/library/oar/handle/123456789/32858 2025-12-27T00:21:16Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/33182 Title: The main actors in the National Action Plans on Employment - who can bring forward the education and training dimension of the NAPS? Authors: Keep, Ewart Abstract: The European Employment Strategy (ESS), agreed at the Luxembourg Summit in 1997, aims to improve the Union’s record on combating unemployment. Besides committing the Commission to produce an annual employment package for submission to the European Council, the Strategy also required member states to develop a National Action Plan (NAP) for Employment as a means of monitoring progress towards targets laid down in the ESS.1 From the outset the guidelines set for the NAPs have asked member states, working in conjunction with the social partners, to develop policies on lifelong learning. This chapter draws on an overview of lifelong learning (LLL) activity and its linkages to the National Action Plans (NAPs) for Employment in a sample of five EU states—England, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and Italy. England rather than the UK was chosen as the unit for analysis here because although responsibility for the NAP and other employment issues remains a UK government responsibility, education and training is a now devolved issue, i.e. it is the responsibility of the four national administrations in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The overall aim of the chapter is to examine the tensions between the idealised model for the NAPs and their actual design and implementation, the different national structures for developing the LLL elements of the NAPs, and the interactions between the different actors who shape the plans within these systems. It also identifies a number of issues facing the future evolution of LLL activity within the context of the NAPs. By way of introduction, a number of issues that will emerge in what follows need to be highlighted. The first is that many debates concerning European policy founder because people make the assumption that as the same word or phrase is being used by all participants a commonly agreed concept is being discussed. This is often not the case. As van de Kamp and Hake (2002, p.13) note: ‘Despite the strong degree of interest in lifelong learning expressed by politicians, employers, trade unions and the educational community, it is still not evident that there is any universal agreement on what the term ‘lifelong learning’ actually refers to…’ Thus, when an English policy maker refers to lifelong learning, what they have in mind may be very different from what a Finn or a Swede would think the concept pertained to. To paraphrase Churchill, in many areas of its work, the EU is a group of nations divided by a common terminology. This chapter stresses the need to guard against assumptions of commonality of meaning, and to underline just how varied are the national paradigms currently being attached to the concept of LLL. A second theme of much of what follows is the way in which LLL is a site of contestation (sometimes overt, more usually covert) between divergent visions of what LLL is for and what a national LLL strategy could or should be concerned with. Some approaches are very narrow and utilitarian, and view LLL as little more than workforce development writ large. Others are much broader, and afford greater priority to non-economic elements (such as cultural and citizenship issues). Insofar as the NAPs act as a focus for discussion about LLL and employment, they provide a forum in which these tensions may become manifest. The third theme is the issue of who should be driving LLL strategies, particularly as they relate to employment issues. Again, it will become apparent that the relative weight accorded to different actors varies enormously from nation to nation. Another aspect of the context set by the NAPs that deserves note is that the NAPs are primarily about employment and employability. As such, they tend to concentrate attention on those aspects of LLL that have as their main focus employment and work, and, as a consequence, on those preparing to enter or those already in the labour market. Thus, if LLL is a cradle to grave concept, the NAPs are only concerned with that portion of the population who will become or already are of working age. This facet of LLL may be in tension with other, wider aspects of what LLL might be about, and this may be of concern to some of the actors involved in the process of formulating the NAPs in some EU states. A final point is that European policy on LLL, as on a number of other fronts, is handicapped by the lack of direct policy competence of the EU. The Commission can exhort and ‘co-ordinate’, and seek to demand information and reporting on targets agreed at ministerial level in inter-governmental meetings, but it has no direct levers to control or directly fund (outside a limited number of cases such as the European Social Fund and Leonardo da Vinci programmes) LLL activity in the member states (Field, 1997). The NAPs, along with other devices such as the EC’s Memorandum on LLL, are a means of getting a Commission foot in the nation state’s policy door. 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/33179 Title: Creating the European learning citizen - which citizen for which Europe? Authors: Kuhn, Michael; Sultana, Ronald G. Abstract: This volume is one of the outcomes of a European Union-funded thematic network—EURONE&T—which brought together scholars from Europe and beyond in order to critically reflect on the way the European Learning Space is being constructed. The network set out to investigate the implications of the European integration and enlargement processes on learning related policies in the EU, including the new member states. As we will note in more details further on, education and training have historically been outside of—or at best marginal to—the policy remit of the European Commission, given that the key concerns of the EU have tended to focus more specifically around economic and political agendas. Learning moved much more to centre-stage in the post-Maastricht, and more so in the post-Lisbon era, when the EU aspired to make important strides forward in establishing itself as a ‘knowledge-based society’ in an attempt to turn the