Sociology of Education

Author(s): Aaron Benavot and Nura Resh

In recent years, the predominance of the nation-state as the sole arbiter over curricular matters has eroded. New actors and organisations, especially local schools, have acquired greater discretion over the definition of school subjects and curricular emphases. In the present study we investigate whether, and how,different patterns of educational governance influence the actual curriculum that local schools put into place. We argue that uniformity/diversity in the implemented curriculum reflects macro-level factors, i.e. structural and institutional characteristics of national educational systems, and institutional status of school subjects. It is also affected by meso-level factors, i.e. community and local school characteristics (which are not dealt with in this paper). Specifically, we investigate between-school variation in curricular implementation in three major sectors of the Israeli public educational system: Arabic, Jewish secular and Jewish religious. We report sector-and school-based differences in course offerings and time allocations to subject areas. In addition, we compare in each sector actual curricular implementation in relation to official guidelines established by central authorities. Implementation patterns between and within sectors are discussed in light of the proposed conceptual model.

Author(s): Alexei A. Makarevitch

This paper reports an empirical investigation of the school-to-university transition of a sample of academically able pupils in the UK. The study is located in the area of educational transition and selection and is devoted to testing the meritocracy thesis. The objective of the study is to determine whether the transition from secondary school to university occurs on meritocratic grounds in modern Britain and what, if any, non-meritocratic effects are present. Our findings support the assumption that the transition occurs largely on meritocratic basis. However, our analysis suggests the presence of a school type effect which indirectly, through school-leaving examinations, influences the educational selection process. More precisely, pupils at selective schools are able to secure better school leaving examination results than their equally talented and hard-working counterparts at non-selective schools. This, in turn, increases their chances of being admitted to higher ranking universities as compared to non-selective schools leavers. This finding can be regarded as supporting the proposition that selective schools provide pupils with an advantage in the 'credentialist race' which is taking place as a side effect of the movement toward meritocracy. The reporting about the transition from secondary school to university proceeds by giving detailed accounts of three major stages of the investigation performed: 1) primary (explorative) analysis of associations between variables in the transition process, 2) 'quasi path analysis' with log-linear modelling, as the core of advanced analysis, and 3) illustration with odds ratios of the school type effect discovered.

Author(s): Andrea Abbas and Mark Cieslik

This paper documents research being undertaken by the University of Teesside in the North-East of England and examines current policy in Britain which aims to increase the number of students attending university who come from poorer social backgrounds. The research explores whether so called 'widening access' polices can meet their intended objectives of promoting social inclusion and aiding social and economic regeneration. For example the research seeks to investigate the extent to which students from poorer neighbourhoods remain in local areas and contribute to local economies on graduation. The likely effects of current British education policy is unclear. Universities in disadvantaged areas that have traditionally attracted students from poorer neighbourhoods (like Teesside) are facing competition from older, more traditional universities which have been allowed to increase their student numbers. Will the marketisation of British higher education lead to a stratified system where local universities lose out to their elite competitors? Recent youth transitions research suggests that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds face a range of barriers to their participation in higher education which is reflected in higher drop-out rates for these students. As government policy increases the personal financial cost of education we explore the role of material, social and cultural resources to processes of participation in higher education. Through our research we seek to gain an understanding of the processes through which young adults from deprived backgrounds and neighbourhoods in Teesside become Higher Education students (specifically of the University of Teesside), explore their experiences during their degree and examine the social and economic benefits this brings them. In this paper we demonstrate how we envisage our study contributing to debates around widening access, social inclusion and economic regeneration .

Author(s): Ángeles Escriva and Jorge Ruiz

In the last years the social alarm on the phenomenom of youth street-drinking has rushed authorities to take measures. Neighbourhoods were big numbers of youngsters concentrate in their night-open air weekend meetings protest for the noise and dirty consequences, while parents complain the bad example these practices may be for their children. Alcohol and other substances are certainly taken in these meetings, since they are cheaper purchased in supermarkets and stores than in pubs and discos. So, the public opinion has come to state that it increases alcohol drinking rates among young people. There is no empirical proof of this, however. On the contrary, there is little knowledge about the various reasons and contexts of the practice, and an evident lack of dialogue among the parts and intergenerational misunderstanding. As a result, many local authorities have opted for prohibiting or firmly restricting access to alcohol among the underaged and dissuade night street-meetings - in a country where night street life is usual among all ages and touristically promoted ! After the ban, administrations are evaluating the results and looking for alternatives of night leisure for the young, since meetings continue though dispersed. But again decissions are taken in general without considering the opinion, needs and expectations of the involved, in this case, the younger generation.

Los cambios profundos que se han producido en las últimas dos décadas en las universidades europeas han hecho que se pase del paradigma de la cantidad al de la calidad. Una de las principales herramientas para conseguir este cambio y, con ello transformar la cultura universitaria, ha sido la institucionalización de la evaluación, entendida como una herramienta para la mejora continua. En España, no es hasta 1995 cuando se aprueba un Plan Nacional de Evaluación de la Calidad Universitaria que ha concluido recientemente. Así, tras algo más de cinco años desde su aprobación se ha realizado un profundo análisis del mismo, más concretamente, se ha metaevaluado en Plan para conocer cuales han sido sus logros y desaciertos y proponer soluciones. The profounds changes produced in the last two decades in European universities have made a shift from quantity to quality. One of the main keys to reach this change and, to transform the university culture, has been the institutonalisation of the evaluation, seen as a tool to continuous improvement, In Spain is not till 1995 when the National Plain of Evaluation of University Quality, that has concluded recently, is aprooved. So, after a little more than 5 years from its aprovation a profound analysis of it has been made, more specifically, "they have evaluated the achievements and disachievements of the Plain and they have proposed solutions".

Author(s): Antti Teittinen

There are varieties of inclusive or/and exclusive features in society. Inclusive/exclusive things happen e.g. among individuals, communities, societies. Practical models of inclusion/exclusion dicotomy is represented by political efforts, lines and actions. These representations are producing inclusion or/and exclusion, but inclusive/exclusive features can be formed accidently too. The focus of this paper is a progress of politics of inclusion/exclusion policy in educational and social policy in Finland. In this context the concept of inclusion is very much political, it is a part of societal discourse about equality between people, nations, cultures etc. Concepts and theories of inclusion/exclusion are generated to practical educational and social policy issues and these policies are evaluated by this theoretical frame. The presentation is based on the development and research project "Growing Together - School and Community for All" run by FAMR 2002-2004. The goal of the project is to support elementary schools to find reasonable practices to teach pupils with varied characteristics in their everyday life. The project is focused on children aged 6-12. Another goal is to improve services of local authority areas in a co-operation between service providers of public sector and civil society actors so that pupils' school attendance from the very beginning contributes their opportunities to participate and influence over the local school and community. From this point of view the paper is evaluating the state of inclusion in Finnish society according to statistics of schooling and ethos of educational administration.

Author(s): Begoña Zamora Fortuny

Nowadays several factors coexist questioning the statute of Sociology of Education. Among others, these are: a) conflictive relations with other sociologies in delimiting an own object of study and, at the same time, with Educational Authorities, because of its supposed critical attitude; b) positions that, inside the discipline, demand both a higher social utility and giving up the so-called "critical delirium"; and c) similar research concerns with other sciences of education, us Didactic, with more pragmatic orientations. It is evident that Sociology of Education, in the one hand, should continue being an applied field of sociology, with transversal relations with related disciplines: sociology of culture, of professions, of organizations, of work... But, in the other hand, a space of its own should be defended in the realm of sciences of education. In this sense, probably, we should avoid excessively slanted vocation to social intervention. Furthermore, in these debates it is to be analyzed whether we should abandon the critical character, which generously has been conceded, or, by the contrary, we should be more critical than before. Grounding these difficulties we find the "new spirit of capitalism" and social, political and educational orientations that implies: the "concrete", the "light", the "practice", the "efficacy"... Just everything which apparently justify, more than ever, the necessity of proposing theoretically and empirically global and consistent perspectives, trying to properly locate the place of education in "new world".

Author(s): Carmen García, Sandra Racionero and Jordi Lleras

The Learning Communities start from the premise that all children have the right of an education that does not condemn them to failure but help them to finish the secondary school (that is, the minimum educational level considered as success by the European Union) and therefore, to access a good job. The main aim of the project is a change in the educational practice in order to transform ideals in permanent utopias. The two basic objectives are the following: to overcome dropout and conflicts through both accelerating instrumental learning and promoting solidarity in the classrooms, the school and the community. In this paper we will explain the different transformation phases of the project, from the dream to the consolidation of it. We will also describe examples from the experiences that currently are taking place in primary and secondary centres in Catalonia, Euskadi and Aragón.

Author(s): Carmen Pérez Sánchez

Starting from the big changes suffering in our societies - relative to economical, political and cultural ordering, i.e. labour flexibility, globalisation, privatisation, mercantilism- we investigate the repercussions of this new spirit of the capitalism in two central spheres. On one side, in the space of social identities, specially social classes, in which the inequality still configures the economical structure, it does not appear adequate to maintain the persistency of the class relative to the social and cultural structures (at least not in an automatic and simple way). On the other side, the role of the educational system, in particular relative to the curriculum and the pedagogical practices. The statements derived from our analysis intend to constitute a key to investigate about the challenges of the educational sociology, in particular any branch considered critical and radical.

