data as information to be analysed according to context, with potential meaning for practice. This raises questions of democratic purposes of education, of leaders' and teachers' agency and corresponding accountability. This article is therefore an empirically based discussion of the relationship between multiple understandings of democracy and multiple practices of evaluation. It presents certain results of three ethnographic research projects among school leaders in Norwegian secondary education. Using a critical ethnographic research methodology in order to build agency, the article focuses on dilemmas and paradoxes of evaluation in an era of market-driven accountability. A situated perspective has been applied in order to view evaluation as a joint enterprise dependent upon the shared vocabulary and repertoire of evaluative tools in each community of practice. The fieldwork shows that the factors that are crucial for teachers' and school leaders' agency in this professional area concern their awareness of assessment used for evaluative purposes within multiple perspectives of democracy and validity. Most participants look beyond formalised procedures and predefined purposes, focusing instead on knowledge construction. The ultimate objective of the participants seems to be that of agency building, or becoming subjects in these processes rather than objects of instrumental application.

Homework through the Eyes of Children: what does visual ethnography invite us to see?

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Homework through the Eyes of Children: what does visual ethnography invite us to see?
Author: KIRSTEN HUTCHISON
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 545-558
ABSTRACT Whilst the notion of children's rights and an entitlement to express their views and participate as global citizens is threaded throughout the international policy field, children's perspectives on the near ubiquitous practice of homework, and its effects on their daily lives and learner subjectivities, remain under-researched. Drawing on the Bourdieuian concepts of practice, habitus, capital and field, this article develops a cross-cultural analysis of homework practices in Australia, Denmark and Britain to make visible the embodied habitus and agentic possibilities shaping the reproduction of educational advantage and disadvantage for variously located students. Using video data generated by children in primary schools, the article explores children's visual representations of their compliance and resistance to homework's regulatory functions. It demonstrates the affordances of visual ethnographic methods as a form of participatory research with children which foregrounds students' experiences and opinions and makes visible the inclusionary and exclusionary effects of homework on children in diverse socio-cultural settings.

Learner Agency

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Learner Agency
Author: CAROLA MICK
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 559-571
ABSTRACT This article presents first results of an ethnographic research project in a Luxembourgish primary school that accompanied the development of a school project by children from the fifth grade. Analysing the data children themselves collected with Kodak Zi8 cameras in order to document their project activities, it investigates their possibilities and constraints to become designers of a 'third space' within the educational institution. The author draws on Emile Durkheim's educational sociology in order to simultaneously analyse the educational processes of socialisation and subjectification that occur when children are legitimated to take part in the design of their own learning processes within school. The analysis focuses on the social languages children are drawing on and creating when shaping their school project in and through the collected data. It succeeds in depicting the interplay of structure and agency in children's practices and in demonstrating children's capability to contribute to their subjectification as social beings and to co-design the educational institution they are socialised by. However, it also points to the institution's mistrust and constant endangering of children's initiative and constitution as social actors. In this sense, the article deals with the possibilities of and obstacles to transformation of institutions of learning from within and bottom up.

On Structure and Agency in Ethnographies of Education: examples from this special issue and more generally

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: On Structure and Agency in Ethnographies of Education: examples from this special issue and more generally
Author: DENNIS BEACH
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 572-582
ABSTRACT The articles in this collection are about the development, possibility, exercise and possible frustration of human agency within educational exchanges. They are also all based on ethnography, which is now a common approach to educational research. Ethnography is not a seamless, neutral observational practice but is instead variable in relation to theoretical perspectives and methodological application. However, central to all approaches is an emphasis on an active and creative citizen and an assumption that there is a dialectical relationship between human social practices, human consciousness and social structures. The similarities and differences within education ethnography are apparent even in the articles present here and in the ways in which they depict, define and describe agency in this special issue.

Quality Assurance on the Road: Finland and Austria in comparison

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Quality Assurance on the Road: Finland and Austria in comparison
Author: ANDREA BERNHARD
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 583-594
ABSTRACT The ongoing necessity for quality and quality assurance in the entire Bologna process remains one of the main issues for European policy makers. The aims of creating comparable systems and of guaranteeing quality within higher education systems are the reasons for national developments and the eagerness to reform. The situation in two relatively small European countries, Austria and Finland, is at the centre of this research and exemplifies different ways of coping with international developments and the need to establish a comprehensive quality assurance system. How do these countries cope with the pressure to compete in the global higher education market? Is their system of quality assurance in line with the European aim to create a European higher education area? The purpose of this study is to provide an overview on two national quality assurance systems and to figure out similarities and differences between these two countries, providing a clear picture of what has been done in the field of quality assurance, where the challenges to transform are and how to improve quality assurance systems.

