This article chronicles the history of the journal "European Education" since its establishment in 1969 by placing it within the larger context of geopolitical changes of the twentieth century and the historical debates on theory and method in the field of comparative education. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative content analysis of…

Change is a perennial struggle for campuses. Trustees, presidents, policymakers, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community groups all seek to alter some aspect of colleges and universities. Common wisdom is that higher education faculty, staff, and administrators do not want to change and are slow to innovate. This article examines the…

The International Baccalaureate (IB) emerged in the 1960s after a significant demand arose for an internationally recognized secondary school-leaving diploma among a subset of the international school community. In tension with the practical demands of producing and sustaining a mobile diploma were underlying liberal-humanist visions of a…

The arts are often seen as peripheral to the "real business" of school and schooling. While this has been the case for some time now, the increasing pressures of high-stakes testing and ever-more draconian public funding schemes (particularly in the wake of 9/11) have created something of a "perfect storm" for those working in…

This article considers the contrasting developments in the new Member States, namely the declining student participation in vocational training, and the marked increase in participation in higher education, as demonstrated by the latest Eurostat statistics. The reforms of the educational systems which are under way have led to an increase in the…

This article analyses the specificity of the French accreditation system in higher education as regards lifelong learning. The changes in higher education may thus take on a new significance. The article describes the changes that could come from wider deployment of the system in higher education. The accreditation system introduced in France in…

The merging of the Bologna and the Copenhagen processes into a single European education area appears appropriate, especially as general, vocational, adult and academic education are to be integrated in a future European Qualification Framework (EQF). This is the backdrop to the following description of the Bologna process, which was originally…

Elitism argues that the values and experiences of the political elite shape policy, while institutionalism contends that an individual's behaviour is constrained by institutional settings. This article shows that both perspectives work well overall, while offering persuasive arguments, but the former is dominated by the latter. This explains the…

The first part of the paper outlines and discusses the nature of work-based learning (WBL) and WBL programmes, and the overall direction of government strategy towards WBL programmes in Higher Education (HE) in England, with particular reference to postgraduate programmes, policy documents, and the WBL literature. Drawing upon case study research,…

This article analyses the unique challenges and needs of moral and citizenship education in post-war Peruvian society. It assumes the explanation of the roots, the facts and the enduring negative consequences of violence as described in the final report of the Comision de la Verdad y Reconciliacion (CVR) [Truth and Reconciliation Commission]…

Studies of race, class, and educational risk often proceed in an established but misleading order: First, race is defined as a trait given at birth and turned into trouble by prejudice and unequal conditions; then, class is defined as traits socialized into children with diminished socioeconomic opportunities; finally, risk is treated as the…

Gender equity is one of the foundational principles of the national Department of Education, but there is not a shared understanding of its meaning. Based on interviews conducted in 2008 with officials in the Department of Education, we argue that there are two basic approaches to gender equity. The first, which we term "gender blind",…

This article explores the need for alternative rhetorics that address systemic marginalization in American society and in the practice of rhetoric and composition. Specifically, three concepts from queer theory--"intersectionality," "copresence," and "disidentification"--are used as a basis for defining an alternative rhetoric. Then, in the bulk…

The ascendency of neoliberal ideas in education and social policy in the 1980s and 1990s was succeeded in the new millennium by a "new" social democratic commitment with emphases on community empowerment, building social capital and a "whole of government" approach to partnering with civil society to meet community needs. In…

In this essay, Charles Payne and Tim Knowles argue that given President Obama's support of charter schools, it is time for educators and policymakers to closely consider both the possibilities and the limitations of these schools in the context of urban school reform. The authors discuss the unique flexibility of charter schools--namely in…