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…

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…

This article argues that by combining critical ethnographic and autoethnographic perspectives we can move beyond the insider/outsider dualism, better understand the ways in which stories of personal experience are "strategic," and interrogate the broader contexts and processes of social inequality that shape life trajectories. The…

One strand of comparative didactics aims at discussing the relationships between the theoretical constructions developed within subject didactics and how these can contribute to research about teaching and learning. This article explores the relationships between categories for analysing joint actions of teacher and students (didactic contract,…

Although numerous claims are made about the necessity for research to improve teaching and learning practices, links between research and teaching are still tenuous. Therefore we argue that the issue of linking research to practice should be tackled in a different way than in the past. Research knowledge in education should consider teachers and…

Research and scholarship into educational effectiveness research (EER) is comprehensively reviewed from the UK, The Netherlands, the US, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and other societies, dating from the field's origins in the 1970s. Issues include its history, methodological and theoretical advances, scientific…

This article relies on twelve texts published in "Distances et Savoirs." It asserts three "figures of thought" crossing our scientific disciplines: the substance, the relation, and the movement. The confrontation of these figures and these texts suggests how much "Distances et Savoirs" invites to a pluralistic…

New theories and theory-based methodological approaches have found their way into Comparative Education--just as into Comparative Social Science more generally--in increasing number in the recent past. The essays of this volume express and critically discuss quite a range of these positions such as, inter alia, the theory of self-organizing social…

Children face many important changes in the first eight years of life, including different learning centres, social groups, roles and expectations. Their ability to adapt to such a dynamic and evolving environment directly affects their sense of identity and status within their community over the short and long term. In particular, the key turning…

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the socionormative approach of internality in the field of education, and more specifically regarding scholastic judgment. It describes the theoretical development and the main procedures used by researchers to show that internal causal explanations have more value than external ones because they…

The issue of students' engagement in learning physics has generally been analysed in science education research using attitudes towards science, or motivation to learn science. However, the corresponding studies have their limitations. Therefore, the object of this paper is to present and to analyse an alternative to these theoretical approaches;…

The 7th International Conference on Education Data Mining held on July 4th-7th, 2014, at the Institute of Education, London, UK is the leading international forum for high-quality research that mines large data sets in order to answer educational research questions that shed light on the learning process. These data sets may come from the traces…

Although the work of Celestin Freinet has exerted considerable influence on European education, it remains largely unknown to English-speaking educators. The Modern School Movement (MSM), which Freinet founded in 1926, is worldwide in scope, and has affiliated organizations in 13 countries with correspondent groups in more than 20 nations. The MSM…

Surveys the successive changes in the terminology and concept of "pedagogy" and "pedagogical research" and their subsequent marginalization. Examines the differences between"pedagogy" and "knowledge," concluding that despite varying definitions, "pedagogy" and "pedagogical research" still…

Time and acceptance are criterion often used to measure the legitimacy and worth of an idea. Two decades have passed since the first publications that introduced Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) as a means to conceptualize games teaching and learning. For over two decades various professionals have advocated for TGfU as a sound idea, which…