Educational Organisations as 'Cultures of Consumption': cultural contexts of consumer learning in schools

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Educational Organisations as 'Cultures of Consumption': cultural contexts of consumer learning in schools
Author: DANIEL FISCHER
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 595-610
ABSTRACT High levels of consumption in the industrialised parts of the world such as Europe mark a central threat to global sustainable development. In recent years, growing attention has been paid to the contributions of education and educational organisations to the socialisation of youths and young adults into consumer culture. It is the contention of this article that educational responses to the consumption challenge both within the European Union (EU) consumer policy strategy and in current practices in consumer education in European countries build on an understanding of consumer learning in schools that is too narrowly defined and thus insufficient. The aim of this article is therefore to help overcome this shortcoming by unfolding a socio-cultural view on consumption-related formal and informal learning environments in educational organisations. It is assumed that in response to external framings such as curricula or policies and as a result of inner-organisational negotiations, schools bring about distinct ways of relating to consumption and youth consumers that have socialising effects on their students. This article presents a conceptual elaboration of these contexts and processes. It draws on research into the genesis and characteristic fields of school culture and relates this to the domain of consumption. As a result, a detailed framework of organisational 'cultures of consumption' in schools with six thematic domains is presented. The article concludes with a discussion of implications and demands for a new research, practice and policy-making agenda that is needed to advance a more holistic promotion of sustainable consumer education in schools in Europe.

Policy as Assemblage

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Policy as Assemblage
Author: RADHIKA GORUR
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 611-622
ABSTRACT In this article, the author tells the story of her search for appropriate tools to conceptualise policy work. She had set out to explore the relationship between the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Australia's education policy, but early interview data forced her to reconsider her research question. The plethora of available models of policy did not satisfactorily accommodate her growing understanding of the messiness and complexity of policy work. On the basis of interviews with 18 policy actors, including former OECD officials, PISA analysts and bureaucrats, as well as documentary analysis of government reports and ministerial media releases, she suggests that the concept of 'assemblage' provides the tools to better understand the messy processes of policy work. The relationship between PISA and national policy is of interest to many scholars in Europe, making this study widely relevant. An article that argues for the unsettling of tidy accounts of knowledge making in policy can hardly afford to obscure the untidiness of its own assemblage. Accordingly, this article is somewhat unconventional in its presentation, and attempts to take the reader into the messiness of the research world as well as the policy world. Implicit in this presentation is the suggestion that both policy work and research work are ongoing attempts to find order and coherence through the cobbling together of a variety of resources.

Interactions between European Citizenship and Language Learning among Adolescent Europeans

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:41 GMT

Title: Interactions between European Citizenship and Language Learning among Adolescent Europeans
Author: MAIRIN HENNEBRY
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 623-641
ABSTRACT Recent enlargement of the European Union (EU) has created debate as to the suitability of current structures and policies for effectively engaging citizens and developing social cohesion. Education and specifically modern foreign language (MFL) teaching are argued by the literature to play a key role in equipping young people to interact and communicate effectively in the ever-changing European context and to exercise their rights as European citizens. However, much of the empirical research to date has focused on adult understandings of European citizenship. Furthermore, very few studies consider whether current MFL teaching is addressing issues of European citizenship or offer a comparison of provision between one member state and another. This study presents questionnaire data from four European countries to investigate young people's current understanding and awareness of European citizenship and the perceived contribution of their language learning experience to this awareness. Findings suggest that knowledge about European citizenship is patchy across the four countries. Reports on learning in MFL lessons indicate a mismatch between the role identified for the subject in the development of European citizenship and the situation in the classroom. Data gathered from English pupils suggest that these issues are more acute in England than they are in France, Spain or Ireland.