Author(s): Caroline Gijselinckx

Schools are largely thought of as social institutions in which the seed for societal reproduction and transformation germinates. In schools the larger societal context, the family context, the context of the neighbourhood and the individual personality interact. Now that our schools and our society get a more multi-ethnic character, it is an interesting question which social processes and mechanisms facilitate the reproduction of the old mono-ethnic context in schools and society and which facilitate the emergence of a new multi-ethnic organisation of school and society. Or, to put it in Margaret Archer's (1995) terms, we have to look for mechanisms and processes that facilitate social morphostasis and social morphogenesis. In order to do this, this paper argues that we have to redefine the concept of socialisation. In stead of defining (secondary) socialisation, in a traditional sociological way, as the process of transmitting (existing) societal culture, we should redefine it, in a Simmelian way, as the multiple processes of the development of social relationships and social groups. This way, we can take into account the possibilities of cultural and structural renewal in the daily actions and practices of the pupils and teachers, the heterogeneity of the pupil and teacher population, the relationships of power between the pupils and between the pupils and teachers and heads of school, and the definitions of the situation of all the social agents in the social structure of the school.

Author(s): Clemencia Cosentino de Cohen

Increased globalization and competitiveness have added to existing pressures to raise student performance. Not surprisingly, national and local governments throughout the world have revisited existing assessment policies in the hopes of utilizing them to monitor and even to foster student achievement. Sweden, France, the United Kingdom and the United States are among these nations. Interestingly, a review of assessments utilized in different nations reveals converging as well as contrasting patterns of change. This paper analyzes these changes and, building on both uniformity and diversity of change found, presents a theoretical as well as an empirical analysis of assessment systems. First, this paper develops a typology of assessment regimes (and of change) found throughout the OECD member nations. This typology is then turned into a methodological tool to test the effect of different assessment regimes on student achievement. Based upon findings from multivariate regression analyses of data from (1) the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) Third International Math and Science Study (1995) and (2) the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2000), this paper presents an empirically-based theoretical discussion of the influence of diverse institutional environments on learning.

Author(s): David de la Croix, Frédéric Docquier and Philippe Liégeois

In this paper, human capital is made of two substitutable components, experience and education ; both of them evolve endogenously over time. We embed this in a computable general equilibrium model with overlapping generations of individuals, and endogenous education decisions. Calibrating the model on the post-war period for France and the USA, we quantitatively estimate the effect of technology, demographics and policy on the difference in the observed evolution of the skill premium in France and the USA. The drop in the skill premium in France is shown to be due to an expansionary education policy which boosted the supply of skills. We then simulate the consequences of demographic forecasts on the rate of return to experience and the rate of growth, and provide estimations of the future stocks of education and experience. We also consider the effect of postponing the retirement age on these variables.

Author(s): Eglé Butkeviciene

The development of e-learning is a global process, which does not exclude Lithuania. Information technologies (IT) change the conditions of work and education. The use of IT in education constantly expands all over the country. But taking into consideration the use of internet, Lithuania still lags behind the European Union countries. This difference is the most obvious in the field of household computerization. This study is aimed at describing e-learning opportunities in Lithuania and identifying the local needs for distance learning. The paper is based on the findings of a case study of Marijampole region carried out on December, 2002. As a result of the study, some outcomes are obvious: -Motives for enrolment in e-learning programs, first of all, are related to labour market (fear of unemployment, aspirations for a better new job, etc.) and, secondly, are related to the need for self-sufficiency. -The demand for upgrading skills of the English language, Basics of computer literacy, Management and Basics of cost accounting are prominent in the course hierarchy. Thus the data showed that e-learning is one of a fundamental tools which should be used by local society members to cope with problems of an economic (solving problems of unemployment, on-the-job training) and social (creating and strengthening the social and cultural capital) nature. Key words: Distance learning, e-Learning, needs assessment, case study

Author(s): Elina Lahelma and Elisabet Öhrn

'This is how strong Finnish women are growing: they survive being teased!' This was an ironic comment from a teacher in a Finnish secondary school, during a lesson when some of the boys were constantly nagging on the doings of some of the girls. Taking this comment as a point of departure, we set out to discuss contemporary research and discourses concerning the schooling of girls, concentrating on gendered patterns in school achievement and in official and informal relationships in the classroom. Our context is Finland and Sweden, two Nordic countries often regarded as 'model' countries in terms of gender equality; several indicators such as women's participation in the labour market and day care facilities suggest that the position of Nordic women is good. The paper draws on a broad range of studies, but will make special use of a Finnish ethnographic study on secondary schools in Helsinki - the project 'Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools with Special Reference to Gender' (Tuula Gordon, Elina Lahelma & al.) These results will be related to a Swedish study 'Gender, power and resistance' carried out by Elisabet Öhrn in two secondary classes in grade 9 in the 1990's and on an earlier interlinked study.

Author(s): Evgenia Poretskina

The importance of the education in the modern society is increasing continually; education is the valued resource of the development of the society. It is also one of the main factors of social mobility; it gives the additional chances to the successful social adaptation. The right to free pre-school and secondary education is written in the Constitution of Russia. But nowadays the situation has changed, and despite of the wide declaration of the rights of the child in the field of education we can observe the difficulties in the sphere of practical realization of the right to free education. The conscious choice of the educational strategy by the family is the part of the process of forming of the future human capital of the child; not-enough investments in it may influence the child's future social mobility and social adaptation. The educational strategies of the family are displayed on the micro-level in the form of everyday practices connected with education. The educational trajectory of the child has some key moments (stages): preparing to the school, entering the school, transition to the senior classes, preparing and entering the institute. The widening gap between the declared principles of free education and the real situation in this sphere is studied on the example of everyday practices of the families with children. The empirical base of the study is a sample of semi-structured interviews with Russian families having school-aged children. The interviews were held in the framework of panel investigation (1993-1996, 1998-2000), devoted to the life strategies of St.Petersburg families.

Author(s): Fernando Garrido Ferradanes

In the last years we have become into a period of an accelerated social change, in wich the Information Society has been shown as the goal for the developed societies and, although in a minor scale, for the whole world. In this context we woul like to analize one concret process: the current spanish education reform made by the Goberment leaded by Jose María Aznar, and its incidence in the establishment and the development of the Information Society. Fist of all, we would like to analized the hackneys of both the Information Society an the Knowledge Society. We would carefully examine the "Informational Pedagogy" that together with the information and communication technologies (ITCs), we think should be the main topic of the debate for an education reform at the beginning of the 21st Century. The expected results of the analyses of the "Informational Pedagogy" will be then contrasted with the reality of an education reform recently approved and its inmediate aplication. Our purpose is to reveal wherter this reform will suppose one step ahead to the Knowledge Society rather than an obstacle in its way.

Author(s): Francisco Santana Armas

En este trabajo se ha pretendido hacer un balance sobre las políticas educativas en Europa y especialmente atender a las características de las reformas educativas españolas (Ley de Calidad y Ley de Universidades) como ejemplo de cómo estas políticas hacen un énfasis especial en las políticas de evaluación y políticas de calidad. Para ello se ha analizado diferente documentación tanto de la Unión Europea como de algunos países y por supuesto de la legislación en el caso español. A priori y haciendo un análisis sociológico de estas políticas hemos llegado a las siguientes conclusiones: 1. Las actuales políticas se mueven en un proceso aparentemente contradictorio entre la desregulación y el control. 2. La evaluación se está convirtiendo en el instrumento que legitima las políticas educativas pues confiere autoridad científica a las decisiones políticas. 3. Cada vez más el dualismo eficacia - equidad se decanta hacia una planificación mercantilista del sistema educativo, por tanto la equidad es ya un elemento de legitimación en precario. Por tanto y para finalizar, las reformas educativas españolas se pueden encuadrar dentro de estas características y el trabajo en cuestión tratará de demostrar este hecho que por otra parte es ya casi hegemónico en el continente europeo.

Author(s): Gabriel Cárceles Breis, Lola Frutos Balibrea and Juan Carlos Solano Lucas

Access to higher education and differential academic success or failure, as related to the socio-economic background of students' families, are poorly understood in countries where democratization of education is a relatively new fact. A current research at the Departement of Sociology and Social Policy (Faculty of Economy) of the University of Murcia is exploring the role of social stratification in the access to Higher Education as well as in academic results, since 1980. The primary focus is on the full exploitation of the University's data base, by graduate program, to follow up students career from entrance to either their successful completion or their drop-out. The research is geared into the identification of major patterns both in the choice of fields of study and in the subsequent phases of retention, progress and successful completion, and their relationship to various explanatory variables (Age, sex, with or without a job, the occupational and educational characteristics of their parents, fellow holders or not, mainly). By equating socio-economic strata to the students parents educational and occupational background, in a first stage, the objective is to explore the theoretical and practical basis of the problem with a stratification perspective in mind. Finally, a multivariate analysis of the data will allow an in depth investigation into the changing patterns of this subject in the last two decades and will link it, at the same time, to the graduate output of the system.

