"European Education" (originally known as "Western European Education") may no longer be directly associated with the field of comparative and international education, yet its establishment in 1969 was an attempt to make a direct contribution to the academic debates about the future of comparative education. The journal emerged at a time when…

A constant element of Europeanization, from the 1950s, was the cultural strategy of creating a common identity, fabricated through cultural symbols and exchange; education was enmeshed within this strategy. In particular, cultural cooperation was associated with a new identity, "a European model of culture correlating with European integration."…

Educational study is always a matter of choice between different theoretical paradigms, however, it also runs the risk of taking a dichotomized and ideological stance. Comparative education is an emblematic case in point, especially the excessively ideologized versions of comparative thinking inspired by the cold war. The choice to interpret…

This article examines equity in national systems of education in terms of differences in student outcomes, as measured by mathematics achievement scores on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003. The author uses four measures for assessing equity in student outcomes: (1) the strength of the relationship between student…

This article chronicles the history of the journal "European Education" since its establishment in 1969 by placing it within the larger context of geopolitical changes of the twentieth century and the historical debates on theory and method in the field of comparative education. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 40…

This article is about the so-called Bologna process and the historically unprecedented diffusion of an abstract model for the restructuring and harmonization of higher education studies and degrees across Europe it has fuelled. This process is interpreted here as a particular example of much larger processes of world-level interconnection and…

Globalization steers modern society and contributes significantly to the internationalization of higher education. New means of transport and communication expand educational and research opportunities worldwide and higher education is becoming a blossoming global industry. It is also seen as a vital part of national policy and the national…

Within an overall policy script aimed at creating fewer "world-class" institutions, Danish universities are currently being remade to better serve the world of work and employment, the demands of high-technology industry, and the needs of society, which are increasingly described and defined in terms of appeals to "relevance to the economy/working…

Education serves many valuable social functions. Among these functions are the development of skills among students that can be used later in the labor market, the passing of societal history and culture from one generation to the next, and the inculcation of important societal norms and values so students have the opportunity of becoming…

Students in every nation of the world learn new and difficult material in ways that are often similar and, at the same time, different from the way other students of the same age, gender, race, religion, culture, and nationality prefer to learn. The purpose of this study was to identify and compare the preferred learning-style characteristics of…

This study suggests the need for complex research approaches that provide richer, contested, and nondichotomous portrayals of classrooms, schooling life, and teachers. Drawing from a qualitative study of Tajik teachers' practices and perspectives (Niyozov, 2001) and studies on teaching conducted in Kyrgyzstan (De Young, Reeves, & Valyaeva , 2006;…

Although informal payments are necessary for education systems in many countries, they prohibit education accessibility and equity in Eastern Europe and neighboring states. Exploring the rationales and the relationships is a promising approach for understanding corruption in education and ensuring educational equity. In this article, rationales…

The international academic success of Finnish secondary schooling in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the triumph of the Finnish technology company NOKIA have stimulated national ambitions to improve higher education institutions in Finland. Because secondary schooling and technology in Finland receive world recognition,…

This paper analyzes in sociological and historical perspective the changes involved in the Bologna process and the commodification of higher education in Africa. The resulting innovations lead to the internationalization of higher education and the provision of online courses, the development of joint programs, and the creation of franchised…

Until the mid-1990s, French educational policy was in line with the traditional model of democratization, which aimed to extend the schooling period. However, this age-old process came to a halt in the late twentieth century. The 1975 Haby Reform, the law modernizing the French educational system, established the creation of comprehensive schools…