Introduction. Philosophy of Education and the Transformation of Educational Systems

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Introduction. Philosophy of Education and the Transformation of Educational Systems
Author: Roland Reichenbach
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 287-291
ABSTRACT Not available

Philosophy of ... Philosophy and ...: taking the conditions we find ourselves in seriously

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Philosophy of ... Philosophy and ...: taking the conditions we find ourselves in seriously
Author: PAUL SMEYERS
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 292-303
ABSTRACT Starting from Peters' characterization of philosophy of education, the article elaborates the development offered by the Blackwell Guide (i.e. a field of study that involves a variety of approaches, including philosophical analysis with problems rooted in the use of language in educational discourse, addressing the assumptions and values embedded in other disciplinary approaches in the study of education, and exploring what education might be or might become). Taking into account recent developments of educational research, it is argued that room should be made for other forms of study than empirical, be it quantitative or qualitative types of research. A critical discussion of the preoccupation with method - as well as more generally in educational research, in philosophy of education in particular - is offered. It is argued that the conditions we find ourselves in today, for example the demand for performativity in educational contexts, should be taken seriously and that this has implications for what we address in philosophy of education.

From the Scientistic to the Humanistic in the Construction of Contemporary Educational Knowledge

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: From the Scientistic to the Humanistic in the Construction of Contemporary Educational Knowledge
Author: DAVID BRIDGES
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 304-321
ABSTRACT The starting point for this article is a lecture given fifty years ago by C.P. Snow under the title 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution', in which Snow critiques what he sees as the damaging intellectual division between the arts and humanities on the one side and the sciences on the other. Fifty years later this problem is, perhaps, better considered in terms of the hegemony of science, or, more accurately, in terms of a very restricted notion of science which the author refers to as 'scientism'. Scientism privileges a very narrow empiricist view of science and in particular experimental methods which allow the measurement of physical and, by extension, human and social phenomena. The article illustrates a number of ways in which such scientism operates to exclude alternative perspectives on experience rooted in the humanities from social and educational enquiry and discourse. It challenges scientism in two ways. First, it argues that it represents an impoverished view of science itself, which, properly understood, draws on a much wider range of methods and methodologies, some of which bring it much closer to humanistic forms of enquiry than the narrow empiricism that is popularly advanced as its defining characteristic. Then the article begins to illustrate, more positively, the sort of contributions to educational understanding that draw essentially from the academic traditions of the humanities. These include: (i) the exploration of human conscious experience and intentionality; (ii) narratives (including auto/biography); (iii) descriptive writing; (iv) normativity; (v) literary, perhaps even 'romantic', sensibility.

Education's Outside

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Education's Outside
Author: PAUL STANDISH
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 322-334
ABSTRACT Is the university to be thought of as in service of society - that is, on the inside? Or should it be regarded rather as its potential critic and prophet of its best prospects, and hence be understood to be on the outside? This is just one example of the multiple ways in which thinking in terms of the inside and the outside figures in educational policy and practice. While the opposition recurs across the broad range of our political and personal lives, it is there in the detail of conceptions of teaching and learning, and of the content of the curriculum. This article seeks to examine some implications of this opposition. It does this by reference to an article by Jacques Derrida in which questions concerning the inside and the outside, of inclusion and exclusion, of purity and contamination, are considered in relation to language itself and to the problems and possibilities of translation.

Philosophy of Education: a thorn in the (clay) foot of the educational system

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Philosophy of Education: a thorn in the (clay) foot of the educational system
Author: MICHEL SOËTARD
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 335-342
ABSTRACT The article tries to defend the thesis that our educational systems are not doing well (which is not at all original), that the philosophy of education, more often than not, accompanies, justifies and reinforces the malaise of the system (which is already more original), and that it should, without a doubt, question itself in order to know how to support the betterment of education in our societies in crisis.

Philosophy and the Rationalisation of Educative Action: the example of personal autonomy

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Philosophy and the Rationalisation of Educative Action: the example of personal autonomy
Author: PHILIPPE FORAY
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 343-355
ABSTRACT In France, the philosophy of education is not accustomed to reflect on the concept of the 'education system'. Often, the 'humanistic' purposes that it gives to education are far away from the real goals of a systematic education. Often also, it is confined to a critical attitude, whose constructive side is missing. Which form of philosophical practice is desirable vis-à-vis the transformations of the education systems? How to develop an at the same time normative and critical thought, which take account of the current evolutions? This is what this contribution is concerned with, using the limited example of personal autonomy.

