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This paper reports on an investigation examining provision of physical education continuing professional development (CPD) in European countries undertaken to identify the types of practices being employed. We begin by providing a brief overview of what we currently know about CPD internationally in general education and physical education. Data are reported to reflect Parker and Patton's (2017) key characteristics of CPD that highlight effective CPD, summarise current trends and issues in physical education, and are intended to serve as a guide to how teachers learn and how they might be better served in that learning in these European countries. Studying current practices in CPD provision identified in this study provided modest insight to inform teacher education programmes and CPD providers on the current status of physical education CPD currently being employed in Europe. We propose these findings might inform international and comparative education with respect to CPD and set the foundation for physical education colleagues in Europe to develop a CPD network where endeavours such as sharing of CPD practices, engaging in discussion of those practices, and the design of collaborative research on such CPD practices are based.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an empirical examination of the supply-side factors influencing dropout rates in MBA programs. We analyze the extent to which the resources and characteristics of the program (content, teaching methodology, course load, class size, partnerships, reputation) influence these rates. A GLM analysis was conducted on data obtained from a final sample of 94 executive MBA programs in Western Europe. The results indicate that several supply side factors significantly affect dropout: intensity of case study learning, number of credits per month, class size, and proportion of lessons given at partner institutions. Several implications for the design and management of higher education programs have been drawn from this research.

Based on small case-study illustrations from a variety of European countries, this study aims to explore methodological aspects of the study of curriculum history by expanding its traditional research scope. In so doing, it is argued that sociolinguistic issues are essential to this discussion. The main argument is that sociolinguistics and curriculum history are more closely intertwined than has been proposed by previous academic literature. Under the examination are often two sides of the same coin which are viewed from different, albeit closely related, research angles. In effect, the curriculum's contextualisation is also structured and modified by sociolinguistic considerations. In the conclusion, it is maintained that citizenship education--understood here as the historical manifestation of the dominant cultural expectations towards the citizens as the bearers of a particular nation state during a specific timeframe--should be better informed by sociolinguistic literature, and by that, also placed against those language controversies that surround the curriculum. On this basis, by adding value to the study of the curriculum as part of educational history--and by blurring unnecessary academic boundaries--this paper provides interdisciplinary insights into the study of curriculum history vis-à-vis sociolinguistics, which have so far remained too separated.

Germany's apprenticeship system is and has always been considered to be the major sub-system of VET. In this context, the debate circling around the European and German Qualifications Framework (EQF and DQR) has become one of the central issues of VET research and policy. Tasks take on a concrete shape if (a) a serious approach is adopted towards the ideas underlying the European Qualifications Framework; and (b) if consideration is given to the 'construction sites' typical for the German VET system as a whole. This paper intends to sharpen VET policy awareness for the problem of dealing with those unresolved German VET issues within the context of the development of the DQR. A comparative view includes Austria and France as two countries with diverging learning cultures in VET from the German case, but obviously with more 'European' imprints within their respective VET systems. It can be shown that there is an interrelation between the attention apprenticeships as such receive against the background of European ideas such as 'progression', 'permeability' and 'lifelong learning' (LLL), including the implementation and use of 'hybrid qualifications'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more than 10 million Muslims living in Western Europe, states are struggling to accommodate the religious needs of Muslims in state-supported institutions. Such issues include whether to fund separate Islamic schools and how or whether to teach Islam in state-supported schools. Despite these common concerns, national governments vary widely in their response to the religious needs and practices of Muslim citizens and permanent residents. This paper looks at how Britain, France and Germany have resolved these issues. We explore how pre-existing Church-State practices and institutional arrangements structured the politics of state accommodation of Muslims' religious needs in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationships between the migratory policies of the EU countries with more experience of immigration and their national political cultures. It focuses on France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It then looks at Italy, a relatively new country of immigration, which, with 3,000,000 legal immigrants, has become the fourth country of immigration in Europe and the first in the Mediterranean basin. In its final part it highlights the incipient process of 'communitarisation' of the immigration policies of EU countries in the last decade. This process, which has already entailed a significant convergence of their migratory policies, is expected to continue after the recent enlargement of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the prospects for trilateral concord among Britain, France and Germany in terms of defence policies? Would more institutionalised links among them lead to more convergence of their defence policies? To answer these interrogations, this article investigates the relation between policy convergence and institutionalised cooperation, in particular by studying whether and when one is a prerequisite to the other. First, this article examines the extent to which these countries' defence policies have converged since the end of the cold war based on several indicators: their attitudes towards international forums, their defence budgets, the structure of their armed forces and their willingness to use force. Second, we study each of the bilateral relations between the three states to qualitatively analyse their degree of institutionalisation and the convergence of their defence policies. This article concludes that contrary to the arguments of many discussions, think-tank reports and political actors, there is no evidence that institutionalised cooperation leads to policy convergence as far as defence is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]