Author(s): Gérard Boudesseul

A common theoretical framework of professional status presents four career steps. According to Castel's typology, teachers are supposed to go through integration and disaffiliation stages, via assistance and vulnerability stages. These steps are supposed to lead to the best status : full time, permanent position in the same school. Studying the career of French teachers however, shows that their life history can be very different from the linear and normative pathway to the best positions. First, the vulnerability and the assistance stages are supposed to be restricted, respectively, to individuals with short term contracts and teachers who need help, as trainees. I suggest that they are also extending to employees with various status. For instance substitutes who have tenure are good examples of this, as well as teacher trainees, stressed by the new job demands.Therefore, the assistance zone usually dedicated to teachers in difficulty, is to be extended to a broad dependence zone Then, the life narratives show that these theoretical stages are not linear, but reversible : some of the teachers have deliberately chosen to leave the integration zone to go into the dependence one, or more surprisingly into an unexpected " vulnerability chosen zone ". By contrast teachers'aids are unwillingly submitted to vulnerability. So, if we look at the career from a status point of view, we are not able to see patterns of "horizontal" career (Becker), including various "perspectives", and traces from events left in memory by the previous steps. About the main theme of the conference " New society " , the question is : from a liberal point of view, is it necessary to privatize such a protected labour market when career patterns are already made so precarious and unstable ? About " Ageing sociology ", the employment nomenclatures usually used to describe in terms of professional positions or status, could obscure more than explain teachers' evolving experience at work.

Ref. : Becker H., (1970), " The career of the Chicago Public School teacher ", Sociological work, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 165-175. Castel R. (1991), " De l'indigence à l'exclusion, la désaffiliation. Précarité du travail et vulnérabilité relationnelle" in Donzelot J. dir., Face à l'exclusion, Esprit/Seuil, 137-168.

Author(s): Gloria de la Fuente Blanco

This paper presents the first results of a research about 2500 spanish university graduates with Humanities and Social Sciences studies. This study focuses on the processus of transition to job, and the results in terms of employment, six years after leaving the university. First of all, I discuss some important points about the processus of transition to job, the "traditional" influential factors like social origin or sex or the new factors like special skills, attitudes or competences, the characteristics of over- education and the differences between the clasical general studies and the more specialisated new studies. In second place, I present some evidence from the research and discuss the influence of all factors mentioned above in this university group.

Author(s): Heidi Jensberg

In the 1960's the Norwegian population was ranked at the lower end in terms of formal education compared to other OECD countries, while today Norway has one of the most educated workforces in OECD. How does this radical change in education look in a generational and historical perspective? Has the expansion of higher education during the last three decades in fact led to more educational equality between the sexes as often argued in sociology of education? In this paper I use register data for complete cohorts born with 5 year intervals from 1950 to 1975 (Generasjonsbasen). This data bank on generations contains information about education for each individual in 1970, 1980, 1990 and 1995. This provides a unique possibility to study changes over time in different cohorts. The data show that there has been a substantial increase in the level of education since 1970, especially among women. This can be interpreted as growing equality between the sexes. When it comes to specific types of education there are however few signs of sex equalization during this time period. What used to be typical female and male choices of education has not changed during the 25 years, nor are the younger cohorts showing signs of different educational patterns than the older cohorts. Keywords: education, youth, generation perspective, cohorts, time series

Author(s): Hsin-Jen Chen

School management has faced more challenges nowadays. On the one hand, the new trend drives globalisationally towards to accountability or effectiveness and towards the employment of multi-participation to attempt to make schools more democratic and competitive. On the other hand, such democratic 'imperatives' re-structure the power game of school operation and create the need for critical awareness of the external imposition on school administration. With democratic voices from the external sources, the school is getting more emphases on local community's needs or even on international changes and tidal currents. Firstly I would like to centre on current available 'discourses' of school-based management and trace their derivation by examining socially and philosophically theoretical analysis. Secondly, I am keen to explore the 'black box' of school management to capture the diversity and complexity of the perspectives and micro-political interactions among school members and investigate the potential effects of such discourses by demonstrating case study ethnographic accounts in a Taiwanese primary school. More specifically, I will focus on the role of the headteacher at the investigated school in which he faced internal and external pressures and demands.

Author(s): Javier Sánchez Herrera

Las elites tienen una serie constante de características: orígenes sociales acomodados, credenciales académicas superiores, centros educativos de calidad, edad madura, residencias urbanas en los barrios más aristocráticos, profesiones típicas (juristas, profesores, burócratas, directores...), etcétera. La educación ha sido para los políticos de siempre una inversión que les ha posibilitado el desempeño de profesiones con altos ingresos que, por eso mismo, les permite el disfrute de un estilo de vida conspicuo, la instalación en una clase social acomodada y el acceso al poder. La Universidad fue la cuna de la capacitación y de la profesionalización en la época medieval y en los comienzos de la moderna, especialmente en lo que concierne a las profesiones "cultas". Las universidades permitían también establecer redes de amigos, padrinos y clientes. En la Inglaterra del siglo XVII, se optó por las escuelas de elite con internado (escuelas públicas) y por toda Europa se crearon escuelas especiales para nobles, donde se educaban las futuras elites políticas, administrativas y jurídicas. Las barreras para el acceso a la formación superior de las clases inferiores no son nuevas ni recientes. Los estudios universitarios estaban reservados a los nobles y los ricos. ¿No siguen reservados aún a la élite (la nobleza actual)? Las élites de nacimiento tuvieron finalmente que defender sus privilegios mediante la educación superior, ya que las clases sociales inferiores habían empezado a competir con ellas utilizando la misma herramienta, lo que les facilitaba la movilidad social ascendente.

PALABRAS CLAVES Elites, centros educativos, eficiencia, equidad, financiación.

Author(s): Joan Carles Bernad, Mariangeles Molpeceres and Almudena Navas

For the last two decades in Spain an impressive amount and variety of vocational schemes for at risk youth have appeared and developed. These training programs for unqualified young people with a history of school failure are usually highly deregulated and flexible both as educational instruments and as working environments. A certain discourse which is critical of formal educational systems can be easily detected among organizations managing this kind of schemes, as well as among teachers working in these conditions. Our aim in this piece of research is to analyze the functionality of such a discourse in the legitimation of emergent educational practices and rationalities, as well as emergent working conditions for educators. Our empirical data are provided by in-depth interviews with 26 teachers and trainers of vocational schemes for at-risk youth. We approach these qualitative data from a Social Discourse Analysis perspective with the aims of: (i) characterizing the defining elements of anti-school discourse among these professionals; (ii) identifying those alternative arguments and discourses against which this one is developed in the field of vocational education; (iii) analyzing the effects that an anti- school discourse has in the legitimation of emergent neoliberal educational practices and rationalities.

Author(s): Joaquina Castillo Algarra

Pese a que el Reglamento Penitenciario del 96 (aprobado por el RD 190, de 9 de febrero), que es el que regula en la actualidad el sistema penitenciario en nuestro país, ya apuntaba hacia un enfoque integrador de la educación de las personas adultas, en el sentido señalado por la LOGSE y definido claramente por las propias organizaciones especializadas como la UNESCO (en su 5ª Conferencia Internacional sobre educación de adultos. UNESCO, 14 de julio de 1997), es el Real Decreto 1203/1999, de 9 de julio, por el que se integra en el Cuerpo de Maestros a los funcionarios pertenecientes al Cuerpo de Profesores de Educación General Básica de Instituciones Penitenciarias y se disponen normas de funcionamiento de las unidades educativas de los establecimientos penitenciarios, la norma que consolida aquel principio. En esta línea, en septiembre de 1999 se elaboran procedimientos específicos que asumen plenamente esa visión integral de la formación, hasta el punto de que la programación! anual de los Centros se adapta al calendario escolar, sin perjuicio de su acoplamiento a los ejercicios económicos sucesivos. ¿Escuelas y maestros en los centros penitenciarios? ¿Qué tarea desarrollan y, lo que es más importante, qué resultados están obteniendo? En esta comunicación vamos a analizar la función educativa que están realizando nuestras prisiones, tarea ésta que consideramos una de las grandes olvidadas dentro del ámbito educativo, siendo uno de los retos más importantes que tiene planteada la Educación en el siglo XXI.

Author(s): Karine Gagneux

From primary school, teachers classify pupils individualy following simple categories among which " good " against " bad ". The same categories are also applied to the different class of a same school level. But, all pupils of a school makes an homogeneous public by age bracket and by the objective since school programmes are the same for all of them. But this public is socially differentiated (residence familial, social and ethnic origin) and intellectually (age to start school, repeating a year, etc.) This wants to show, through the analysis of a school, ways to form homogenous class. School stratification starts from the constitution of the first high school year and are based on age, ethnic, social and residential items and sexual to a lesser extend. The analysis of construction of successive classes of the next levels shows how differentiation is repeated years after years in a process of a growing internal homogenisation of classes and therefore of increasing differences between classes.

