This article, delivered as one of two keynote lectures at the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) in Milan in September 2022, offers an example of an autosociobiographical approach to the history of education, in which the life story of the author is entangled with the collective movement of a generation of…

This paper is a theoretical contribution to discussions about the emancipatory potential of citizenship education across four sites (i.e. Catalonia, Colombia, England, and Pakistan). By reflecting on policy and empirical data from our four contexts of study, we discuss whether citizenship education manifests different conditions of emancipatory…

Emotional intelligence is a way to enhance workforce capability in the 21st century. Psychological well-being is vital for shaping faculty and student relationships in the educational sector. This article aims to provide an updated methodological review of emotional intelligence studies in academia. This study investigates two decades of emotional…

Today, the term 'global' has become a pervasive description of universities that aim to alleviate their importance and reach. The global looks inherently big. By relating to a spherical shape it attributes size in two distinct ways: it signifies the comprehensive and extensive reach of a theme or issue as well as the spherical centrality of an…

This article examines the nature and evolution of the term blended learning (BL), which encompasses numerous connotations, including its conception as a strategy, delivery mode, opportunity, educational shift, or pedagogical approach. Although much has been said in this field, very few studies examine the different types of blends behind their…

This article examines the long-run effect of higher education, measured in average years of tertiary schooling, on the level and growth rate of national per capita income. It uses an improved dataset on educational attainments which not only reduces measurement error but also overcomes data comparability issues and allows us to estimate the…

This paper focuses on university education in prison as a strategic tool for building social inclusion. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, it examines the Italian and Spanish experiences in this area. In Italy and Spain, the idea of punishment having a rehabilitative function has been supported by strong motivation to achieve this ideal.…

It is often assumed within much of the academic literature and by many of those working in higher education that universities across Europe are homogenising, converging around an Anglo-American model as a result of neo-liberal pressures and the aim of creating a single European Higher Education Area. However, drawing on an analysis of 92 policy…

This article focuses on the Workers' Institutes (WI), one of the most important educational initiatives undertaken by the Spanish Republic during the Civil War (1936-1939). After framing their creation within the context of European trends in higher education for the working classes and within the Spanish socio-political context, this article…

Social laboratories, defined as experimental spaces for co-creation, have recently become the main centers of innovation. Medialabs are experimental laboratories of technologies and communication media which have co-evolved along with the digital society into mediation laboratories of citizen experimentation, observing a confluence of both models.…

We survey here the state-of-the-art in open courseware initiatives worldwide. First, the MIT OpenCourseWare project is overviewed, as it has been the real starting point of the OCW movement. Usually, open courseware refers to a free and open digital publication of high quality university level educational materials that are organized as courses,…

This article proposes a framework within which the question as to the purposes of open universities should be examined. It argues that the question has become submerged over time through the establishment of so many open universities that have become natural elements in a higher education landscape rather than remaining radical and innovative…

This book assembles over 50 papers from the 7th Triennial European Research Conference of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA), which was held from the 4th to the 7th of September 2013 at Humboldt-University in Berlin. The title of the conference was "Changing Configurations of Adult Education in Transitional…

The present report is a product of two ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) seminars, held in 2007, on current trends in European Quality Assurance. The first seminar, hosted by the Bulgarian National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency (NEAA), examined the situation in South-Eastern Europe. The second seminar…

Examined the genesis and development of Spanish education reform since 1990 from a systemic perspective. Explored main concerns and positive effects of changes to secondary and higher educational systems. Notes the need for new responses to the demand for life-long and life-wide education. (SLD)