In many developed countries, disagreement on important policy issues between groups with different social identities ('ideological polarisation') is increasing. In professional settings, these disagreements undermine cooperation and trust between employees, which negatively affects work relationships and managerial decision-making. We investigate…

This volume provides an overview of the state of the art of research on the politics of higher education policy in Canada, the US, and Western Europe. Each thematic chapter combines an extensive literature review with original empirical work that further advances our understanding of policymaking dynamics in higher education. The book covers five…

This study offers a theoretical context for reading political education literature. Comparing the two classical cultural exemplars (Latin/Greek) we build our working framework upon the firm distinction between Republican and Democratic ideals and we suggest that the current political culture is shaped into the Republican mold. Setting these…

At the present conjuncture of political, economic, social, and ecological crises, it is important to pay attention to the ways in which intensifying demands for equality, sustainability and social inclusion are met in education policy. In this article, we present results from a critical discourse analysis of an EU council recommendation on…

This path-breaking addition to the Comparative Politics of Education series studies the influence of public opinion on the contemporary politics of education reform in Western Europe. The authors analyze new data from a survey of public opinion on education policy across eight countries, and they also provide detailed case studies of reform…

This paper addresses convergence as a political issue stemming from the political coordination of the European Higher Education Area. From the perspective of cultural theory, this issue relies on the fact that the influence of ways of life are not evenly influential in the political coordination of the European Higher Education Area. Convening the…

The paper offers new insights into the Europeanisation of adult education, as an area of intervention and a component of the European education policy and sector, by tracing routes and processes that underpinned this pathway. The analysis provides some original findings, by pointing to four moments (thematisation; lifelong learning dimension;…

Home education is becoming an important issue for education policy in almost every country across Europe. It should also be of potential interest to the geography of education which, however, has remained the domain of research to educational studies. Consequently, no studies currently compare the individual aspects of home education by looking…

The article will discuss some central relations between political authoritarianism and right-wing education in the interwar period. Then it is asked why these concepts and powers are renewed in today' s politics and education. And in the end it shows what research gaps exist and how the articles of this special issue could fill them.

This paper draws on recent research in Europe and England to discuss the politics of accountability. It is suggested that, as policies in education are increasingly focused on delivering technical-managerial accountability, that is accountability understood as evidenced in international, national, institutional and individual comparative measures…

Neoliberal theories--whether the new public management, principal-agent theory, or performance management--have provided the rationale for sweeping reforms in the governance and operation of higher education. This paper expands our understanding of neoliberal theory and practice by examining a leading neoliberal reform: performance-based funding…

While comprehensive research has been conducted on the Bologna Process (BP) as well as on the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the roles of the social sciences in these reforms have remained mostly overlooked. Based on a systematic literature review of articles and reports from 1999 to 2018, we analyse the interplay of social sciences with…

In this article, we discuss the process of standardization of Higher education (HE) initiated by the Bologna Process bringing to the forefront the temporal politics of the standardization of European Higher Education Arena (EHEA). Empirically, we perform a comparative review of the Scorecards indicators at the base of the Bologna Process…

This editorial introduces the "European Educational Research Journal" special issue that hosts four articles co-authored by emerging researchers in the field of educational research in Europe who participated in the Summer School in European Education Studies. We present the Summer School in European Education Studies project, its…

While the European Parliament is increasingly involved in EU governance, its role in policy developments in domains of strategic importance for the EU has not been the focus of many studies. In this article, we analyse a new digital dataset containing more than 10,000 speeches delivered in the European Parliament plenary between 1999 and 2014 and…