Author(s): Koen Pelleriaux

The Flemish educational system is highly streamed. Pupils in secondary schools from grade 9 to 12 are grouped in technical, vocational and general streams. There is a lot of policy concern about the so called 'cascade school carriers'. Pupils tend to start in the high prestige general stream and scale down their ambitions when they fail. The consequence of this mechanism is that most pupils in the vocational stream have a record of repeated school years and changing of stream. For this paper we used data of nearly 5000 pupils in the 12th grade. For each respondent we gathered complete information of their school carrier and different measures of well being. By means of multi level analysis we try to demonstrate a relation between those two variables (controlling for social background). The modeling of the school carriers is a key methodological aspect in this paper, based on the calculation of distances between sequences.

Author(s): Ksenia Oschepkova

Nowadays formation of joint social spaces, international rules, objects of social transformation characterize globalization. On the one hand, it opens new opportunities for mankind progress, on the other - poses new threats. The necessity of fairer using of opportunities and advantages of globalization puts the task of working out new approaches to education social policy at local, regional, and global levels. The main task of it is to solve education social problems, trying to overcome restrictions, existing in every country and encouraging positive social transformations. The basic principles of education nation policy are equality and progress of people. Issues of formation of intellectual nation potential, development of education and science should demand a lot of government attention, concerning of the country progress. Modern information technologies promotes development of global world phenomenon -open international distant education, which gives a lot of added opportunities for various social groups, such as disabled people, rural population, working people and so on, to attain education they need and will. Distant education creates the global world education space. It is tense circulation of information and knowledge, communication between students and teachers of the entire world and big base of empirical and theoretical scientific material. This global education space promotes development of world science and people intelligent development. Global distant education requires foundation of necessary structures and mechanisms of its realization. Based on national policy resources, distant education can solve real social problems at regional and global levels.

Author(s): Leena Mattila

In April 2002, the National Board of Education carried out an evaluation on the learning performance in mathematics among the ninth-graders in comprehensive education. The evaluation is based on data collected from a representative sample covering provinces, EU support areas and municipal groups. The sample comprised 98 Finnish-speaking and 17 Swedish-speaking schools. The pupils were chosen on the basis of a systematic cross section and, thus, the sample consisted of 6.2% of all ninth-graders, 4,023 pupils in total of whom 51% were boys. The learning performance in mathematics was assessed through a test including multiple choice questions, as well as open questions measuring pupils' ability to solve problems. In addition, an attitude survey was conducted among pupils. In connection with the test, background information was gathered from the school principals, teachers and students. The pupils reached an average of 57% of the maximum score in the test overall. The figures stood at 66% and 52% in the multiple choice section and the test measuring problem-solving skills respectively. The results of one fifth of the pupils indicated clearly inadequate basic skills. Boys clearly outperformed girls in multiple choice question section. In the problem-solving test, the test results of girls and boys were equally good. Girls spent more time with their homework than boys, and also their school certificate grades in mathematics were better than those of the boys. The competence in mathematics substantially influenced the choice of further studies. Boys and girls chose further studies differently: a relatively larger proportion of girls continued their studies at upper secondary school. Although the number of boys who decided to attend upper secondary school was smaller than that of the girls, those boys who did, opted for a long course in mathematics more often than girls. Urban schools and cities in the eastern provinces of Finland succeeded slightly better while the schools in Lapland achieved the poorest results. Pupils in Finnish and Swedish-speaking schools succeeded equally well. Boys had a more positive image of their skills and competence in mathematics than girls. Many factors contribute to good test results, such as a higher hourly quota than the minimum, non-course based curriculum, only a few periods when mathematics is not taught at all, a permanent teacher, a variety of working methods, undisturbed atmosphere in lessons, pupils' positive attitudes and, among boys, the time spent with computers.

Author(s): Lidia Kourakina

Modern Russian society is in a system crisis condition. The cause and, simultaneously, consequence of this crisis are changes of conceptually-moral, spiritual values and norms of life. The educational system reforming on the basis of transition to the humanistly oriented contents and to democratic forms of educational process is one of outgoing directions from this crisis. Volume's increase of a spiritual component in educational knowledge system should become the basis of reforming. Moral-ethical, aesthetic, spiritually-religious knowledge should be the basic elements in spiritual educational structure. Recognition of spiritual blokes of knowledge as basic elements of spirit indicates outcomes of sociological interrogations (Russia, Syzran, 1998-2000 years). Considerable majority of the Russian youth highly evaluate necessity of a spiritual person's development.74,6% among the respondents in the age of 18-24 and 90,9% among 25-29 years old consider that the person's upbringing assumes formation of spiritual values. However, the role of church, by their opinion, in this process is insignificant now. Only about third of young respondents have marked that "it is impossible to form the present spiritual values without church participation. The spirituality is accepted now as a secular, moral-aesthetic phenomenon, namely, as "high morals" - 78,1% and as a "good knowledge of culture and art" - 63,6%; 19,6% of the young respondents associate spirituality with religiousness. Thus, the spiritual formation of the person should become a major direction of the secular educational system.

Author(s): Lucía Gómez, Almudena Navas and Ignacio Martínez

In this presentation we intend to examine the modes of subjectivation that are produced by new modalities in the organization of work based the diversification of contractual forms, flexibility, mobility and competitiveness. Through this, we intend to render visible, on the one hand, the normative pattern that defines criteria of inclusion/exclusion, as well as the rationality that inequally distributes winners and losers. On the other hand, we intend to show the political effects of discourses and practices that present themselves as fostering individual autonomy and responsibility while they are actually defining a new domination regime. These practices and discourses are embedded in technologies of government that have allowed a shift from the normalizing ideal typical of disciplinary societies to a self-control ideal characteristic of post-disciplinary ones. Our analysis is based on discourses about their everyday work practices produced by professionals and managers of vocational training schemes for at-risk youth in the Valencian Community (Spain). In the educational field, the sector of vocational training for unqualified youth is probably the one that has incorporated to a higher degree neo-liberal strategies in relation to work such as decentralization, individualization and deregulation.

Author(s): Ludmila Sintsova

Great changes covered all spheres of modern society require corresponding transformations in the sphere of social upbringing. Problems of social upbringing acquire especial significance and importance now, because these problems are the problems of security and stability of society. The alternation of upbringing's paradigm, its purposes and tasks, ideals and values is going on in the swift changing world. Transformational processes in the sphere of social upbringing are not going on only in one country, where great reorganizations take place (e.g. Russia) or in a group of countries (e.g. countries of European association) but apply to all countries all over the world. Social upbringing is understood as a planned creation of conditions for the development of a person, adequate to upbringing requirements of society and overtake society's development to a certain extent. Social upbringing is a relative controlled part of the whole process of socialization. The state formulates purposes and tasks of social upbringing. It also creates its organizational infrastructure, defines its programs and content. Any society always reproduces with the help of upbringing its own conditions of existence. The significance of social upbringing in the process of socialization depends on the historical conditions, cultural, ethic and other traditions and particularities. But in spite of the serious problems of social upbringing we must note that investigations in the sphere of social upbringing have fragmental and even utopian character. There are no fundamental researches in this sphere. The problem of the research is to integrate efforts of philosophers, sociologists and other specialists in order to study the low-governed nature of social upbringing, its modern tendencies, directions and perspectives of the development.

Author(s): Maddalena Colombo and Laura Mentasti

Since the last two decades the realty of immigration has become a common feature of Western countries in the Mediterranean area. Within a shared framework of controlled entry, each nation is adopting proper politics for the economic and social insertion of immigrants both at national and local level. Having past the emergency stage, now we face the time of social and cultural integration of migrants into our society. During this time first importance is given to the policy of education, either for adults (I generation) or for youths and children (II generation), as a tool for peaceful coexistence among cultures. Based on some data collected in a trans-national research on vocational training and orientation for immigrants into Italy, Spain and France, this paper discusses what will be the position of foreign groups in the near future. To what extent do they represent a new challenge for the educational systems (now organised under the "cultural uniformity principle")? We try to give a reply by looking at the Italian case and its characteristics, in regard to orientation and vocational training activities carried out for immigrants. Specifically, there will be a comparison between the opinion of operators and that of beneficiaries.

Author(s): Manuela Ferreira

Taking the Sociology of Childhood as a starting point, the aim of this paper is to show children as social actors, involved in a process of double integration - in adult's and children's social order. This has been developed through an ethnography describing the daily life of 18 children between the ages of 3 and 6, in a public kindergarten, located in a rural setting, during one school year. This paper analyses one of the most important adult routines - cleaning time - exploring how children weave their social relations with the kindergarten-teacher and other children, over decisions related to the control of their time, space, interactions, conceptions and values. Beyond adhering and conforming to adult controls, children strategically use such rules and principles in order to pursue their own agenda: to continue playing with other children for a longer time. When cleaning time is announced, children's use of an expression "What a mess!" indicates the way they appropriate adult order, while transforming it in a new play routine of the peer group - a big cleaning in the 'house', which implies displacement, clean all the stuff and put it back. Children's agency is here an active form of resistance facing adult order. However, when analysed from the point of view of peer relations, it allows the identification of important sociological divisions - gender, age and social class - in the process of interaction, where multiple power relations and social inequalities are (re)produced.

