European Identity and the European Dimension in Secondary Education

Author(s):  
Sandra Barkhof
Author(s):  
Elira Luli

Globalization is already an uncontestable process nowadays. Its impacts have affected areas such as: economy, politics, geographical territorial boundaries, identity and national interest, style of life, customs and traditions. Thinking about globalization, the European Union is one of the proper indicators of free circulation of goods, people, products and services. In this context, EU member states are not just a unity of states who share benefits such as single market, currency, space, common civilization values and identity but also a division when it comes to questions related to national interest and national state model and role, sovereignty and ideological issues that some member state are such in obsolete manner attached to them. This paper will examine identity issues within the frame of European Union, in particular not implicitly the unifying factors such as art, culture and history but the divergences that stems from the fact of a single policy for a joint European national interest and speaking in one voice. Ultimately, as the globalization process continue to expand how possible will be to still cultivate culture diversity beyond national frames and extend national identities within a European dimension.


Author(s):  
Alida Favaretto ◽  
Iola De Monte ◽  
Carmela Billotta

The RESCUE project (Retention in Secondary education: a European Network), carried out within the VETPRO mobility action funded by the E.U. Programme “Lifelong Learning,” has implemented the school-family alliance under a new European dimension. Parents, headmasters, teachers from two vocational schools in Treviso, psychologists, and a voluntary organization for educational support have been involved in a mobility entailing a visit to some highly reputed European schools. The project has intended to explore innovative practices apt to improve the concept of joint responsibility among all the members of the school community, with a special focus on retention (seen as the contrast to the drop-out problem), namely on the permanence of the students within the training cycles until attainment of adequate educational levels.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Nancy Spina

The creation of “European educational space” is one of the objectives of the European Union’s (EU) cultural policy. This paper examines an overlooked contradiction within the European educational space discourse, namely the tension between its stated goals of creating a new European identity based on common cultural heritage and its reliance on intercultural education’s ideas of trans‐ethnic identities to address the challenges of immigrants’ integration. Relying on the insights of critical race theory, the paper argues that the key assumptions behind the European educational space and intercultural education, far from being contradictory, are interconnected insofar as intercultural pedagogy informs the tropes of “migrants,” “integration,” and “multiculturalism” that are at the core of the European dimension of education’s discourse. The paper argues that these tropes are part of an evolving discourse about immigrant education that allows the EU to maintain a facade of multicultural benevolence while perpetuating a differential inclusion of EU and non‐EU migrants in Europe. To support these claims, the paper critically examines the evolution of the discourse surrounding migration and integration in the EU, focusing on the main policy initiatives on immigrant youth education elaborated from the 1970s onwards.


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