Session Information
23 SES 13 D, Educating Europeans? Mobilisation as Education? Paradoxes and Contradictions of the Politics of Education through Europe
Symposium
Contribution
Education plays a crucial role in the construction process of the project of Europe. This can be observed on various levels and in differing contexts: European politics impact on the transformation of national education systems; the demand for transparency and transferability impact on the transformation of national qualification structures and the implementation of new qualification frameworks; work and learning migration creates multicultural settings of initial and continuing education. Furthermore mobility has turned into an educational target and is trained in a variety of Erasmus activities.
While policies and practices are mobilizing the next generation of students, learners, workers and researchers the idea of Europe disappears behind a project of Europeanisation, which can be read as flexibilisation of national education and training structures/systems and mobilization of lifelong learners.
This symposium addresses the paradoxes and contradictions between Education in Europe and European Education (Bildung). We will ask about the implicit learning targets of European Education policies directed towards a knowledge economy and argue that the related instruments and incentives (funding programs to promote transparency, mobility and transferability of qualifications) are transforming institutionalized education in the member states. These transformations impact on educational practices and go along with more or less obvious reconfigurations in the terms of reference, affecting underlying normative orientations related to the idea of Europe and the project of Europeanization. Thus European education policy is promoting a politics of education through Europe, virtually and literally, since mobility programs belong to the core instruments. However, which are the implications for European education and the education of Europeans? What is taught in European studies? What is learnt during an Erasmus stay? What is the hidden curriculum of lifelong learning politics? And before all, what would be the (implicit) knowhow, knowwhat, knowwhom, on which migrants could build their constructions of belonging.
In this symposium we suggest a critical discussion of these questions, with four contributions presenting four differing perspectives on the project of Europeanization through education and four differing approaches to relate it to a politics of education.
This symposium brings together researchers with a longstanding experience in European projects from different ends of Europe, who are working on related topics and are concerned with questions about the social and political (re)construction of Europe as a space and place of education and for education. The common intention is to open a space for critical discussion of the effects of European education politics and (self) reflection of research and practice in education with a dedicated European perspective.
Referring to the concept of hidden curriculum and implicit learning intended and unintended effects of European education policy can be identified. A combination of discourse analysis (of European education policy), theoretical reflection and case studies points to a multiperspective policy analysis. The European perspective will include contributions from Spain, Sweden and Germany, thus covering a typical variety of education and welfare systems of Europe, with an Australian discussant providing an outside view on Europe.
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