The study, upon which this special issue focuses, used narrative interviews to investigate how learning can support workers' transitions in the labour market in five European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain). The five countries were chosen to represent very different contexts in the way learning can support career and…

The Education for All (EFA) goals, established for countries to improve educational performance, are most challenging for many developing countries. Notwithstanding the challenges, each country must implement suitable programme intervention in order to accomplish these goals. Goal 6 calls for the overall improvement of the education product, which…

Teachers' perspectives of play differ widely because of social and cultural influences that can be seen in their values and beliefs about play in different countries. In a global community, sharing educators' knowledge of play and their perspectives of how to educate children through the use of play would be appropriate and complementary…

In European Union policy, Denmark is often referred to as a model country in terms of its flexicurity model and provision of financial support and access to education and training during periods of unemployment, i.e. during transitional phases in a working life. However, in the research on flexicurity and its implications for labour market…

Recent research has reported professional agreement among foreign language (L2) teachers with respect to the beliefs and behaviors associated with effective L2 teaching. While such research may contribute to an emerging professional consensus, it must be acknowledged that the participating teachers in the related studies were all living and…

This article centres on the importance given by individuals to the process of education in labour market transitions and how they manage to overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. Many of the stories in the Spanish research were transformative and innovative despite the context of high levels of unemployment in Spain due to the global economic…

Women play an increasingly important role in the labour market and as wage earners. Moreover, in many countries, young women have outperformed men in terms of educational attainment and qualification. Still, women's human capital investment does not pay off as it does for men as they are still significantly disadvantaged on the labour market.…

This article considers four interviews conducted with French citizens by a team of researchers as part of the research project "Learning for Career and Labour Market Transitions: individual biographies". Funded by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), this study sought to contribute to the development…

In this article the author reflects on some of the methodological issues of conducting research in a local marginalised community in the UK. Her research was on attitudes to literacy in the Gypsy and Traveller community in southern England. This article describes some of the challenges and how she, as an outsider and not a member of their…

This article aims to provide better metaphors for thinking and speaking about culture, identity and values. In terms of human behaviour, the words culture, identity and values are viewed as useful reifications which have allowed us to discuss human action in terms of nouns. However, the terms have been used over many years in various theoretical…

Conducting research with communities constructed as the "other" from a purely positivist paradigm can often be replete with colossal flaws with enormous potential to oppress the researched--especially minority communities in this case. This article presents an analysis of the cultural and experiential affinity experiences of the author…

This article highlights key theoretical and methodological issues and implications of being an insider/outsider when undertaking qualitative research in international educational settings. It first addresses discourses of "self" and "other," noting that identity and belonging emerge from fluid engagement between researchers and…

This article addresses issues of methodology and ethical reflexivity when attempting to investigate the opinions of young people. Drawing specifically on three studies of young people's understandings of citizenship and their views on topical issues, two from England and one from Lebanon, the authors present ways in which the ethical and…

Over the last few years research funding has increasingly moved in favour of large, multi-partner, interdisciplinary and multi-site research projects. This article explores the benefits and challenges of employing a full-time research fellow to work across multiple field sites, with all the local research teams, on an international,…

This article outlines some of the findings of a project funded by the German Research Association which conducted an analysis of six leading journals of education in Germany and England. All articles published in these journals between 2001 and 2009 were analysed according to thematic foci, methodological approaches and characteristics of authors.…