Author(s): Marc Verlot

Ethnographic research over a number of years in multi-ethnic schools in Flanders indicates that teachers increasingly engage in multicultural practices in their classrooms. These practices are enabled by the general acceptance of the theory of cultural discontinuity, in which teachers take into account differences in pupils' cultural background in order to enhance their results. The implicit expectation was that cultural racism would gradually disappear. The paper argues that in reality, they simply take on a new guise. Whilst teachers previously tended to make personal remarks to individual pupils in the classroom, one finds that their comments have shifted to a more abstract and impersonal depreciation of groups with an other cultural background as less civilised and adapted to modern life. The paper asserts that this persistence of racist discourses in schools otherwise governed by an ethos of multiculturalism occurs because the recognition of cultural differences in itself! does not change the tendency of schools to promote the cultural values of the majority. Yet, by adopting and naturalising the theory of cultural discontinuity, the result is that teachers stress the cultural differences between the 'home' and the 'school' whilst trying to overcome the 'gap'. However, working to overcome the cultural 'gap' results in teachers essentialising, objectifying and simultaneously depersonalising 'other cultural traditions' which enables the persistence of a cultural racist discourse. The practical consequences of the flawed conceptualisation of culture within the theory of cultural discontinuity force us to fundamentally rethink the place 'culture' occupies in learning theories.

Author(s): María del Mar Noda

Because of the changes in the capitalist production system during the last decades, as a consequence of the social, political and economic evolution, the so-called emotional intelligence is becoming increasingly important as a determinant of the economic and social success of individuals. These changes have implied a reinforcement of the main ideology about capitalist system, based upon a supposed equal economic oportunity, where social inequality is only given in terms of the usual both cognitive and non-cognitive skills -supported on schooling certificates- and certain individual traits related to "new" attitudes and behavioral abilities (motivation, perseverance, leadership, industriousness, ...) which, however, are being embodied by the schooling system. In other words, the intelligence, as playing a major role in the legitimacity of inequality, and the shcooling system and IQ tests, as its formal tools for measurement, have welcome a new pointer for the individual differences, given by a number of "innate" traits, though they may actually be learned -and so, the principle of equal opportunity is safe and, even, strengthened. In addition, these behavioral traits agree, in fact, with the environment of the marketplaces corresponding to the new middle classes. This trend partially explains that, in the main ideology about the role of the schooling system, terms like "social justice" or "equal oportunity" are being replaced by others like "justice" or "effectiveness".

Author(s): Maribel García Gracia

The communication describes the main results of a survey (Survey to the young people of Catalonian, 2002), recently made by the GRET and it is focused, particularly in the formatives itineraries followed by the young people between the 15 and 29 years. The study registers within the framework theoretical of the TVA (Transition of the young people to the Adult life) and analyses the educational changes between the promotions that conform the object of study from a biographic "and" longitudinal "perspective". For them a new methodological tool has been designed, the biographical diagrams, that are an adaptation of the well-known diagrams of léxis, particularly applied to the phenomenon of the abandonment of the Educational system and the access to the superior and university studies. The study describes and analyses the following aspects: o The different situations of the young people with relation from the educational system. o The uses that these do of other systems of non formal formation. o The expectations and options of studies followed by the young people who are in the educational system in relation to the different levels from the education system. o The breaches and changes in different formatives itineraries. o The construction of the itineraries formatives followed by the young people according to the followed trajectories of studies, the changes of studies and the abandonment or the obtaining of accreditation, that forms six differentiated itineraries: itinerary of elementary diploma absence; itinerary of formative poverty, itinerary of abandonment of post- obligatory average studies, itinerary to abandonment of higher education, and itineraries of achievement in higher education.

Author(s): Marie Carlson and Dennis Beach

A franchising process was initiated with resepct to municipal adult education in Göteborg (Sweden) after the completion of the National Adult Education Initiative (AEI) as part of the restrucuring of government services within the welfare sector. It was initiated experimentally on the basis of decisions in the Göteborg Municipal Council in 1999 but came into full force first in 2002. The franchising process followed the guidelines for the introduction of private enterprises within the public sector as per the 1992 Purchasing Act. It had serious consequences for several education suppliers but particularly for one, Studium AB, a company created and owned by the Göteborg Metropolitan Council. In the paper the consequences of franchising are discussed with respect to the proffessional lives and experiences of teachers, education leaders and students from Studium. The research is ethnographic and pays specific attention to discourse theory.

Author(s): Mariya Alexeyevna Vlasova

In the middle of 1990's a system of national education has become obsolete and the necessity to realize an educational reform arose. It was caused by its discrepancy to changing socio-cultural conditions, which have taken place in our country at the beginning of 1990's from the one hand, and by its discrepancy to the international tendencies, while the majority of the advanced countries entered the new era of postindustrialism with the information as the best value - from the other. Educated people are the who able to receive and to transfer information in the best way. Unfortunately, our system of education doesn't correspondent to modern conditions of world life. Nowadays in our country the system of education is changing from the curriculum model of education to personally-oriented model. So it is necessary to define the most acceptable ways of transformation the system of the Russian education. There are three ways of reform: 1. The first - is a transformation of separate educational structures by keeping the existing principle of organization of educational system. 2. The second - is acceptance one of the most successful foreign systems of education carrying out it in the Russian conditions. 3. The thiris the transition into international educational level further reorientation of own educational system with taking into account of the world-spread tendencies and socio-cultural peculiarities of the Russian society. At present the system of education in Russia is in the process of reforms and has represented itself at rather inconsistent picture, there the positive shifts are frequently mixing up negative or uncertain tendencies. Thus, it seems extremely important to lead comparative analysis on structures of educational system of western pattern, educational system of eastern pattern, as alternatives previous, and also modern system of education in Russia, that allows to study the ways of organization of educational structures in detail, to define their function, content traditional and innovational educational structures, technique of teaching and educational concepts in all, also all these let us to determine the opportunity of acceptance of one these education models as a pattern to estimate probability of its efficiency in modern Russian socio-cultural and economic conditions, and to reveal the basic reasons of failures of educational reform in Russia at present also. The goal of the given research is a model of reform ways in the system of education in Russia.

Author(s): Maryse Esterle-Hedibel

This qualitative research analyses the processes of lack of school attendance before the age of 16, (limit of scholastic obligation) with their different stages, studying actors'logics and interactions between them, (pupils, institutions, families, social environment, peer groups). We study also the resorts organized by and with the youngsters. The research is led in North of France since january 2001 to june 2003. We present here the common aspects of those situations, in which we can observe the scholastic institution influence (the negative labelling consequences and lack of coordination between pedagogic and social services), the link between commitment in band and lack of school attendance, the differences between familiar problematics and scholastic rules. Stopping school attendance in not compensated by social integration and leads to the disagregation of scholastic networks, often not replaced by other ones. Delinquance risk is important among stopping school youngsters in poor neighbourhoods where we study those situations. On the other hand, other youngsters are very isolated, retiring within themselves at home. The situations presented illustrate also the processes diversity.

Author(s): Mieke Van Houtte

Research into ability grouping has consistently demonstrated an effect of tracks (or streams) on pupils' achievement. Pupils in lower tracks tend to achieve less than pupils in higher tracks do, independently of their personal ability. Explanations for this finding are often suggested, but almost never tested. One possible explanation is the way teachers and principals view their pupils and deal with the subject material, as described in many ethnographies. These show that teachers in lower tracks are less academically oriented then those in higher tracks are, because they have a lower opinion of their pupils. In this line of research a link with school achievement is often suggested, but never really shown. The central aim of this contribution is to test quantitatively the explanatory value of the academic culture of school staff with respect to the stated effect of tracks on pupils' school achievement. For this, use is made of data of 3760 pupils and 745 members of staff (711 teachers and 34 principals) in 34 schools for secondary education in Flanders (Belgium), 15 schools for general education (preparing for higher education) and 19 schools for technical and vocational education. By means of multilevel-analyses it can be shown that the school type (general or technical/vocational) affects the pupil's chance to fail, controlling for individual pupil features as ability or socio-economic status, and that the academic culture of the school staff entirely or partly explains this effect of school type.

Author(s): Milada Rabusicová and Ladislav Rabusic

This paper is placed within the context of functional literacy as one of possible new mechanisms of social inequalities and exclusion. The main research questions of this paper is whether and how has the Czech family an impact on functional literacy (to be more precise, one of its dimension - prose literacy) of children. From the theoretical viewpoint, the answer to the first part of the question should be "Yes". However, in the Czech environment, the explicit empirical evidence has been only searched for in the last decade. As far as the second part of the question is concerned, there have been only speculations so far in Czechia with respect to mechanisms of the family influence on children's reading ability, despite the fact that knowledge of these mechanisms is extremely important. It seems obvious that in this area of children's development (which is an organic part of cultural development of a personality) it is not possible to rely on school contribution only. The fami! ly and its cultural and "reading" environment cannot be ruled out here. From the mid 1990s, there have been several research attempts in Czech republic (with the support of IEA and OECD) to map the knowledge and competence of children and teenagers using international comparative research instruments such as TIMSS, PISA or SIALS. In our paper, to answer our research question, we shall apply secondary data analysis to these Czech data sets. Using also international results we shall try to put the Czech ones into proper comparative perspective.

