Within the parameters of the new Erasmus programme, this Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) combines virtual exchange with physical mobility. There were three institutions involved in this project: Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Ireland, Hochschule Bremerhaven, Germany, and Malaga Healthcare College, Spain. The virtual exchange ran for five…

Research as a social process suggests that the collective research agenda of a discipline is shaped by its structural features which thus helps to explain why we actually discuss what we discuss within an academic domain. This assumption also substantially informs publication patterns and co-authorship networks in German civic education research:…

Global competence is an increasingly important disposition for today's society. Prospective teachers will have to be able to teach effectively in multicultural classrooms as well as develop dispositions of global competence in their future students. This pilot study was aimed at investigating what aspects of global competence should be integrated…

Intercultural dialogue is an essential component of intercultural citizenship, i.e., students' ability to address complex societal issues. With more interconnected problems comes an increased need for students to communicate and collaborate with people from differing backgrounds. This pilot study combined the framework of Intercultural Citizenship…

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the cities and municipalities decide which streets are being refurbished, which educational services are offered, or where sewers will be laid. The cities and municipalities have financial resources at their disposal for this purpose. However, these resources are, with a view to Rhineland-Palatinate,…

This research uses i-graduate's International Student Barometer to investigate whether overall satisfaction and institutional recommendation are influenced by student nationality and destination country, while controlling for the covariates of learning experiences. The result of our analysis is the identification of a conceptual framework for the…

In light of a global higher education expansion, the paper analyses the historic-structural conditions of this development for the German state(s) after World War II. Building on Talcott Parsons citizenship patterns, the analysis centres on two core institutions of the German higher education system: the state-organized system of entitlement…

To obtain a better understanding of country-specific policies, a country-specific literature review was undertaken. The search entailed key-terms focusing on relevance and the three higher education relevance dimensions. The main outcomes of the country-specific literature review are discussed in this chapter. We do so by analysing the typically…

This article presents an analysis of a teaching concept we developed based on the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) (Council of Europe, 2018), that not only provides opportunities to practice communicative skills but puts a major focus on democratic competences. Mathematics students and TEFL (Teaching English as a…

Service-Learning programs at school and at university level are commonly considered as reliable instruments to increase civic engagement. In the last years, within Service-Learning Research a new paradigm arose understanding itself as non-foundational and critical. This study differentiates this critical perspective by offering a secondary…

The objective of teacher-training at university for political science is the development of professional competencies that enable teachers-in-training to act proficiently in all aspects of civic education. Although there are some studies that focus on civic education for teachers' professional competencies, most of them relate to general…

Europe's knowledge economies need high-level skills, the capacity to innovate and to support democratic societies. In this perspective, the main objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the relevance of higher education and how this is promoted in various countries in Europe and beyond. The evidence, conclusions and…

Europe's knowledge economies need high-level skills, the capacity to innovate and to support democratic societies. In this perspective, the main objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the relevance of higher education and how this is promoted in various countries in Europe and beyond. The evidence, conclusions and…

The country case studies are part of the empirical data collected for the "Promoting the Relevance of Higher Education" project. Before presenting the case studies, this introductory chapter describes how the 8 case studies were selected, the case study methodology, and provides an overview of the interviewed organisations and experts.…

This annex to the main report "Promoting the Relevance of Higher Education" includes the international policy literature study and the review of indicators. The objective of the literature study was to provide first insights into the policies that relate to the three dimensions of higher education relevance: personal development,…