The first of two volumes dedicated to this little-explored topic, this volume gathers international perspectives to critically assess how Waldorf education has been perceived and discussed in both public and academic arenas. The book thereby challenges the historical concept of Waldorf education as an international movement championing…

ICAP is a framework that classifies learning processes based on students' explicit behaviors. The framework is developed for testing the hypothesis that interactive exercises are better than constructive exercises, and active exercises are better than the passive exercises for higher cognitive engagement and better learning outcomes. The ICAP…

This paper, based on interviews conducted for the "Early Childhood Oral History Project," draws on oral life-history interviews with 14 prominent early childhood researchers who have been active since the 1970s within diverse European countries. A common theme across the interviews is the key role that collaborative research between…

The historical origins and development of comprehensive schooling have seldom been analyzed systematically and comparatively. However, there is a rich comparative and historically grounded literature on the development of welfare states, which focuses on many relevant policies, but ignores the education system. In particular, the power resources…

It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation…

Aim/Purpose: Academics are often requested to create and teach courses for emerging technologies with perhaps no experience or guidance on how to do so. Background: A Framework to develop IT courses for emerging technologies was created and tested to assist academics; the framework was then tested by developing an IoT course. Methodology: A…

The academic profession has been long recognized as a pivotal source of belief and identity alongside the discipline and the institution of belonging. However, the ways in which academics as a professional group organize themselves towards common objectives that possibly transcend systems, institutions and disciplines, has not been explored so…

Background: Higher education outdoor studies programs retain a critical interest in student experiences as they seek to prepare citizens in a globalized, yet simultaneously neo-nationalist, world. Purpose: This research explored the impact of transculturality on the student experience of outdoor studies in the Transcultural European Outdoor…

In this article, we address the issue of participation in adult education building on the cultural capital framework. This theoretical framework suggests that (educational) practices are affected by one's social background and, more precisely, by the cultural resources handed down in the family context. To examine the validity of this theoretical…

"Bildung" is a complex educational concept that emerged in Germany in the mid eighteenth century. Especially in Germany and Scandinavia conceptions of "Bildung" became the general philosophical framework to guide both formal and informal education. "Bildung" concerns the whole range of education from setting…

This paper presents some of the overall frameworks and models for language learning that were used under Avalon (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONline), an EU co-funded project aimed at developing language-learning scenarios in virtual worlds. The introduction and background summarize some of the theories that constitute the starting…

Previous studies indicate that a worldwide measurement tool may be developed based on the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) Core Sets for chronic conditions. The aim of the present study was to explore the possibility of constructing a cross-cultural measurement of functioning for patients with low back pain…

In times of increasing skills shortage, regions and particularly non-core regions, need to attract highly-skilled workers. It is better for these regions to (re)attract highly-skilled workers that gained knowledge and contacts elsewhere and because they once lived in the region for study have already ties to the university region than trying to…

Human Capital Theory has been an increasingly important phenomenon in economic thought over the last 50 years. The central role it affords to education has become even more marked in recent years as the concept of the "knowledge economy" has become a global concern. In this paper, the prevalence of Human Capital Theory within European…

Using data from the international Teacher Education and Development Study: Learning to Teach Mathematics (TEDS-M), the measurement equivalence of teachers' beliefs across countries is investigated for the case of "mathematics-as-a fixed-ability". Measurement equivalence is a crucial topic in all international large-scale assessments and…