Author(s): Monika Kwiecinska

The social background Polish youth builds its adult identity in is more then ever before the reality of change, euphamistically called economic transformation. What is school function in such reality? Does it facilitate the transition process? Does school provide young people with tools that would let them adopt to such reality? Does it soften the tensions experienced by youth when trying to adopt to the transition reality and when making future (e.g. education) choices from an illegible cultural offer? Or - on the contrary - it generates such tensions and produces students conviction of their unability to influence their own future? What are the Polish school features that may cause soem groups of students disorientation, uncertainity of their future, lack of the ability to ancipate it and helplessness towards it? Does school only reproduct helplessness of social groups its students come from? Or has it mechanisms of producing it? What are the sources of such phenomena? Where to look for the explanations? On the basis of the empirical data gathered in the longitudinal study of the 15 and 18 year old students of secondary schools in central Poland I try to describe life strategies of young people. Special interest of this paper is the dimension of activity (subjectivity and social independence) vs. passiveness (objectivity). Are there strategies characteristic for different types of schools? Comparison of different schools' students life strategies at the beginning of their secondary education (in age of 15) and at the end of it (at age of 18) gives answers to the questions put here.

Author(s): Myrian Andrada

This description is part of an extensive investigation which is the author's doctoral thesis. Different provision models in education have been selected for this presentation: England and Wales and Belgium which are cuasi-markets. France may be considered a cuasi-monopolic provision state model. In England and Wales a cuasi-market has been established. However, since the evidence of the "open enrolment" programs implementation, a final answer to the question that if the school choice may produce the effects quoted by its detractors or the ones argued by its defensors, is not found. The functioning of this cuasi-market is stimulated by the government. This does not happen for the French-speaking Community of Belgium educational authorities who do not breathe its development. Nevertheless, school free election has not been abolished and external evaluation seems to help families choosing schools. In France, only families that send children to private schools may decide to "exit" the system. The demand is regulated through a dispositive called "carte scolaire". The evidence shows this dispositive ratify the residential inequalities. The normative regulations are different depending on the educational level. This presentation is conducted through these questions: *how the regulations give transparency and equity to the pupil admission process in the preferably schools? *do these regulations -normative and autonomous- contribute to limit or to increase differences between groups? *how differences are expressed in the educational systems?

Author(s): Nuria Rodríguez Ávila and Jaume Farràs Farràs

Esta investigación esta estructurada de los siguientes apartados: primero se presentan los elementos teóricos de partida, que envuelven al entorno de jovenes borderlines dentro del sistema educativo. Material y Métodos: Las fuentes de documentación tanto documentales como empíricas que hemos utilizados han sido datos primarios y secundarios. Los datos primarios han sido los aportados a través de una encuesta a centros de secundaria de la localidad de Hospitalet. Así como una búsqueda exhaustiva de bibliografía secundaria. Resultados:. La escuela es un pilar, un agente básico y muy importante en el proceso de socialización de los jóvenes. Es por esto, que nuestra investigación se ha centrado en el estudio de datos, vivencias, experiencias y opiniones de profesores de diversos centros de estudios Una de las principales conclusiones es que se deduce de la recogida de datos y análisis de opinión del profesorado y en particular de los docentes tienen una responsabilidad organizativa en la dirección, gestión y planificación de los centros, es la necesidad de planificar individualmente el servicio de soporte para el desarrollo de los jovenes bordelines.

Palabras claves: Educación, Borderlines e inserción social, inserció laboral, política social,

Author(s): Ove Skarpenes

Based on documents, articles, curriculum as prescriptions and interviews, I discuss and compare the construction of two educational high-school reforms in Norway; Reform 1974 and Reform 1994. After a process of nearly 15 years, the traditional knowledge- and subjectbased 'gymnasium' was in 1974 transformed into a broader and more open secondary comprehensive school/high-school, where the admission was democratised following typically social democratic values such as solidarity and equality. Also, long-term economic growth arguments were used. The reform was justified as a compromise between the civic and industrial orders of worth (Bolatanski and Théventot 1999). The school was then transformed from having knowledge and subject as its main focus, towards the individual pupil; the school open up for a process I have called pedocentrism. The reform was initiated in a historical period - organized modernity (Wagner 1994) - where the functionalistic perspective was linked to positivism, and this paradigm directed the belief in and the legitimation of the educational reform. I claim that in the start of the reform process, the school was considered to be a neutral actor, and that the new school would help developing society in a positive, progressive way. Pedagogical tools were used to differentiate the teaching. In the late 60's and in the 70's organized modernity faced a crisis that could be identified in economical, political and academic institutions. The crisis was also reflected in the reformprocess. The school couldn't be neutral. This epistemological point was connected to a moral question concerning the negative consequences of the industrial-capitalistic society. The normativity-problematique was integrated as a new uncertainty in the reformdocuments and in the general curriculum as prescription. In addition to this, the critique of positivism in Norway was linked to the critique of the established pedagogy, and the behaviouristic (instrumental) pedagogy was criticized for hiding an instrumental rationality that brought alienation into the classroom. Instead, a new phenomenological-based pedagogy was advocated, claiming to have an emancipating potential. Leaning on the pupils' creativity, differences, emotions etc, meant that new values were used to justify content and pedagogy in high-school (with Boltanski and Thévenot inspirational values). Reform- 94 tried to establish and redefine the meaning of "the perpetual student". The reform documents launched "a new broad concept of knowledge" that was needed to develop "hole and integrated human beings". It was argued, that the only thing that was stable in the new "Knowledge Society", was that everything was in constant change, pupils had to be creative, flexible and adjustable. The reform did not talk about emancipation from anything, instead it focused on emancipation to a flexible society with unlimited opportunities for self-realization. The rhetoric managed to combine market values with romantic values of authenticity; the reform was justified as a compromise between two orders of worth; marked and inspirational (Boltanski and Théventot 1999). This shift in legitimation from 74 to 94, also reflect a transformation to a new paradigm in school curriculum and in school pedagogy, namely "creative lifelong learning" which simultaneously fulfil the market demands of continuous flexibilization and the individual demand of continuous self-realization.

Author(s): Petre Georgievski and Marian Niezgoda

The education system in both countries being a legacy of the past (communism) was forced to face a completely new situation as a result of changes of the economic system. A new factor and completely new challenge emerged: the job market and its demand. This demand was determined by processes of modernization of the economy, i.e. re- structuration of traditional branches of economy, privatization of enterprises and growing importance of the third sector of economy typical for the model of information society. The old system of schooling shaped under Communism was not able to response for the challenge. It had to be modernized. There occurred two ways of modernizing the system of education. The first was an evolutionary process of modernizing the public (State controlled) school system: organizational and structural changes (limitation of vocational schools, emerging the new type of schooling of the tertiary level, modernization of school curricula and handbooks). It is characteristic for both countries. But in Macedonia a pressure of ethnic minorities, especially Albanians, has determined the changes in functioning of the system of education. Those changes are being expressed in establishment of parallel teaching in Macedonian and Albanian language at all levels of education. However, it violates the integrative role of the educational system in the society. In the article three questions related to the reform of the education system are being discussed: 1) forms of privatization in education; 2) labor market problems relating to qualifications and education levels, employment and unemployment; 3) the new technologies in the education and their influence on primary and secondary schools, particularly with respect to their being fitted out with computers, and the use of computers in teaching and access to the internet. The basic thesis of the author's analyses is approached via that of H.Lauder: that there is a fundamental consistency between a low wage, low technology economy and the educational system - which is likely, in the case of such an economy, to produce persons with a low level of qualifications.

Author(s): Rafael Merino

This paper is a study of the flows of students that have been studied by LGE and LOGSE, with the data of Departament of Education (by autonomous government of Catalonia), from academic year 1989-90 until 2000-01, in the framework of evolution and changes in secondary education in Spain. The most important conclusion is that we should say the educational system has three tracks: the first one, the drop out (between 25 and 30% of cohort); the second one, vocational, with two subitineraries, a short one an ents who haven't got this qualification. That is going on to a paradox of FP: less segregation needs to be more selective; and, on the contrary, less selective and offering a second opportunity to failed students increase the risk to become a second track, in the "second zone".

Author(s): Risto Rinne and Johanna Kallo

(OECD) has been recognised as being significant and influential to industrialised countries since the 1960s. This applies also to the education sector This research paper is based on a longitudinal and comparative study on OECD education policies started at research center CELE in Turku University, Finland, in 2002. The object of inquiry is to characterize some main issues of the resonance of the OECD activities in European and EU education policies from the 1960s to the 2000s. First, we ask, how and in which ways the OECD has influenced European education policy practices. Second, we look at what implications the OECD activities have had in the formation of a European domain of education policy. In this examination, we refer to the research on education transfer, especially the discussion on the theory of externalisation in the context of globalisation and education convergence. We proceed with systematic examination of OECD and EU documents. Our analysis includes i) conventions ii) benchmark Eurotreaties, iii) European Commission/Directorate General XXII papers iv) OECD Education Committee and CERI papers v) reports, and vi) selected publications. Our preliminary finding is that the influence of the OECD activities on the EU and European education policy practices has been widely disseminated, and symbolic. The OECD éminence grise has found a sound political resonance within the highest level of decision-making circles. Its national reviews of education are often used to legitimate austere education policies. One may call this phenomenon "OECD-isation" in European education policies. Research on the OECD and its influence on European education policy practices has been slightly touched upon or almost neglected. This research area, however, should be highly significant, since it helps to understand the past and the present dynamics of the EU and European education policies correctly.

