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Beginning in the mid-1980s, European governments have increasingly implemented performance-based funding systems for higher education. While a focus on the transnational pressures that contributed to the widespread adoption of performance-based funding in Europe accounts for the impetus for performance-based funding policies, it fails to address how and why the resultant performance-based funding policies are as distinct and different as they are. In this paper, I argue that an institutional logics perspective offers a theoretical account of the performance-based funding policy formation process. I use the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, and France as case studies. I contend that in these three cases, different local logics drove the performance-based funding policy formation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regionalization processes across Western Europe have triggered analyses of regional policy divergence. Yet, in a number of cases, regional governments appear to have deliberately strived to achieve policy conformity. Previous research tends to emphasize exogenous explanations of regional policy convergence. In contrast, this paper addresses the issue of regional policy convergence by focusing on endogenous explanatory factors. Its objective is to carry out an investigation of when, how, and with what effect a ‘desire for conformity’ arises, and contends that regional governments may actively cultivate policy similarity as a strategy to develop or secure their policy capacity. Specifically, the paper argues that the adoption of this strategy is contingent upon two requirements that may or may not be met, and that its outcome is the convergence on targeted dimensions of regional policies. The two requirements are: (i) a countrywide public preference for policy uniformity in the policy area of concern, and (ii) the presence of a threat posed to regional policy capacity by various political entrepreneurs, including the central state, who blame regions for providing divergent policies on particular dimensions. This paper is based on the comparison of two case studies where regional governments deliberately pursued policy conformity on targeted dimensions of their education policy: school-building policy in France and curricula policy in Germany. The two case studies also present dissimilar features that make it possible to investigate the effects of institutional setting and policy distribution on the adoption and operation of the active-cultivation-of-policy-similarity strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an EU-funded project under the Training and Mobility of Researchers (TMR) Programme, with a particular emphasis on the Oxford-based part. Involving six European universities, the overarching investigation was concerned with the tensions between standardization and tradition in education. In Oxford the focus was on aspects of EU education and training policy in four Member States: the United Kingdom, German, Sweden, and France. The paper describes the research undertaken and its outcomes, using the project as an example of EU funding programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses specifically on the incorporation of ethnic minority children within the education systems of England, France and Germany. The trends in policy development after World War II in these countries are examined through the prism of three ideal-typical incorporation strategies – integration, assimilation and separation. This is done to test the theories of universalism, parallel development and particularism, which anticipate different trajectories with regard to these strategies. The paper finds evidence for convergence towards integration with regard to provisions for extra support in the host country’s language. This supports the theory of universalism. However, no evidence of convergence towards integration is found in four other policy areas. For instance, country-specific trends emerge on minority religious education and enrolment into mainstream schools, which is consistent with the particularist perspective. As there is little evidence of the three countries drawing closer in terms of all three adopting a strategy of incorporation promoted by transnational agencies, the expectation that national states can borrow in a straightforward fashion from internationally advocated models of ethnic minority incorporation appears unfounded. The paper further finds that local practices are sometimes significantly at odds with national educational policy, suggesting that future research should be directed more at the local level to determine the policies affecting ethnic minority children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through a comparison of France and Germany, this article investigates why the overall conception of multilingualism promoted by the education systems of the two countries favours the teaching of ‘useful’ European standard languages over that of minority and migrant languages that are conceived in merely cultural terms. Adopting a theoretical framework of historical institutionalism, I will argue that the tension between the utilitarian and the cultural dimension characterizing contemporary multilingual education policies in France and Germany results from the separate institutionalization of general foreign language education policies on the one hand and language-of-origin, regional and minority language courses on the other hand. The demonstration builds on an analysis of policy documents, press archives and interviews conducted with education officials, policy-makers, language teachers’ associations and parental organizations. The paper will show that despite trends towards their incorporation and unification of these two sectors of language education after the diffusion of the paradigm of multilingualism since the beginning of the 1990s in Europe, it is the historically more deeply entrenched utilitarian logic of the sector of general language education that remains prevalent in the conception of contemporary multilingual education policies in France and Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper gives an overview of the most relevant policy developments (1999-2001) regarding