EERJ Moot

Friday, 25 Aug, 11:00 - 12:00
Location: W2.04 Auditorium 1

Speakers: Martin Lawn; Sortiria Grek; Natalie Papanastasiou; Linda Rönnberg
Session Chair: Martin Lawn

The European market and the Union are based on, and shaped by, the Four Freedoms. These are the free movement of goods, workers, services and capital, each of which is necessary to create a common economic entity, and sustain a common purpose. Variations exist in the relation of individual countries or services to these common goals, and protectionist policies are still in place.

How do the four freedoms unfold in the field of education? This is the subject of the 2017 Moot. Are there educational goods which have crossed borders and established their presence in new countries? Which kind of educational goods – texts, software, tests? Has capital moved into educational operations across borders by founding or buying companies which are profit seeking in education? Are they creating private educational institutions or taking over privatized organizations and employing educational actors?

Since its foundation the EERJ has focused on describing and analyzing the processes of Europeanization in education: its projects and networks, different sectors of education (like VET or secondary education), or disciplinary studies (like curriculum or pedagogy). Increasingly, we have encouraged studies which show how Europeanizing processes in education have become dependent on regulation, standardization and comparability. These are the essential platforms enabling the development, maintenance and growth of cross border innovations. They have the same function in other fields of policy in the private and public spheres, combining them into a European form of governance, in which capital and services move through private/ public partnerships or hybrid forms.

The Moot aims to build on and extend our work on Europeanization in education, using the Four Freedoms as guides, to bring together and extend our understanding about how the new areas of European education are growing and being governed. It is an opportunity to create relational analyses across the range and complexity of education markets in Europe – in goods, services, capital and people. Student mobility is visible but there are too few studies of companies in educational software or lifelong learning or school services, nor are there studies of new careers in education, moving between countries or between national, private and European institutions in education. Has accession created new private education companies, and the creation of cross border commercial organizations? In other words, what is happening? We need a better picture than we have now and we wish to encourage you, if necessary, to move into these new areas of work.