tide of global competition in its favour. As many of the contributors to this volume note, this new policy focus on education, articulated as a response to the perceived threats of globalisation, produced specific effects at both member state and Community levels, promoting a particularly economistic and technocratic approach to learning. A key concern of EURONE&T was to understand the learning society more broadly and holistically, that is as a society where knowledge and continuous learning occupy a central position and affect all aspects of life: not just the economic, but the political and social as well. In contrast to mainstream discourses which tend to privilege economic, technological and institutional issues, EURONE&T set out to put the learning citizen at the centre of its work. This volume reflects this stand-point. It thus investigates the impact of the European integration and enlargement processes on learning related policies, but it does so by foregrounding the manner in which such policies contribute—or fail to contribute—to creating and supporting the learning citizen. The present collection of papers has to be seen within the context of the overall thematic project, discussing learning related policies from different perspectives by the four thematic EURONET domains guiding the interdisciplinary discourses among scholars from Europe and abroad. 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/33166 Title: The modification of learning through cultural traditions and societal structures Authors: Laske, Gabriele Abstract: During the last decade work and learning have become strongly coupled. Never in recorded history has the need for continuous learning taken on such an economic slant. One could phrase this new paradigm as: ‘Without continuous learning one will lose one’s capability to work’. It no longer seems to be merely a lack of physical capacity or the lack of certain talents that limits one to remain employed: what excludes one from the labour market is lack of, or the refusal to undertake, continuous learning. The Anglo-Saxon and West European worlds nowadays are especially ruled by the economic conviction and ideology underpinning this paradigm. The latter’s dubious nature shall not be discussed here. Rather, this paper will emphasise the fact that the discussion on learning is, amongst others, characterised by the implicit assumption that everybody has a mutual understanding of what learning is. For example, when strategies about workforce development with respect to learning are discussed during a meeting of European researchers or international managers, the aspect that learning is culturally determined is hardly ever taken into consideration. The present volume, ‘Homo Sapiens Europæus—Creating the European Learning Citizen’, focuses on two essential concepts: citizens and learning. The meaning of both concepts/terms is highly subjective, and depends on the social and cultural context in which they are used or discussed. For instance, there is much American literature available that stresses the importance of the school in the development of active citizenship. Yet, the very idea of citizenship in the US is a result of the specific cultural and historical development of this country. As Labaree (2000, p.28) notes: ‘The urge to preserve individual liberty is a key to understanding American society, and it is what defines distinctive approach to politics, economics, and education. ‘Don’t tell me what to do’ has long been our national slogan. By it we have meant in particular that government should keep off our backs—especially government that is far removed from our local community. All you need to do is to remember that this nation was born of an uprising against a colonial government that tried to impose modest taxes on it from afar.’ The coupling of the idea of citizenship and education is very unique to the American culture and value system. In Asian cultures like China or Japan, a concept that relates education and citizenship does not exist. Also the European concept of citizen is still very vague compared to the strong sense of citizenship that exists in the United States. In this sense Marks (2003) raises the question: ‘Could it therefore not be the case, that the idea of citizenship in fact being witnessed is the Americanisation of the globe (and by definition Europe)?’ But this chapter will not stress the origin and connotation of citizenship and its correlation to learning or education. Rather, its main concern will be the cultural determination of learning and education. Thus, whilst Marks concludes his discussion of the Americanisation of the globe by asserting that ‘...comparative accounts of education and education systems are becoming increasingly redundant since we are all becoming more and more alike’ (2003), this chapter makes the case for quite the opposite perspective. Besides work, learning is the activity by which the socialisation process of citizens takes place. Yet socialisation through learning occurs from early childhood, while socialisation through work takes place at a later age. In most cultures learning and work were, and still are, deeply related. One cannot work without having learned to work. But as work is embedded in a specific set of values and norms of a given culture (the source where work ethics stem from), so also is learning, knowledge, and expertise. Each culture and society has developed its specific ways of learning and teaching. Learning to work means to have access to a certain body of knowledge (including practical knowledge) and while putting it into practice, one learns to work in meaningful ways. However, what one understands as meaningful is also culturally determined. The way we learn is part of the process of socialisation and we learn in accordance with what our culture considers as learning. These ways and forms of learning have been developed through history. They are defined by specific values and norms concerning learning and teaching, which differ from society to society and culture to culture. Culture determines—amongst other things—the value systems and norms that guide the individual’s actions and attitudes. Structures regulate the different aspects and functions of society. They set the frame for how, at a macro-level, national education system, and at a micro-level, training