Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian education reform discourses have become increasingly similar to distinctive Western policy discourses traveling globally across national boundaries. Tracing the trajectory of "traveling policies" in Central Asia, this article discusses the way Western education discourses have been hybridized…

For newly independent Central Asian republics a debate has arisen about how much of the aims, content and pedagogy of old Soviet-era curricula to retain, how much to revise or replace, and with what. There is a need to replace and revise textbooks, which are wearing out and outdated. Financial crisis has made the financial support of external…

The authors discuss the problems of children's foster care in Lithuania in the context of European dimensions. The article consists of two parts. The first part presents the main changes in the children's care system in Lithuania. The first part reveals the discussion of the paradigm of children's foster care in both the Western and Lithuanian…

Within the broad perspective of school and social exclusion, this article pays attention to an important factor of exclusion: overweight and obesity in primary school children. An interdisciplinary research was conducted and aimed at the study of social representations and practices surrounding food which primary school children, their parents and…

This article describes a bi-national project planned with Interreg (European) funding involving communities in Kent and Nord Pas-de-Calais. The focus is on "at risk" youth and training and supporting personnel, and action to address the needs of this client group. The differences in the two systems mean that the forms of the project are different…

Statistics in European countries show the same trends, for example: social inclusion depends on inclusion in education, training or employment, and life chances are greatly improved if the level of qualifications is high; in all European countries, economic growth still leads to the existence of "pockets" of poverty and economic and social…

Negotiations concerning Greece's accession into the European Union began as early as 1961, when a cooperation agreement was signed between Greece and the European Economic Community. These negotiations were concluded 20 years later, on 1 January 1981, when Greece became the tenth full member of the EU. The next major step in Greece's progress…

This article is based on the Keynote Address to the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Crete, Greece, 21-25 September 2004. One of the most consistent results in sociology of education research has been the existence of inequalities in school results and educational trajectories related to social factors. Despite an important…

This article discusses how the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) addresses the task of conducting international policy research. The article begins with a descriptive account of CERI's work, including the way member countries shape the research agenda. Several issues which…

After describing both average scores, dispersion, and social inequalities in achievement in the various countries included in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, this article relates those "products" to country economic and cultural characteristics. It then explores relations between student scores and a number…

Why do some students drop out while others do not? The role of participation and identification in the process of early school leaving is studied. In addition, the contributions of socioeconomic background and available resources are assessed. Boys in the lower vocational track of education, which traditionally has a large number of early school…

This article examines the extent to which higher education policy in the Netherlands is becoming Europeanised. This issue is explored through the case of the Bologna Process and the impact of -Master's (BAMA) Programmes on Dutch higher education policy. Changes in higher education, such as increasing competitiveness and decentralisation, have…

The northern part of Sweden is characterised by depopulation and relatively high levels of unemployment among young people. As a consequence, a number of projects have been established for the purpose of strengthening young people's creativity and spirit of enterprise. The aim of this article is to problematise the concept of "enterprise…

This article makes a contribution to discussion on the neo-liberal reshaping of education in Western Europe. It argues for a greater attentiveness on the part of education researchers to collective social actors such as trade unions and social movements. Making use of concepts from Gramsci and from Poulantzas, it suggests that such actors had a…

Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, the authors focused on the relation between pre-school classroom experiences and the development of later comprehension skills in ethnic minority children whose first language is different from the language they learn in (pre-)school. In Study 1, the relation between pre-school playgroup…