Schooling in Western Europe : the new order and its adversaries / Ken Jones ... [and others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Jones, Ken, 1950-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education and state--Europe, Western.

Educational change--Europe, Western.

Educational change.

Education and state.

Western Europe.

Physical Description:

vii, 225 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

Education in Europe is being transformed by a new policy orthodoxy, affecting all aspects of the school. Private sector involvement, decentralisation and curriculum reform are everywhere part of a reshaping of the school in the name of the competitiveness of a European knowledge economy. But these changes are accompanied by controversy. New policies challenge ideas about the value and purpose of education that have deep roots in the systems created by reforming movements in the post-war decades.

Drawing from the experience of researchers and activists from six Western European countries, this book analyses the terms of the new orthodoxy, as developed by bodies such as the EU and the OECD. It explores the remaking of teaching and learning, and management and governance and looks at new patterns of access and inequality. It is appreciative of reform's political successes, and critical of the narrowness of its educational vision. Finally, it argues that the conflicts that surround policy change are not yet settled; the opposition encountered by national governments, and by the EU itself, may yet take schooling in new directions.

Contents:

1 An Emerging Order 1

2 The Europeanisation of Schooling? 29

3 System Change: Local Autonomy and the Evaluative State 46

4 Privatisation: From the Margins to the Centre 65

5 Inequality Remade 87

6 Teaching and Learning - The Terms of Modernisation 107

7 Symbolic Worlds 130

8 Human Resources: Students 147

9 The Agency of Teachers 165

10 Unconcluded 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [206]-221) and index.

ISBN:

9780230551435

0230551432

OCLC:

170034998