This article presents and discusses some results of the authors' analysis of international and national institutional documents related to environmental education from the 1970s to the present day. The aim of the study is to present a critical characterization of how environmental education is conceptualized and introduced through the ongoing…

Essays concerning second language teaching as a means of promoting intercultural competence include: "Intercultural Competence: From Language Policy to Language Education" (Chantal Crozet, Anthony J. Liddicoat, Joseph Lo Bianco); "Linguistic Diversity, Globalisation and Intercultural Education" (Jagdish Gundara); "French…

This article explores some of the legal and law-related challenges educators face in designing, implementing, and sustaining globally networked learning environments (GNLEs) in the context of conflicting international laws on intellectual property and censorship/free speech. By discussing cases and areas involving such legal issues, the article…

Purpose: The author's interest in learning organisation development leads him to examine large French companies' practices regarding "high potential" executives policies and to question their selection and development processes and their capabilities to develop learning oriented organisations.The author also tries to explain why most…

The provision, in most industrialized democracies, of public funding for schools that differ from the state system in religion or pedagogy has the effect of encouraging philosophical diversity and school-level decision making alongside a substantial degree of curriculum alignment and with various forms of government protection for the interests of…

This newsletter contains articles in French and English on events relating to educational policy in various European countries. Part 1 contains an essay on the essential aims of education and a suggestion for incorporating work and study in university education. Part 2 includes the following news items: Austria's school education act; Belgium's…

France and the United States share a belief in equal educational opportunity for all children. Despite efforts by both nations, equal educational opportunity has remained a elusive ideal, especially for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and even more so in the United States, where studies have shown that poor children typically enter…

This paper will present an analysis of the notion of cultural and linguistic diversity in the new curriculum for primary schools in France (MEN, 2003). First, it will explain how this notion is linked both to a wider choice of languages and to the teaching of one foreign or regional language only. We shall argue that, despite the wide theoretical…

Educators and policymakers who share the goal of equal opportunity in schools often hold differing notions of what entails a just school in multicultural America. Some emphasize the importance of integration and uniform treatment for all, while others point to the benefits of honoring cultural diversity in ways that make minority students feel at…

The ultimate purpose of education indicators can be described as providing a basis for monitoring the quality of education. Even though the current indicator sets have become quite comprehensive, and there are clear signs of their use in policy-debates, there are still some important aspects in which their impact on educational policy and…

The territories where Catalan is traditionally spoken as a native language constitute an attractive sociolinguistic laboratory which appears especially interesting from the point of view of language-in-education policies. The educational system has spearheaded the recovery of Catalan during the last 20 years. Schools are being attributed most of…

This paper starts with the founding of UNESCO and the fundamental belief that humanitarian, social and political deficits in given societies can be corrected by means of education. The history of the UNESCO International Conferences on Adult Education (Elsinore, Montreal, Tokyo, Paris and Hamburg, 1949-1997) demonstrates the changes in perceptions…

The aim of this book is to investigate the motives for action on language behavior, whether this means corpus, status, or acquisition planning. It examines such questions as why individuals, groups, and governments try to influence their own or others' language behavior or language attitudes, and what drives authorities to try to control, favor,…

This volume combines a discussion of bilingual education in three parts of the world, the Soviet Union, the Celtic countries of Western Europe, and the United States, with an outline of a theory of bilingualism and bilingual education. The first part of the book investigates how various systems derive from different combinations of identical…

In many countries around the world there is a current focus on the restructuring of education systems in a bid to increase the "quality" of the educational experience for pupils in order to raise their academic achievement. However, the definition of quality as expressed through policy may not always accord with the aims and aspirations…