Drawing from critical disability studies and cultural studies, this article unpacks cultural understandings of digital abilities. We analyse policy documents on digital education as cultural texts which communicate cultural values. Methodologically, we understand policy ideas as deriving from the larger culture. Our analysis first explores how…

Recently, the "Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency" (2012) have funded programmes designed to advance European citizenship and citizen competences through education. This paper reports on the findings from one project, Creative Connections, designed to encourage the "voices" of young people in exploring European…

In his 1847 "Report on a System of Public Elementary Instruction for Upper Canada", Egerton Ryerson stated that public education was created in Canada to ensure that youth were prepared for their "appropriate duties and employments of life … as persons of business, and also as members of the civil community in which they live."…

Most societies today are culturally diverse. Increasingly, minority groups are demanding recognition and self-governing rights to protect their ways of life against that of the majority. These demands represent a serious challenge for the state: how is it to balance between the equally legitimate claims of the many cultures inhabiting its…

This publication aims to capture how policies and measures relating to citizenship education have evolved over recent years in European countries. It focuses on the following areas which are integral to the provision of citizenship education: (1) Curriculum aims, approaches and organisation; (2) Student and parent participation in school…

As the 21st century unfolds, the United States faces historic challenges, including a struggling economy, an aging infrastructure and global terrorism. Solutions will have to come from educated, skilled citizens who understand and believe in our democratic system and are civically engaged. This incisive new report examines these fault lines and…

This article is based on ethnographic studies in the context of vocational education: two in Sweden and one in Finland. The Swedish data originate from the Vehicle programme and the Child and Recreation programme; the Finnish data originate from the social and health-care sector. In this sense, the authors' perspective is cross-cultural. The…

The medicalized interpretation of deafness has until recently seen the rights and protections of sign language users embedded in disability law. Yet the rights and protections crucial to sign language users centre predominantly on matters of language access, maintenance and identity. Legislators, motivated by pressure from sign language…

Collaborating with universities in Hong Kong, Finland, the United Kingdom and Australia the research project outlined in this paper takes up one of the key initial findings related to the importance of children's online spaces away from school. The project brings together complementary strengths from each partner nation to assist our mutual need…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implications of Media Literacy Education (MLE) in Turkey by analyzing the Primary School Curricula in terms of MLE comparatively in Turkey, Ireland and Finland. In this study, the selection of Finland and Ireland curricula is related with those countries' being the pioneering countries in MLE and the…

Education has been expected to maintain status quo through regulation of citizens, but also to contribute to social change and emancipation. In a collective ethnographic project we have proposed that these contradictions manifest themselves in everyday life at school through tensions between control and agency. Girls encounter practices whereby…

This article analyzes how professionals of early childhood education define Finnishness and how they deal with ethnicity. It illustrates how nationality and ethnicity are actualised in the everyday practices of preschool. As part of a one-year ethnographic study in two preschools, the study reveals that the liberal version of multiculturalism…

With the concept of lifelong education as the leading principle in planning and developing educational systems, the author outlines the four areas of adult education in Finland (supplementing general basic education, adult vocational education, developing citizenship, and individual self-development) and the demands placed on the educational…

This article traces the shifting profile of the elementary school teaching profession in Finland over 130 years in relation to changes in the model of citizenship, acknowledging the role of the Scandinavian welfare state. Mass education has assigned teachers a crucial role in the initiation into adulthood. (SLD)

This report aims to inform Canadians on the extent to which Canada's post-secondary education sector is contributing to Canadians' social and economic objectives, its ability to respond to a fast-changing global environment, and how Canada's approach to higher education compares with other leading developed countries. Analysis of currently…