higher education in a number of Western European countries. The focus is on Austria, Denmark, Finland, Flanders, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The following issues are addressed. Firstly, which issues are major issues in these countries in this three-year period? Secondly, can we explain why these issues are on the agenda? Thirdly, do the policy developments suggest increasing convergence in policies? We maintain that current policy issues reflect the existence or emergence of five global trends in and around higher education. The ubiquitousness of these trends explains why Western European governments are considering similar policy issues. However, this does not necessarily imply that governments in practice are offering similar policy solutions. It would be more accurate to state that the similar trends challenge governments to find policy solutions most suitable to reach specific national solutions in specific national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Europe, the Bologna and Copenhagen Processes in higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET) are on the agenda, aiming to create a European educational area. Acknowledging important differences between countries, we compare the evolving relationship between HE and VET. We ask whether and how these two distinct organisational fields in France and Germany have changed in recent decades. Comparing institutional shifts, the article analyses whether long-standing differences in postsecondary education and training systems and the education/economy nexus in these two countries have remained stable. We argue that these countries' skill formation systems have begun to converge, departing from their original institutionalisation paths. Thus, while the traditional typologies that contrast France and Germany have served as useful heuristic devices, they require revision to adequately represent incremental institutional change in these skill formation systems resulting from endogenous reforms and exogenous pressures due to Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concentrates on the policy reforms of schools in England, Germany, France and Italy, from 1988 to 2009, with a focus on the introduction of market accountability. Pressing demands for organisational change in schools, shaped by the objectives of ‘efficiency’ and competition, which were introduced in England in the 1980s, have been adopted in other European countries, albeit at a slower pace and within the continuing need for domestic institutional conformity. How does the increasing predominance of market accountability in state schools change traditional bureaucratic and professional accountability relationships between politicians, managers, professionals and users? The article argues that despite some evidence of convergence between different education systems, England remains the outlier and continental European countries have been much more reluctant to adopt choice and competition policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 1999, European education ministers have discussed and further implemented the 'Bologna process', a wide-ranging framework for the reform of higher education. Lifelong learning was added as a goal of the process in 2001. This article evaluates the extent to which the development of lifelong learning has progressed and examines whether the Bologna process has facilitated lifelong learning opportunities in a sample of countries. The evaluation of legislative instruments and policy positions of different stakeholders in Germany, France, Italy and the UK shows that countries link quite different strategies to lifelong learning in higher education. Specific national approaches exist which facilitate or restrict its development. Thus far, the impact of the Bologna process on this issue has been modest. The process has mainly had an impact on the discussion regarding lifelong learning, not necessarily whether and how such policies and programmes are implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a review of two decades of restructuring of primary and secondary education and describes principal features of the mode of educational governance as implemented in four European countries, namely, Sweden, France, Germany and the Czech Republic. Transformations within and across national systems that reveal significant trends of global convergence in educational restructuring and governance.

The article analyzes the Chinese-western scholarly interaction. China has signified its willingness to strengthen ties with western universities and maintain or increase the flow of scholarly exchange. Chinese leaders are confident that their scholars will absorb from the West techniques that will be useful for a modern, independent China. An examination of China's academic exchange with Great Britain, France and West Germany was undertaken, and the exchange policies and programs of the U.S. Canada and Japan in relation to China was reviewed.

The article focuses on the educational development in the Saar River Valley in France and Germany. No area in Europe, not even the Ruhr, suffered the physical devastation to be seen in the Saar in 1946. Over 65 percent of the houses, 60 percent of the factories and more than half the schools were ruined. But now, like everywhere else where the German lives and works, the people of the Saar also believe that they are on the march to industrial and commercial ascendancy. Between six and seven hundred entirely new schools and additional annexes to schools have been built since 1947. A magnificent Arts and Crafts school, ranging from ballet and weaving to sculpture and photography, is nearing completion. The vast College for Domestic Science, attended by some three thousand female students per week, has no equal in this country, either in buildings or in up to date equipment. Saarbrücken, a university in Saar is the first European university situated there. The rector, M. Joseph Francis Angelloz, is a Frenchman, a Catholic from Haute Savoie, with a brilliant academic career to his credit and one closely allied with international problems. He sees his task, as first head of the University of the Saar, as one based on Franca-German understanding and the ultimate attainment of European unity.