activities of companies and single institutions, manifest themselves. Given the quite diverse historical and philosophical roots of education in the countries that make up the European Union, the way learning is understood cannot be expected to be the same. Of course, one may question the need for a common concept of learning, or whether different forms and approaches towards learning may not be an advantage after all. Whatever the case, it is clear that a great sensitivity as well as adequate research instruments are needed in order to identify the meaning and practice of learning in different European cultures—a process that must necessarily underpin the common effort towards the creation of a learning European society. This chapter addresses the cultural and structural dimensions of learning, and the interdependency of the micro- and macro-level of education or vocational education systems. It is based on the findings of the project ‘The Construction of Learning Cultures as a Process of Micro-Macro- Interdependency between Educational Traditions and Learning Cultures,’ funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. The study addressed learning for work in production settings. Because the countries of comparison—USA, Germany and Japan—have very different approaches to educating their workforce, it was necessary to include the general education systems of Japan and the US in this analysis, while for Germany the emphasis was placed upon its vocational education system. A key finding of this study is that the globalisation of learning has in fact not yet taken place. The instruments and approach applied may serve as an example of how to address the need for grasping cultural dimensions that are essential for education and training of the workforce, and help to determine the structural manifestations of a society’s educational policy and institutions at the macro- and micro-level. 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/33165 Title: Knowledge in the bazaar : pro-active citizenship in the learning society Authors: Magalhaes, Antonio M.; Stoer, Stephen R. Abstract: This chapter aims at identifying relationships between the transformations underway within capitalism itself, within the state and with regard to the nature and role of knowledge in present social contexts (characterised by social analysts such as Beck, Giddens, and Harvey as risk societies and as societies in which appears a reconfigured economic determination in the ‘first instance’) and their impact on the reconfiguration of the mandates addressed to education, and to education systems, at the beginning of the new century. The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part has as its aim precisely the analysis of the transformations and respective relations of capitalism, the state and the exercise of citizenship in present contexts. The increasingly visible presence of examples of pro-active citizens who claim their difference with regard to an institution such as the school constitutes that which we might designate as a process of the repoliticisation of education where citizens refuse to see themselves as the passive objects of action by the state (which appears more and more to speak in the name of the market). Indeed, a tension appears to develop between a process of the individualisation of citizens, by way of which they are made responsible for everything including, above all, their own failure, and a process of individual and institutional reflexivity (in Beck’s terms [1992] ‘individuation’) enacted by the pro-active citizen who claims her own difference, in which citizens redefine themselves, not only on the basis of the homogenising logic of the market but, also, on the basis of heterogeneity. We aim here to develop further an assumption of a previous work (Magalhães and Stoer, 2003) according to which not only the concept of citizenship is re-appropriated by individuals and groups in a process of reclaiming sovereignty, but also this process of reclaiming is carried out not on the basis of that which people hold in common, but, rather on that which differentiates them, namely identity. In the second part, and on the basis of these new claims for citizenship, we centre the discussion on their expression, namely in the field of education. As this field is increasingly framed by entities and energies at the supranational level, it is on this basis that we analyse the impact of the change in the nature and function of knowledge in present societies. In taking up again the question of the repoliticisation of education and of the role of knowledge within education, we attempt to relate the exercise of reclaimed sovereignty with the political models on the basis of which Europe is being thought as a new political entity. In a recent work (Stoer and Magalhães, 2003), we have argued that it is the metaphor of ‘Europe as a bazaar’ that, among other metaphors such as ‘the flag’, ‘issues or themes’, or ‘network’, best captures a European construction process capable of promoting unity within diversity. The bazaar as a political metaphor for European construction incorporates and mediates the flag, issues/themes and the network without destroying these latter in some overarching synthesis and without losing its own specificity, that is, the fact that it is founded on the enunciation of what we term below ‘difference is us’. Within the bazaar, knowledge, in an epoch of globalisation, has taken on a new role as central element in the production process. As a result, it can be argued that knowledge as formation of the individual is moving from the school as an institution to ‘society’, both to society as a network and to society as a site of local sociabilities. There are important implications here for the design of the so-called (in various official EU documents) ‘learning society’. Finally, this chapter will take this discussion further in its attempt to better understand a process of reconfiguration that offers new definitions not only of ‘Europe’, but also of ‘learning’ and of ‘citizen’. We refer to this process in relation to the school as the consequence of its very repoliticisation, that is, a school as a context where citizenship is not only ‘prepared for’ but, rather, where it exercises its claims. 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z