Author(s): Rob Pattman and Mary Jane Kehily

The paper draws on interview based research with young people aged 12-18 in schools and youth clubs in Milton Keynes, UK. The interviews were loosely structured around the general theme ' being a young person of their age', and explored issues such as interests and leisure pursuits, pleasures and anxieties, self definitions and relations with others. Using a young person centred method, the interviewer played a facilitative role encouraging the young people to set the agenda, and picking up on issues they raised. Drugs, especially tobacco and alcohol and to a lesser extent cannabis, emerged as key topics in most of the interviews, and were spoken about at length and in emotionally engaged ways by 'users' and 'non users'. In the paper we argue that young people's narratives about drugs and the positions they took in relation to various drugs were crucially tied to the ways they were forging their identities. We will focus then not exclusively on young people's attitudes towards drugs, but how they see themselves and others more generally and their identifications and disidentifications. We will examine how drugs were being invoked as markers of identity in the narratives of particular young people, for example, 'popular' and 'unpopular' boys and girls, 6th form students, private school students, white English and South Asian boys and girls. Many of our interviewees were agreeably surprised at being treated by the interviewer as experts about themselves; we explore the implications of our research approach for good pedagogic practice in drugs education.

Author(s): Rosanna Barros

This paper focuses on three major points: (i) the conceptual basis of adult education and non-formal education; (ii) the role and purpose of the progressive educator in Portuguese society today, and (iii) the history of adult educational Portuguese system concerning a reflection on the current state of adult education thinking and policy in Portugal. Keeping in mind the diversity of the specific contends and designation we can find in Europe, and in another countries, concerning the non-conventional education concept ('community education' in Scotland; 'social pedagogy' in Germany; 'animation' in France and Italy; 'popular education' in South America), the paper will try to analyse the contemporary understanding of the differences between the so called non-formal and formal education in Portugal, to brig out issues around setting, aim and process in this reality. An analytical overview of the concept and historical practice of adult education and adult learning in Portugal will also be a central concern in this paper in way of understanding (i) the local impact of the policymakers decisions in the work of educators and communities, and (ii) the reasons way there have been so significant shifts in educational policies in the last decades. We have realise that changes in work organizations and management (adaptable labour forces and flexible production) are connected to a recent focus on market and consumption that drawn policy makers in Portugal more and more to the rhetoric of 'lifelong learning', but this require critical interrogation specially because there was a remarkable dislocation of Faure's 'learning society' principles and ideas. Finally the paper will also reflect about the role of non-formal education and the potential of more educative approaches in the global society to build a better word for us and for the forthcoming generations. The educators have today a special responsibility in create global citizens, aware of the contemporary humanity problems, compelling concerns for full democracy, human rights, justice, peace and respect for Others and for the environment… In some how this was the promise of non-formal education and this is the challenge for today.

Author(s): S. Sharonova

During the last decades we try to reform our education but our ef-forts take to nothing. When it was the socialism we forgot about our depending on world development of economic. But now we are carried away by the problems of the entry in the world market economic and forget our state mentality. We look for causes in bad Russian economic, in bad Russian legislation. But I think the problem is in following: we are needed understand, find the connection between the essence of mar-ket economic and the essence of Russian mentality. The nature of Rus-sian mentality is expressed in the three principal properties: it is the emotional nature of Russian man, the cathedralation (sobornost), the sharpening sense of justice. The presence of this properties is always expressed in the extremes. And the system of education absorbs all these peculiarities of Russian mentality. As rule all these properties demand an ideal for believing. But we must take stoke of the stable practices of mentality as such as paternal-ism, Great Power, nomination social at the first plan, communal labour, going away the law, the believing in historical supper-mission of Russia. We must also take stoke of the Russian unique historical way of development. Our country develops by jerks. During the little time (for example, a few tens years) we have so many events as another coun-tries have them during a few centuries. And of course this influence on our consciousness and our education.

Author(s): Sabine Gruber

The paper refers to a study (forthcoming dissertation) which describes how teachers manage social and ethnical diversity. It focuses mainly on pracices concerning these issues. In the paper I will illustrate how institutional practices produce casslifications and how these are related to notions about immigrants (invandrare). Further I will discuss how these notions are also related to gender. My empirical material is based on ethnographic fieldwork (participant observations) during one year at senior level in a compulsory school. In the paper I share som results of my fieldwork; how teachers plan and organise their teaching and how their discussions and meetings take place. By getting close to these everyday practices of schooling it is possible to see how the managing of social difference is surrounded by institutional practices. Social difference is thus produced and reproduced through an institutional order. My point is that daily routines in school are taken for granted and experienced as truths. To put it another way, the institutional engagement has a strong influence on the way of thinking. It also raises the question about what the consequences of these practices are. The paper is theoretically influenced by Mary Douglas´s writings about how institutions functions and Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann´s work in institutional processes.

Author(s): Sirpa Lappalainen

In this presentation I analyze the professional discources concerning nationality, ethnicity and citizenship. I focus firstly on how professionals of early childhood education define Finnishness and how they deal with ethnicity. Secondly, I illustrate how nationality and ethnicity actualize in everyday practices of preschool. This paper emerges as a part of my one year ethnographic study in two preschool. Methodologically, my reading is poststructuralist in a sense that I focus on the construction of discursive categories and their inclusive and exclusive effects in relation to subject formation and access to various forms of agencies and performances. I argue that Finnishness conceptualizes as discipline and order of everyday life. When individuals considered as Finnish are evaluated individual discourses are mobilized. When individuals considered as 'others' are under scrutiny cultural discourses works as interpretational resources.

Author(s): Tarja Tolonen

The focus of this research is to critically examine sociological concepts such as social class, habitus, locality, nationality and gender, through stories told by young people about their life courses and future plans. analyse how young people describe their transitions (home-another town, school-school, school-work etc), and how they talk about places important to their life course and transitions. The data has been collected in four regions in Finland (Kouvola/Kotka region, Kajaani, Salo and Helsinki) with different local cultures. In these locations 60 interviews of 20- year-old people have been gathered. The five locations I have chosen have different social, cultural, educational and employment traditions. In the interviews I asked young people to talk about their future plans, success stories, and significant social and spatial transitions. Transitions of young people today are argued to be individualised, reflective, self- expressive, and full of cultural ruptures. Often there are no clear paths to be followed. The education processes have changed dramatically from one generation to another. However, I argue that not only cultural ruptures are to be found in young people's life stories, but also social continuities are very significant in their transition processes. In this paper few different cases of life stories are examined. Several types of continuities are seen as significant. Firstly, cultural continuities of childhood family are analysed using Bourdieu's terminology, such as habitus, social, cultural and economic capital of the family, including gendered analysis of capitals. Secondly, local educational and employment opportunities and traditions are seen as focal. Thirdly, the young people's relation to space (locality, nationality and globality) is seen as vital while studying their life course.

Author(s): Thomas Gitz-Johansen

This paper is drawing some conclusions from a period of fieldwork in classes with a relatively high percentage of bilingual pupils in two compulsory schools. The issue is how ethnicity is represented in these schools, or, in other words, the teachers' way of understanding and talking about the ethnic background of their pupils. The finding is that ethnicity is represented within a general discourse on social problems. Also, the material suggests that immigrant boys and girls is problematised differently. The chapter puts the findings into a broader context by placing the findings in relation to wider discourses.

Author(s): Torild Hammer

The study draws on a new comparative data set of nearly 17,000 young unemployed people in Europe. Representative samples were drawn from national unemployment registers, with eligible respondents defined as young people between the ages of 18 and 24 who had been unemployed for a period of at least three months during the previous six months. They were interviewed one year later. The total sample in all ten countries therefore consists of young unemployed people with a variety of work histories that, at the time of the interviews, were located in a wide range of positions in education, in employment or outside the labour market. The samples and response rates were: Finland, 73% of n = 2386; Iceland, 63% of n = 2280; Norway, 56% of n = 1997; Sweden, 63% of n = 3998; Denmark, 76% of n = 1540; Scotland, 56% of n = 1500; Germany, 65% of n = 3000; Spain, 52% of n = 5000; France, 51% of n = 4000; Italy, net sample n = 1421 of n = 1500. The results showed that in all countries, re-entering post compulsory education was mainly dependent on educational capital, as defined by Bourdieu. The respondents' education, their parents' education and parents' support for their children's education had a strong impact on the probability of re-entering the educational system. Social capital, as defined by Coleman, increased the probability of re-entering employment, but had less impact on the probability of re- entering education. There were great differences between countries. However, the results cannot be explained only by the unemployment rate or access to further education in different countries. Project homepage: www.isaf.no/nova/fou/hammer/unemployment.htm

Author(s): Tuula Gordon and Janet Holland

This paper is based on a project analysing citizenship, difference and marginality in schools, with special reference to gender. The data have has been collected in the context of a contextualised, comparative, crosscultural and collaborative ethnographic research in four secondary schools, two in London and two in Helsinki. On the basis of observation, participant observation, interviews, associations and metaphors we explore ways in which space is implicated in school as physical, social and mental. These spatialities are constructed in everyday practices and processes in school. We analyse space not simply as a ground on which human agency takes place, but also see teachers and school students as actively constructing space. As well as analysing relationships constructed in space, we also question how ideas of citizenship and nation are constructed through both material spatial praxis and imagined mental space. The self-evident backdrop for schooling is the nation, the future citizens of which are educated in school. The comparative, cross-cultural nature of our data enables us to discern patterns that are likely to remain hidden in their banality. Curricula construct school students as equal individuals regardless of gender, social class, ethnicity, culture, sexuality and embodiment. The neo-liberal emphasis on individual choices is counteracted by neo-conservative concerns with national culture and national values. In this context 'them' and 'us' are constructed in complex ways, both implicitly and explicitly.

