EERJ Call for Papers -The European Curriculum: Restructuring and Renewal

The European Educational Research Journal would like to produce a special issue on the processes of curriculum reform in European education systems in 2012.

Editors:

• Prof Kirsten Sivesind, University of Oslo
• Prof Jan vanden Akker, University of Twente and Director General, SLO (Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development)
• Prof Moritz  Rosenmund, Universities of Vienna and Zurich
  
  

Call for Papers

The EERJ works within the idea that European education exists today  within a borderless space containing significant flows of ideas,  policies and academics, between countries, in networks and associations,  and in projects. From the beginning, it has encouraged research across  European borders and across the field of educational studies: it has  published symposia and network papers in a range of fields on European  education policy, market reforms, travelling policies, public education, social capital, the technology of numbers, mobility, didactics and  social justice.

This Call for Papers is focused on current processes and programmes of curriculum reform as a key problematic in understanding knowledge formation and education policy steering in Europe.
Indeed, the dominance of the knowledge economy paradigm as an organising policy principle for education has accentuated research attention to comparisons of performance, policy learning, and technologies of governance like the Bologna Process and OECD PISA. However, curricula and their associated pedagogic practices remain under-researched as elements in the shaping and governing of a European education policy space.

After a long dominance of national reform efforts and decentralised decision power, Europeanisation and cross-national comparisons are becoming more central in the national educational policy agenda. New qualifications frameworks across Europe draw attention, not only to quality processes, but to common interests in curriculum and evaluation. From kindergarten to higher education, policymakers and practitioners discuss what knowledge is of most worth, how to think about the curriculum, and how it should be evaluated and assessed to facilitate new ways of learning. The formation of knowledge is the core of this activity, and concentrates attention on schooling and new flexible learning pedagogies.

Questions for the Call  include

• Are national education futures still produced within curriculum texts and discourses?
• Are there convergences in curriculum thinking and theory across time and space?
• Do key agencies and actors share common ideas and mores in deciding upon the “what, “how” and “why” of teaching?
• How is knowledge transferred and translated between the global and the local arena?
• Are European wide standards being created in curriculum and instruction?
• Is curriculum still a viable idea?

In a time of governing by performance and comparison, can European curriculum and knowledge formation manage its contradictions and still produce identity, meaning and culture?

The EERJ reviews submitted papers on the basis of the quality of their argument, the contemporary nature of their work, and the level of 'speaking' from the local to the European in which they are engaged. All the manuscripts will be peer-reviewed.

There is no limit on manuscript length but they will normally be between 6/7000 words.

The deadline for submission is January 31st 2012
Please make sure your submission refers to the Call in its email heading.
Send all submissions to Martin Lawn – m.lawn@btinternet.com