The "Survey of Schools: ICT in education" commissioned in 2011 by the European Commission took place between January 2011 and November 2012, with data collection in autumn 2011. This article presents the main findings of the "Survey" based on over 190,000 questionnaire answers from students, teachers and head teachers in primary, lower and upper…

The development of key competences for lifelong learning has been an important policy imperative for EU Member States. The European Reference Framework of key competences (2006) built on previous developments by the OECD, UNESCO and Member States themselves. It defined key competences as knowledge, skills and attitudes applied appropriately to…

As communities respond to challenges, threats and opportunities, organisations are changing in significant ways--new organisational designs, new communities of practice, new skills and new forms of human capital are sought. Yet K-12 school systems appear to be permanently failing organisations, not changing despite being shrouded by the rhetoric…

School networking is increasingly important in a globalised world, where schools themselves can be actors on an international stage. This article builds on the activities and experience of the longest established European initiative in this area, European Schoolnet (EUN), a network of 31 Ministries of Education. First, we offer an introduction…

Planning for shared schooling in Northern Ireland requires a re-consideration of the decision-making processes that underpin the choices made by parents and a re-thinking of the nature and purpose of alternative modes of educating young people from the different communities together. The article provides evidence that demand for existing…

This article explores the process and practice of knowledge creation within development and research (D and R) networks. It focuses upon D and R networks in England that are currently engaged in collaboration and innovation. Early evaluative evidence suggests that D and R school networks offer "spaces" for collaborative working, mutual sharing and…

The Delors report remains a timely and challenging agenda for shaping education from the earliest years. This article reviews the status of basic education, defined as a passport to life in the report. Despite progress toward universal primary education and gender parity, countries are still far from education targets adopted in 2000. Lack of care…

Previous research indicates that, while parent involvement promotes student achievement, how teacher candidates are prepared to establish family-school partnerships (FSP) is not well documented and the roles of teacher educators are often neglected. Explorative studies including curriculum analysis and focus groups of primary and secondary teacher…

The context of Special Education is a privileged space to study participation. Most professionals and teachers have long assumed the participation and collaboration with families as a central tenet of their interventions. On the other hand, parents with children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) have also been described as being permanently…

In line with the principles of the Bologna Process, teacher education systems across Europe are converging along a common path. Taking the Republic of Ireland (Ireland) as a case study, this paper examines the European agenda in relation to teacher education and asks how individual nation states are coping with the demands of greater comparability…

There is a need to develop a broader view of knowledge to deal with the way in which new digital trends influence the underlying conditions for schools, teaching and subjects. This theoretical article will therefore examine whether a broader view of knowledge, digital literacy and assessment forms can generate new ways of adapted education within…

In the present study, we propose a model describing how motivational beliefs and strategies influence study performance of students at three different school levels: elementary (age 8-10), middle (11-14), and first year high school (15). Participants were administered the AMOS 8-15 instrument (Cornoldi et al. 2005) designed for measuring the…

Many US teacher education programmes have developed learning environments in partnership with local school districts. A professional development school (PDS) is a learning organization formed through the collaboration of a university-based teacher education programme with its K-12 school partners. The resulting organization focuses simultaneously…

The methodological characteristics of teaching in primary and secondary education make it necessary to revise the pedagogical and instructive lines with which to introduce the new Information and Communication Technologies into the school context. The construction of Web pages that can be used to improve student learning is, therefore, fundamental…

Introduces a collection of papers that resulted from a 3- year project on scenarios for the future of teacher education in Europe. The first part of the issue introduces scenarios and describes the scenario model developed at a conference. The second part analyzes curriculum developments in different countries, using the scenario model as an…