Establishing and implementing rules that would teach pupils to become citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after the First World War into lived social spaces. This article uses Arnold Van Gennep's notion that a shift in social status possesses a spatiality and temporality of…

Previous work has not yet comparatively studied which forms of peace education (PE) have been adopted in national laws. Through content analysis of policy documents, we seek to find out why the Colombian Congress established PE as mandatory content across all educational levels in 2014 in a postwar phase, while the German Standing Conference of…

In light of a global higher education expansion, the paper analyses the historic-structural conditions of this development for the German state(s) after World War II. Building on Talcott Parsons citizenship patterns, the analysis centres on two core institutions of the German higher education system: the state-organized system of entitlement…

This article combines the perspective of transnational transfer with contributions from social theory and historical sociology -- specifically the Luhmannian concept of social 'inclusion'. In doing so, this article reconstructs a historical case regarding the conflicting implementation of universal conscription and compulsory schooling in Chile in…

To obtain a better understanding of country-specific policies, a country-specific literature review was undertaken. The search entailed key-terms focusing on relevance and the three higher education relevance dimensions. The main outcomes of the country-specific literature review are discussed in this chapter. We do so by analysing the typically…

This article introduces a collection of papers comprising the special issue, "Competing interests: Parents, Schools and Nation States." Drawing on the seven papers in the collection, and situating them in recent developments in the sociological field, the article discusses globally shifting relations between families, schools and the…

The country case studies are part of the empirical data collected for the "Promoting the Relevance of Higher Education" project. Before presenting the case studies, this introductory chapter describes how the 8 case studies were selected, the case study methodology, and provides an overview of the interviewed organisations and experts.…

National curricula are being challenged and transformed by the impact of migration and European integration. This paper examines how cultural diversity and Europe are intertwined in geography, history, and citizenship education curricula in Greece, Germany, and England. This question is explored using quantitative and qualitative methods through a…

This paper examines the Europeanization of citizenship education policy through a comparative analysis of two European states, Germany and Spain, with strong traditions of regional control of education policy. While previous studies have tended to focus on national responses to and implementation of EU initiatives, they often disregarded the…

In the early years of the twenty-first century, being German has become a matter of linguistic competence and performance. An acute shift in citizenship statutes at the end of the 1990s brought about a peripatetic departure from Germany's "right of blood" ("ius sanguinis") toward a French-inspired "right of territory"…

This long-awaited synthesis approaches the past three centuries with an eye to highlighting the importance of significant schools, as well as important women educators in the emergence of secondary education for girls. At the same time, each contributor pays careful attention to the specific political, cultural, and socio-economic factors that…

Companies and schools in different types of market economies face a dilemma. Public schools are performing poorly at a time when companies need better skilled employees to compete globally. The trend toward greater participation of companies in the public schools is a consequence of this dilemma. It poses the question: "What are the…

This article focuses on the development of, and new theorising about, a strong democracy education intervention, the Just Community approach. Three questions frame the discussion: (1) Does democracy education change children and adolescents or do students in these programs change their schools, or is there a dynamic interaction over time? (2) How…

"Changing Schools" places educational and social aims at the centre of a discussion of educational change. It draws on 14 case studies to explore school change which is oriented towards social justice and democracy. In an age of global mobility, economic polarization and unprecedented environmental and cultural challenges, the education…

An education revolution is sweeping across the European Community. Like a chilling wind from the east, Europeans have been rudely awakened to the reality that reforming its system of higher education is of great urgency if its goal of becoming a competitive regional powerhouse is to be realized. As public opinion and a growing awareness of the…