Author(s): Tuula Gordon, Janet Holland, Elina Lahelma and Rachel Thomson

In this paper we develop cross-cultural analysis of social, cultural, material and emotional aspects of young women's investment in education. We ask how young women's subjectivities are constructed within relations of power, what are possibilities and limitations for the exercise of agency by female individuals, and how citizenship is implicated in this process. We also consider the place of feelings such as ambivalence about femininity, individuality and desire in the construction of educational pathways. Our starting point is provided by a cross-cultural ethnographic project conducted in London and Helsinki. The extensive data consists of observation, participant observation, interviews with school students and teachers and other material in schools. The study explored implications of educational restructuring on everyday life at school. We continue this exploration by analysing young women's post-sixteen educational paths in two projects on young people's transitions, on! e in the UK, one in Finland. We analyse how young women celebrate their successes and tackle their failures. The social and cultural ways of understanding success and failure are discussed. We pay particular attention to ways in which young women attempt to exercise agency and ways in which they explain obstacles they have encountered and achievements they have realised.

Author(s): Ulla Reiterä-Paajanen

The main concept of the project "Growing Together - School and Community for All" during 2002-04 is an inclusion. The goal of the project is to support schools to find their own ways how to respond and to reflect the diversity of their pupils. Local authorities in our project will develop different practices and models of co-operation which are focused on children between 6-12 years old. The research "Inclusion at School" takes place in four pilot local schools. It is focused on issues of educational inclusion, learning development and participation in schools. The schools will be examining the ways they can respond to and reflect the diversity of their pupils. My study is qualitative action research focused on the perspective of children and their families. The methods are observations in the classroom and inquiries. Children and their families from each school(stakeholder-analysis) will be interviewed. The main questions are how an integrated principle and a comprehensive principle can be linked to a principle of equality: what opportunities there have to be available and how should the resources be dealt with? How can schools improve the co-operation between families, service providers of public sector and civil society actors to contribute their and their parents' opportunities to participate and influence over the local school and community. The pilot schools implement the international inclusion programme, "Index for Inclusion" (T. Booth, 2002) as a tool to improve inclusive cultures, policies and practices in their own schools and community. My study describes the process of implementation in Finland. As a result of my study an inclusive profile of the pilot schools will be formulated including good practises and models which other schools can utilise when working in the levels of inclusive cultures, policies and practices.

Author(s): Vassili I. Joukov

A swift knowledge in the 20th century and needs of practice caused the formation of a new kind of education that is social education. It becomes one of the most significant trends of scientific and pedagogical activities in the 21st century as namely social education can provide training of specialists able to meet time challenges. Social education is a systematic process of accumulating, keeping and spreading knowledge on the basis of developing fundamental and applied social sciences as well as on the basis of social experience being stored by the civilization. It may be represented in the classical shape by such subjects as sociology, social ecology, social anthropology, social history, social psychology, social law, social philosophy, etc. Social education is guided by forming an active creative personality, possessing an energetic civil position, by training an expect who can profoundly follow social aspects of counteraction between Society and Man, in every sphere of Society's vital activity, and can harmonize the relations of Man, Nature, Society and State. It is connected with specialists training for the social sphere. It has 4 functions: professional, mental and spiritual, cultural and humanitarian and includes 4 main aspects: theoretical, applied, spiritual and mental. Its political mission is being an instrument of public consent, a way of reducing excessive social and political strain. The studies of educational activity experience in the universities of the United Kingdom, Germany, the USA, Sweden and Finland allows you to highly evaluate the level of our native social education and emphasize significance of its further development. And it requires intensified attention of the Russian state to this issue, account in policy in the field of education.

Author(s): Yaël Brinbaum

A French study reveals that in families with similar background and environment, immigrants' children are more successful academically than native French children (Vallet et Caille, 1995). These results are explained by immigrant families' educational behaviour, linked to their higher expectations towards school in France, the school system being considered a way towards integration and social mobility. This confirms results by European research. However, there is very little quantitative research on this topic in France. The objective of this paper is to analyze immigrant families' educational investments in France, to understand better the mechanisms used to facilitate children's achievements and therefore, their transition from school to work. We will compare educational aspirations and educational investments, in taking into account families trajectories and their resources. This paper deals with the following questions: Controlling for social class, do immigrant families' aspirations for their children differ from native French families' aspirations ? Since immigrants constitute a heterogeneous group, do we observe differences according to national origin or time of migration ? How are those expectations translated in behaviour, according to parental background and resources, migration and national origin? We use data from the 1992 Efforts d'éducation des familles survey (Educational investments by Families) carried out by Insee (the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) and Ined (the National Institute of Demographic Studies), which contains indicators identifying rigorously the immigrant population and data on children's education, parents' educational aspirations and investments -such as their involvement in children' education, their assistance with school work etc.-. Outcomes show that most families have high educational aspirations. Moreover, immigrant families wish longer studies for their children than native French families. And further, two kinds of expectations appear, revealing different strategies according to cultural origin. North-African families expect long studies in secondary school for their children, while Portuguese families prefer short studies, in order to access more quickly the labour market. Concerning investments, parental school assistance with school work differs between immigrants and native French from the same social class, and according to cultural origin. Indicators of parental investments show the impact of the migratory process and also the difficulties of immigrant families related to their weak resources and therefore the gap between aspirations and investments for a number of immigrant families.

Author(s): Ya-Hsuan Wang

The promotion of linguistic diversity in general is crucial to any serious attempt to realise intercultural education. Many countries have been actualizing multi/bilingual education encompassing other optional extra of ethnic minority languages apart from the compulsory learning of national language and English. Nowadays a prevalent issue is to argue to acknowledge that local dialects could be a compulsory course or to express scepticism about the practical value of dialects given the characteristics of the modern world. In this paper, giving a sociological account by critically examining socio-political contexts, I argue that in the increasingly homogeneous society only can education make effort to resist language death by teaching minority mother tongues in schools. Meanwhile, the promotion of linguistic diversity is intensely associated with ethnic identity as long as people recognise mother tongues as markers of their own ethnic groups. The ambivalence towards ethnic identity and languages perpetuity is however reflected by an opposite statement that 'if I cannot speak my mother tongue, I am still one of her members'. Beyond that, the connection of ethnic identity with language perpetuity is threatened by the global homogeneity. Though the use of a mixture of languages is increasingly encouraged in educational contexts, the monolingual ideology is still so powerfully evident in education systems. It's controversial that should schools be the appropriate place to perpetuate or to eradicate linguistic diversity and ethnic identity? This paper raises several educational dilemmas of dialect languages and ethnic identity.

Author(s): Yechezkel Dar and Arza Avrahami

The impact of recent social and economic changes in the Israeli kibbutz on the prolonged stage of youth was examined with respect to higher education. The young people on the kibbutz of the late 1990s appear less moratorial and more instrumental in relating to their future and commence higher education earlier than in previous age cohorts. When starting studies, their educational and professional prospects are crystallized as those of the non-kibbutz students. Most of them opt for academic, degree-granting studies, but a higher percentage than among the non-kibbutz students prefer vocation-oriented colleges to the research oriented universities. In choosing fields of study, they favor more applied studies like engineering, social services and practical arts and are less likely to choose sciences and the humanities. De-communalization and economic instability of the kibbutz, inadequate preparation in kibbutz high schools for the competitive admission to the universities, exposure to parents' restricted range of occupations during adolescence, and lack of a cultural tradition supportive of elitist studies may explain this practical mood, more salient

Author(s): Yvonne Leeman

It is, with regard to ethnic diversity, important whether and how teachers take differing perspectives on the world and on the school as a community into account while teaching. In the ideal situation, intercultural dilemmas and conflicts will be settled with a clear understanding of the basic principles of a just solution. In most cases though, unequal power relations and confusion about a just solution in a multicultural context might be at play. This qualitative research project offers a description and analysis of moral dilemmas experienced by teachers in ethnic diverse schools in the Netherlands. Interesting here are the teachers' views of multiculturality, differences between pupils and the teachers professional knowledge, skills and insights regarding teaching and value-forming education. Eleven teachers teaching different subjects at ten different schools for secondary education (pupils 12 till 18 years old) were interviewed. The teachers were informed on the purpose of the research and were asked to reflect on moral dilemmas that arose in their teaching practice and they were asked to describe those dilemmas and the way they coped with them. The teachers invited for the interviews were experiencered teachers (more than ten years in the profession) who are interested in ethnic-cultural diversity and multiculturality. Two of the teachers have an ethnic minority background. The others represent the Dutch ethnic majority.