Throughout 2020, and into 2021, national governments were forced at different times to impose 'lockdown' on traditional approaches to education to cope with the impact of COVID-19. Higher education institutions (HEI) with face-to-face models scrambled to 'pivot' to distance and online learning. Whilst originally conceived as a temporary measure,…

The increasing importance of continuingly complex Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) challenges and encourages universities worldwide to organize up-to-date CPS oriented educational programs. The Erasmus+ project "CybPhys" aims to support CPS oriented educational programs in Belarus and Ukraine. We put forward a hypothesis that the educational…

This article describes the unique characteristics of internationalization in teacher education in the Republic of Belarus, by asking how the creation of a national system of teacher education after the USSR's disintegration has both enhanced and hindered internationalization. The question is answered by providing an overview of the specific…

All European Union (EU) member states and many former post-Soviet countries joined the Bologna Process without major obstacles during the 2000s and today belong to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The only European country which was refused membership in the EHEA was Belarus, whose demand was rejected in 2012. The case study of this…

For the purposes of this study, we investigated how special educational needs activities were carried out in the available physical space for preschool children with language difficulties in Belarus and Norway. Muller's and Bernstein's concepts were used to recognise patterns of knowledge construction in special needs education. A qualitative…

The European Training Foundation (ETF) has created a network of vocational schools and centres that aim for excellence: the ETF Network for Excellence (ENE). Its members are vocational education providers that wish to learn from each other, collaborate, improve their practice, introduce innovation, establish partnerships and provide support to…

This article explores the theoretical understanding of the relation between school history textbooks and the state-led construction of national identity. It does this by conceptualizing a history textbook as an assembly of historical narratives that provide young readers with an opportunity to identify with the national community in which they…

The present study is about sensitive issues in history teaching that have probably been experienced by most teachers in the field. We conducted a questionnaire study in Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Serbia and The Netherlands to assess which issues were experienced as sensitive in class, what the reasons were…

The article introduces a special issue of "Policy Futures in Education" on changes and challenges in educational policies and systems of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The countries in the region share some characteristics, such as their historical experience with the authoritarian-socialist or communist rule and its impact on…

This report is part of the European Training Foundation's (ETF) regional initiative to map the policies and measures that support youth school-to-work transition in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries. It focuses in particular on describing the key policies and programmes that address the challenges of youth employability and the bottlenecks…

Research on family structures in Belarus show that they are changing to accommodate new societal requirements, but the data are ambiguous regarding the ability of family life to fit with its members desires for individual development and self-expression. (Contains 6 tables.)

All countries in the EU Neighbourhood and Central Asia have been hit by the COVID-19 outbreak to a greater or lesser extent, with overall lower infection numbers compared to some of the EU Member States, although issues of under-reporting may impact on the reliability of data. All countries, apart from Belarus and Turkmenistan, made similar…

In Belarus, the ways in which statistics are compiled, the complex rules for registering as unemployed, and the segmentation of the labor market and job-seeking activities, all combine to hide the actual levels of employment and unemployment. This in turn makes it difficult to develop appropriate and effective labor policies, and to have support…

In this article we investigate the problem of the balance of fundamental and applied training in technical colleges through the lens of a historical analysis of the development of the Soviet school of engineering. We demonstrate that the Soviet school of engineering became overreliant on fundamental education due to historical features of its…

This article discusses the Belarusian case of post-communist development and the role and status of Belarusian ethnicity in Belarus' nation-formation process. "Nationalizing nationalism" (Brubaker), as realised by the Belarusian state through various social and cultural practices, is aimed at the creation of a Belarusian national entity…