Philosophy of Education as an Exercise in Thought: to not forget oneself when 'things take their course'

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Philosophy of Education as an Exercise in Thought: to not forget oneself when 'things take their course'
Author: JAN MASSCHELEIN
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 356-366
ABSTRACT Starting from a distinction between a critical and an ascetic tradition in philosophy and taking into account their different stances towards the present, the article proposes a practice of philosophy of education within the ascetic tradition. In this tradition, the work of philosophy is in the first place a work on the self - that is, putting oneself to 'the test of contemporary reality' - implying an enlightenment not of others but of oneself; however, of oneself not as subject of knowledge, but as subject of action. Putting oneself to the test is, therefore, an exercise in the context of self-education. The article indicates how this exercise can be described as an exercise of/in thought, how it has to be conceived not as a private matter but as a public gesture and as a condition for a truth-telling that is in the first place illuminating and inviting. In order to do so, the article first recalls how Hannah Arendt describes her own work and how this indicates what kind of philosophical practice is entailed in the ascetic tradition. In line with this description, a topical example (i.e. the films of the Belgian Dardenne brothers) is offered of how educational philosophical research in this tradition is carried out today. And, finally, it is clarified how this relates to a proposal for doing 'empirical' philosophical research and for creating laboratories.

Necessary Transformation or Safe Permanence? A Philosophical Approach to the Desire for Change

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Necessary Transformation or Safe Permanence? A Philosophical Approach to the Desire for Change
Author: ANNE-MARIE DROUIN-HANS
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 367-374
ABSTRACT What is proposed is a meditation on the phrase 'transformation of the educational system', paying attention to the sense of the words, and showing what the desire for educational change can reveal. After explaining to what extent 'educational system' is a quasi-oxymoron, the meaning of 'transformation' has to be compared to those of revolution and utopia. The claim to be transforming the educational system is an attempt to adapt education to social and political situations and constraints. The case of the Langevin-Wallon project in France, which was never applied, helps when wondering what has to be adapted to what. What sort of reciprocity is there between school and society? The organisation of knowledge itself can be submitted to a transformation. Jeremy Bentham's Chrestomathia expresses such a conception through an unheeded and somehow utopian project. The desire for something new is in itself problematical, and the very fact of it being new cannot be an aim.

The Research of Transformational Education Processes: exemplary considerations on the relation of the philosophy of education and educational research

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: The Research of Transformational Education Processes: exemplary considerations on the relation of the philosophy of education and educational research
Author: HANS-CHRISTOPH KOLLER
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 375-382
ABSTRACT Confronted with the choice of either insisting on the inevitability of philosophic reflection and thus risking being neglected by research funding and the policy of offering chairs or of giving up on its philosophical orientation and also becoming committed to empirical research, this article suggests a third option for the Philosophy of Education, consisting of a combination of philosophic reflection and empirical research. By the example of the concept of transformational processes of Bildung it will be demonstrated that philosophical reflection is indeed indispensible but may be productively combined with empirical research. As this concept takes up the classical idea of Bildung, as it was developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt, first the relation of this suggestion to this tradition will be sketched. In working out the concept of transformational processes of Bildung the article will then refer to Bernhard Waldenfels' concept of the foreign. As a conclusion the article will indicat what a kind of empirical educational research might look like which aims at researching transformational processes of Bildung.

Role and Function of 'Philosophy of Education' within the Educational Sciences: a cross-national attempt

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Role and Function of 'Philosophy of Education' within the Educational Sciences: a cross-national attempt
Author: VOLKER KRAFT
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 383-392
ABSTRACT Disciplinary structures of education across Europe are rather different mainly due to the fact that education as an anthropological phenomenon is deeply rooted in specific cultural and national contexts. For this reason the role philosophy of education plays within the given national educational sciences is somewhat divergent and not easy to compare. In face of these difficulties the article argues for a cross-national attempt using theorems deriving from modern systems theory. From such a perspective philosophy of education can be regarded as a special 'knowledge system' and its function consists in re-including what has been excluded in the process of rationalisation of education; it serves, so to speak, as a special type of reflection knowledge which is as timeless as it is necessary and therefore of meta-national relevance and indispensable for the process of Europeanisation of education.

EU Funding and Issues of 'Marketisation' of Higher Education in Greece

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: EU Funding and Issues of 'Marketisation' of Higher Education in Greece
Author: DIONYSIOS GOUVIAS
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 393-406
ABSTRACT In the last 10 years, tens of millions of euros from European Union (EU) funding have started to flow into Greece's state schools and universities. New departments of higher education have been established all over the country, and a new institutional framework for lifelong learning has been recently set up. Considering the above context, certain questions arise, such as what is the 'agenda' behind the EU-funding rhetoric, which has been officially linked to the 'opening up' of higher education and the 'widening' of opportunities. Initially, the author tries to assess the degree of 'marketisation' vis-à-vis EU involvement in the planning of higher education policy making, and to highlight the balance of power in educational policy making in Greece. To this end, special reference will be made to the Greek academics' response to the new legislation concerning the financing of higher education.

