This article examines French and English average performances and educational inequality in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) between 2000 and 2018. It asks why English average scores in 2018 are much higher than those of France when they were fairly similar in previous PISA assessments. It questions why the impact of…

This paper retraces the evolution of the relationships between higher education institutions, the state and the academic profession in France since the French Revolution on the one hand and the parallel evolution of the societal expectations for their roles and missions, on the other. It in particular highlights the divide between the universities…

This article compares the discourses, practices and politics of film education in France and Germany, and outlines their historical development. The discourses on film education in the two countries are fundamentally different: whereas German film education is anchored in the global politics of media education and around notions of…

Successive republican governments in France have constructed a complex educational context, which is rhetorically committed to a myth of provision of educational equality of opportunity whilst in practical terms it is characterised by a system focused on the production and reproduction of elites. This article aims to consider the political drivers…

Despite large-scale public opposition to civilian nuclear power in the United States and France, only in the former country has the opposition been successful in halting further commercialization of this energy technology. A major reason is that France's political structure provides relatively few access points for the expression of opposition.…

The article compares the educational policy trajectories of four societies in the South-west Indian Ocean: Madagascar, Mauritius, Ile de la Reunion and South Africa. The main purpose is to trace the political pathways and differing educational policy trajectories of former colonies of Britain and France. Five metaphors are invoked in this paper to…

National patterns of power and control in higher education are key determinants of the conceptions of academic excellence and equality that prevail in particular systems. This paper examines five countries with predominantly state-controlled systems of higher education--West Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, and Japan--and two with mixed control…

Argues that the form and function of presidential foreign policy rhetoric are grounded in a nation's acceptable images of political reality. Examines the rhetorical responses of Presidents Reagan and Mitterrand to the terrorist bombing in Beirut and to acts of military interventions by the United States and France in Grenada and Chad. (JD)

In Western Europe, the advent of higher education as a self-sustaining field of research began two decades ago. The place of higher education research in academia, government policy formulation, and the type of inquiry undertaken in Sweden in comparison with counterparts in France and Britain are examined. (Author/MLW)

A discussion of the changing relationship between the state and higher education in nine industrialized countries looks at conflicting requirements for institutional accountability, different models for the relationship; politics and governance; the developing role of central intermediary agencies; changing perspectives of student protest; and the…

The result of an interdisciplinary seminar in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, this book reviews patterns of academic power in several nations. The authors are John H. Van de Graaff, Burton R. Clark, Dorotea Furth, Dietrich Goldschmidt, and Donald F. Wheeler. Separate chapters are devoted to the Federal Republic of…