In the field of education for sustainable development (ESD), many authors refer to the notion of 'experience' and associated concepts. This highlights some of the theoretical underpinnings of ESD, a disciplinary field which, in France, became generalized in schools as of 2004. It has since been the subject of numerous research studies and…

Over the last two decades, the French doctorate has evolved significantly after the introduction of national policies defined by law in 2003. The most important change was the creation of about 250 doctoral schools, where students spend 3 to 4 years. At the same time, they are attached to an accredited research laboratory to do a thesis and become…

This article provides a case-based critical reflection on integrating transdisciplinary knowledge in entrepreneurship education as a framework for empowering future entrepreneurs and innovators . The increased complexity of modern societies emphasizes new requirements for teaching practices intended to equip decision-makers with the tools…

This paper examines transnational circulation of political and pedagogical ideas associated with "éducation permanente" with particular reference to post-war Western Europe. It offers a socio-historical reconstruction of pan-European dissemination and reception of policy repertoires articulated by governmental and non-governmental policy…

Since March 2020, French Business Schools have been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic due to imposed sanitary restrictions. Higher education deployed different online and offline teaching settings to ensure the continuity of students' learning. Literature proposes hybrid teaching, which combines face-to-face activities with online…

In public education, procurement reform has been all but ignored in policy discussions and procurement policies have remained virtually untouched. But the high price of ignoring procurement is becoming clear to people trying to reform education on the ground. Often involving long, cumbersome processes and risk-averse central office cultures,…

The French engineering education system has been established in quite a different way from others in Europe, such as the German and British systems, for instance. Due to both the whole state system and the private initiatives during the industrial revolution, the engineering education system today is composed of a large number (nearly 200) of…

The last two decades have seen fast-moving and wholescale changes in the ways that education is now provided in French schools, in the nature of learner assessment, and in the form and scale of system evaluation. Innovation and reform have in part followed international trends, themselves triggered by the global impact of the international…

In assuming ownership of the Horizon Report, EDUCAUSE recognized the challenges of anticipating the future. The authors have, in this first major revision of the report's methodology, structure, and content, striven to break the mold of the classic Horizon Report without losing its essential purpose. The report begins with a scan of the current…

Since the late 1980s, the production of PhDs has become a much-discussed political issue, and the reforms and tensions surrounding this category of graduates have gathered momentum. Vocational fields and the contents of PhD education have evolved everywhere, partly because, as academic competition has intensified, the American "graduate…

This article reports on a movement to create a radical new model of higher education in Europe and beyond based on the practices of self-education and militant/co-research during 2011. The article provides an account of a group that lies at the heart of this movement, the Edu-Factory Collective. The approach advocated by the Edu-Factory Collective…

Chapter 1 starts out with a short historical view on "academisation" and "professionalisation," illustrating how much professional higher education (PHE) in Europe has been in flux in the past years. With examples from France and Ireland, the chapter argues how a new spectrum of missions, differences in national organization of…

What is proposed is a meditation on the phrase "transformation of the educational system", paying attention to the sense of the words, and showing what the desire for educational change can reveal. After explaining to what extent "educational system" is a quasi-oxymoron, the meaning of "transformation" has to be…

This paper deals with the nature and the level of difficulty of teaching and learning physics in the first year of undergraduate engineering schools in France. Our case study is based on a survey regarding a classic and basic question in applied physics, and which was conducted with a group of second-year students in a post-baccalaureate 1…

The synthesis "Public Policies and Strategies of Actors" concerns the same theme as Part 4 of the "Handbook of Distance Education" (Moore 2007), which deals with policies, administration, and management. Eleven articles illustrate the theme. Three articles are studies about the experience in France between 2000 and 2003 of the…