This chapter describes the national reform processes of six European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Portugal. The approach opted for here has been to give the voice to the individual university rectors and officials that played an important role during the reform processes. By hearing their stories, we obtain a…

This article builds upon Robert Cowen's (1996) work on educational coding in transitological settings and post-spaces by deciphering the efficacy of political and economic compressions in Tunisia from the French protectorate period to the 2011 post-Jasmine revolution. First, I diachronically decrypt and elucidate the specific experiences and…

Over the period 2017-2021 the attitude of the French public and policymakers towards early years education and care changed, resulting in early childhood development (ECD), particularly the affective and social components, increasingly being recognised as a priority, with early childhood education and care (ECEC) services enjoying more government…

This paper explores two new perspectives for the research on higher education. Building on the case of Europe with a special focus on France, it first addresses the trend toward more competition and more differentiation that can be observed in countries that traditionally were more egalitarian and the strong implication of European states in…

In the eyes of policy, the transformation of European education systems has become essential. Economically, education change is deemed vital to the successful emergence of knowledge economies. Politically, educational institutions and their cultures are seen as unhelpfully residual, providing a home to beliefs and practices that are not aligned…

The relationship between the state and higher education institutions has always been a complex one. The "state" itself in this context is a heterogeneous mix of elite people--bureaucrats, politicians, committees of co-opted academics and business leader--and it increasingly faces pressures from diverse stakeholders, including students…

The history of education in France, with its inherited link between the Republic and the religion of knowledge, produces a specific form of educational functioning, consubstantial to a tradition of selection and a symptomatic lack of what elsewhere is called a curriculum. While the recent introduction of the "common grounding of knowledge and…

The Humboldtian educational ideal is based on the idea of the unity of teaching and research in universities ("Einheit von Forschung und Lehre"). The role of the state, according to Humboldt, was to fund universities in such a way that their autonomy was maintained. Much has changed in the funding mechanisms of higher education systems…

This essay examines the formation, operation, and social effects of adult education classes in France during the nineteenth century. These classes were created and operated prior to the formation of France's national education system and were part of the expansion of primary schooling for the working class, or more generally for "the…

The provision, in most industrialized democracies, of public funding for schools that differ from the state system in religion or pedagogy has the effect of encouraging philosophical diversity and school-level decision making alongside a substantial degree of curriculum alignment and with various forms of government protection for the interests of…

Whether to adopt national standards and tests has long been a subject of lively debate in the United States. With 47 states now participating in the Common Core State Standards Initiative, and a commitment from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to allocate hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to the development of common tests, the country is…

A French mayor reflects on how he is confronted with the double needs of training and democracy, becoming the organizer of a vast educational market. He proposes educational reform on the basis of two axioms: (1) decompartmentalization of areas of knowledge and (2) the necessity of learning to learn. (SK)

The transformation of higher education systems under the pressure of new needs required by the "society of knowledge" in France and Italy has had a deep effect on the relationship between state and university, and therefore a direct impact on university governance. This article sums up the main results of a research carried out on…

Examines the impact of teacher unions in two centralized educational systems--France and Israel--on school reforms. Document analysis and interview data suggest that, since 1970, teacher unions in both countries have been demanding and receiving more say in educational policy reforms. Despite similarities in tactics, French unions are more…