Self-Study Research and the Development of Teacher Educators' Professional Identities

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Self-Study Research and the Development of Teacher Educators' Professional Identities
Author: MIEKE LUNENBERG; FRED KORTHAGEN; ROSANNE ZWART
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 407-420
ABSTRACT This article presents the results of a study on the project 'Teacher Educators Study Their Own Practices'. Nine teacher educators participated and conducted a self-study into their own practices. The leading question of this article is whether their self-studies contributed to the development of their professional identities. Data sources were digital logbooks, exit interviews, and follow-up questionnaires. The results show that conducting self-study research supports theoretical growth, ongoing development, the production of knowledge, and the enhancement of self-confidence. What these results could mean for the teacher educators themselves and their practices, and for the professional community of teacher educators, is discussed in the final section of this article.

The Projectisation, Marketisation and Therapisation of Education

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: The Projectisation, Marketisation and Therapisation of Education
Author: KRISTIINA BRUNILA
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 421-433
ABSTRACT Publicly funded projects with economic aims and discourses have permeated the public sector, including education. In practice this has meant a shift whereby publicly funded education has evolved into a series of business-oriented projects with individually targeted activities. The rapidly increasing amount of project-based work in education is a result of a shift whereby Finland has become a project society. In this article I will disclose the alliance between projectisation, marketisation and therapisation of education in Finland by analysing project-based equality training in education and project-based training and guidance for young adults. Both activities operate in quite different contexts in the field of adult education but are still targeted by similar forms of power that I aim to analyse in this article.

On the Reception of Foucauldian Ideas in Pedagogical Research

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: On the Reception of Foucauldian Ideas in Pedagogical Research
Author: HELENA OSTROWICKA
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 433-444
ABSTRACT The article is devoted to the presentation of the reception of Foucauldian ideas in Polish pedagogical research over the past twenty years. This movement of thought is described as an oscillation between heterotopia and utopia, autonomy and heteronomy, emancipation and repression. As results of this analysis indicate, Polish pedagogues are most interested in those of Foucault's analyses which undertake an inquiry into the problems of discursive power or reveal the generative conditions shaping particular discursive formations. The concepts of disciplinary and pastoral power are adopted and utilised for analysing power relations inscribed in discourses of gender, market, childhood, youth, disability, homelessness and subjectivity. Apart from this, the article discusses the Polish reception of Foucauldian texts devoted to the critique of the autonomous subject and to his project of heterotopology. In conclusion, the author points to the inspirations issuing from the works of the French philosopher which encourage us to depart from a dualistic mode of reasoning.

Interruptions and Failure in Higher Education: evidence from ISEG-UTL

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: Interruptions and Failure in Higher Education: evidence from ISEG-UTL
Author: MARGARIDA CHAGAS; GRAÇA LEÃO FERNANDES
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 445-460
ABSTRACT Failure in higher education (HE) is the outcome of multiple time-dependent determinants. Interruptions in students' individual school trajectories are one of them, and that is why research on this topic has been attracting much attention these days. From an individual point of view, it is expected that interruptions in school trajectory, whatever the reason, influence success in undergraduate programmes, and this success is measured either by time required to obtain a degree, by the scores obtained in some more 'critical' subjects in these programmes, or by the number of enrolment registrations. The study of the impact of interruptions on failure in HE is also important to help education institutions fight this problem, and to support policy measures related to the articulation between upper secondary and HE programmes. In previous research the authors have shed some light on the determinants of failure in the first year of HE studies. In this article, the authors' major concern is to find some evidence of the effect of interruptions on HE failure among students using a life-cycle approach. They are interested to know whether such effects are related to gender and/or specific graduation programme. They also want to investigate whether work experience may counterbalance the effect of interruption on academic success. They hope to be able to derive some useful recommendations to address policy making in the fields of pedagogic methodologies in HE, articulation between academic and occupational learning in the framework of the Bologna Process, and public funding/fellowship policies in HE.

REVIEW ESSAY. Globalization, New Modes of Governance and Educational Challenges: a comparative review

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:48:59 GMT

Title: REVIEW ESSAY. Globalization, New Modes of Governance and Educational Challenges: a comparative review
Author: Ana Márcia Pires
Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Year: 2011 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 461-466
ABSTRACT Not available