About the book
This book discusses how the ways that young people’s educational trajectories into and beyond lower secondary education are regulated can influence their future lives. It draws on the results of empirical studies in eight European countries: Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom (England and Northern Ireland), carried out under the EU-funded GOETE project. The book explores the different ways that educational trajectories are – actively or passively – conceptualised, negotiated and organised in the individual countries, and the ways that these shape educational opportunities and life chances. Its central aims are to elaborate the different ways in which educational trajectories are governed in the eight countries, and to compare the differences between those approaches and their outcomes in the eight countries. It focuses on the relationships between the different (national and local) forms and outcomes of interactions between collective and individual actors, structures, institutions, mechanisms, and discourses that exert influence on education policy and practice at various levels: inter- and trans-national, nation-state, regional, local or school levels.
The chapters are organised in two parts. Part One develops and discusses the conceptual framework that drove the empirical analyses of the governance of educational trajectories. Part Two discusses different ways in which the spatial/scalar, discursive and institutional dimensions of the governance of educational trajectories affect the educational experiences and life courses of the young people in the eight countries. These chapters focus on different aspects of those experiences, such as issues of access to and coping within educational settings, the role of parents and students in the processes and consequences of transitions, provision for supporting migrant students, and conceptions of the relevance of education. Overall, the comparative approach to governance adopted in the volume makes it possible to identify key sources and consequences of the similarities and differences of the approaches to, and practices of, educational transitions adopted in the eight countries.
Contents
Patricia Loncle, Marcelo Parreira do Amaral & Roger Dale. Introduction. Shaping the Futures of Young Europeans: education governance in eight European countries
PART I – CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Roger Dale & Marcelo Parreira do Amaral. Discursive and Institutional Opportunity Structures in the Governance of Educational Trajectories
Yuri Kazepov, Susan Robertson & Risto Rinne. Space, Scale and the Governance of Youth Trajectories and Transitions in Europe
PART II – INSTITUTIONAL AND DISCURSIVE ANALYSES OF OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES IN THE GOVERNANCE OF EDUCATIONAL TRAJECTORIES
Marcelo Parreira do Amaral & Risto Rinne. Reading Discourses in the Governance of Educational Trajectories of Youth in Europe
Karin Amos & Roger Dale. Governance and Disadvantage: discursive opportunity structures framing the educational trajectories of children and youth from migrant background
Karin Amos, Alessandro Martelli, Patricia Loncle & Roger Dale. Translation and Interpretation of Policy Instruments and Negotiation of Subject Positions
Patricia Loncle, Valérie Becquet, Simon Jahnich, Karin Amos, Alessandro Martelli & Ulrich Theobald. Students and Parents as Actors of the Educational Governance
Eduardo Barberis & Patricia Loncle. Governance and Disadvantage: institutional opportunity structures at local level
Roger Dale & Marcelo Parreira do Amaral. Conclusion. Distributing Life Chances through the Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe
Contributors
S. Karin Amos is Professor of Foundations of Education, International Comparative Education Research and Intercultural Education at the Institute of Education of the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany. Her current research interests focus primarily on theoretical perspectives, themes and areas in the international governance of education; the relationship between the concepts of governance and governmentality and the fundamental question of the relationship between the political and pedagogical order formation.
Eduardo Barberis is research fellow at the Department of Economy, Society, Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy, where he lectures on immigration policy. His research interests include the socio-economic participation of migrants and minorities, anti-discrimination policies, and the local dimension of social policies in comparative perspective.
Valérie Becquet is a senior lecturer of sociology, habilitation in educational sciences, at the University of Cergy-Pontoise. Her research interests are youth participation and educational and youth public policies. She analyses the social and organisational construction of young people’s practices involved in associations or in public programmes (national and local youth council, student council, civic service) and compares educational and youth policies in the field of participation and civic education to understand the way public policies define and frame them. She is also interested in the articulation between participation, individual trajectories and social and professional integration.
Roger Dale is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. His research interests include globalisation, Europeanisation and educational governance, sociology of education and training policy in the European Union. The latter forms the current focus of his work, with which he supplemented and extended his earlier research on education and the state.
Simon Jahnich is a research assistant at EHESP French School of Public Health. His main fields of interest are the sociology of education and the analysis of the brakes and barriers to school achievement and social integration.
Yuri Kazepov has been Professor of International Urban Sociology and Comparative Welfare Systems at the University of Vienna (Austria) since March 2015. Previously he taught at the University of Urbino (Italy). He has been Jean Monet Fellow at the European University Institute and an ARC distinguished fellow at the Graduate Center CUNY. He is a founding member of the Network for European Social Policy Analysis (ESPAnet) and the immediate-past president of RC21 of ISE. His fields of interest are urban governance, citizenship and urban quality of life, and social policies in comparative perspective.
Patricia Loncle is a senior lecturer in sociology and political science. She belongs to the Centre of Research on Political Action in Europe (UMR CNRS, 6051), where she is co-responsible for the ‘citizenship’ team. She works at the High School of Public Health in France, where she is responsible for the Research Chair on Youth. She also leads the master’s programme ‘Youth, Policies and Care’. Her research focuses on youth policies addressed to young people in the fields of social, health, education and leisure policies. She is particularly interested in questions of youth participation and engagement and in vulnerable youth issues.
Alessandro Martelli is Tenured Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Business Law – University of Bologna, Italy. His research focuses on youth as well as on social protection policies.
Marcelo Parreira do Amaral is Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Münster, Germany. He is president of the German Section for Intercultural, International and Comparative Education of the German Educational Research Association (DGfE) and a member of the International Advisory Board of FIRE (Forum for International Research in Education) (USA). His main research interests include international comparative education, education policy, international educational governance and its implications for educational trajectories, in particular issues of access to and equity in education as well as a range of issues in comparative and international education such as convergence and divergence in education policies around the globe.
Risto Rinne is Professor of Education and head of the Department of Education and CELE (Center for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education) at the University of Turku. He is also the director of FiGSEL (Finnish National Graduate School on Educational Research) and a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He has led numerous national and international research projects and has over 400 scientific publications. His main interests include sociology of education, international comparative education, educational policy, history of education, higher education and adult education.
Susan Robertson is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on the political nature of education in societies and purports to understand the transformations in the nature of the state, the creation of new (global and regional) scalar platforms for the advance of education projects, the changing role of teachers’ labour, the uneven distribution of opportunities for learners, and the implications of these developments for the social outcomes of education.
Ulrich Theobald is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education of the Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany. His main field of interest is organisational sociology in the educational sector. His PhD project is focused on governance structures at the local level of the German school system.