There has been a growing interest in the influences on undergraduate performance in recent years as a result of the increasing diversity of students entering third-level education and an ever increasing emphasis on the development of a robust knowledge economy. This paper investigates the influence of students' dominant interest types and prior…

The upgrading of higher technical education which began in the 1960s marked the most influential intervention by the Irish government in the third-level sector since the establishment of the independent Irish state. A series of reforming initiatives extended educational opportunity and transformed the status of technical education at higher level.…

This essay presents the theoretical framework and main results of a research on intercultural mediation which has been performed in eight multicultural classrooms of Italian secondary schools. Intercultural mediation is conceived as a form of dialogic communication which should empower empathic and equal relationships between the participants by…

The article looks at two important documents in the context of education policy in Ireland: the Higher Education Authority's "Strategic Plan 2008-2010" and the Government's report, "Building Ireland's Smart Economy." It demonstrates how the entrepreneurial student is fabricated out of particular truths told about the present and the obligations…

In the course of educational expansion, gender differences in access to higher education have decreased substantially in many European countries. In Germany women are currently over-represented in upper secondary education and more frequently attain a general qualification for university entrance. Despite those advantages, women still enrol in…

One of the main intentions of the comprehensive higher education reform in Norway in 2003 was to improve student performance and completion. One way of doing this is to reduce the number of students leaving an institution. Institutions have limited options for reducing student departure, and one of the few routes open to them is changing the…

This article addresses the question of why fields of study differ in early labour market returns. It is argued that the higher the potential training costs of a field of study the more problematic the labour market integration of graduates. This is due to the fact that employers use the occupational specificity and selectivity of a study programme…

In order to explain why students choose to enter or abstain from university education, economic theories of educational choice assume that the income returns to a degree are critical in motivating students' educational decisions. However, important group differences between men and women as well as students from different class backgrounds that…

In this article, we use data from the Canadian Youth in Transition Survey (YITS). This survey has followed longitudinally the Canadian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) students originally surveyed in 2000. The aim of this article is to look to what extent social factors (e.g. gender, parental education and socio-economic…

This article focuses on differences in higher education (HE) enrolment and choice of study according to students' background, specifically amongst first- or second-generation immigrants to Norway. A special emphasis is placed on the choice of prestigious study programmes. The results indicate that students with an immigrant background tend to make…

As economic circumstances in Ireland, as elsewhere, remain difficult and applications for higher education entry reach record numbers, there has been renewed focus on higher education access. This article draws on the findings of a major Irish study which focuses on a group that has not shared in the general trend towards increased higher…

This paper deals with the topic of child protection in Irish primary schools, and reports on a recently completed survey of newly qualified teachers' knowledge of and familiarity with their school's child protection policies and procedures. The study was undertaken by means of a questionnaire survey, and conducted with 103 teachers from different…

This study explains early school-leaving in lower secondary education in the Netherlands, taking into account background characteristics, family resources and school composition factors at the same time. We distinguish four groups of school-leavers: "dropouts" (those without any qualification), those who leave school with a diploma in lower…

This paper examines the concept, pervasive policy and practice of learning outcomes, as increasingly adopted and officially supported in third-level educational institutions. It begins by outlining the context and development of learning outcomes from European and Irish educational policy perspectives. We go on to explore how learning outcomes…

The concept of children's rights evolved during the 1980s giving prominence to the role of children as active participants in the construction of their lives. The rhetoric of children's rights has emerged as an important consideration in all policy and practice relating to children. Implementation of children's rights in practice is necessary to…