Changing Educational Aims in a Changing Europe: some analytical considerations

1. Changing Educational Aims in a Changing Europe: some analytical considerations Stavros Moutsios

2. New identity formation in Europe • increasing flexibility in career and life patterns • weakening of nation state sovereignty • liberal democracy in crisis • pluralisation of group identities • proliferation of cultural codes • the culture of individualism • religious fundamentalism • nationalist explosion • political extremism

3. (European Commission, (2002) Education and training in Europe: diverse systems, shared goals for 2010. p. 9). However effective the policies in other areas, making the European Union the leading knowledge-based economy in the world will only be possible with the crucial contribution from education and training as factors of economic growth, innovation, sustainable employability and social cohesion. … education and training are more than instruments for employability and have broader responsibilities to citizens and society… [they] contribute to their personal development for a better life and active citizenship in democratic societies respecting cultural and linguistic diversity. They play also an important role in building up social cohesion by preventing discrimination, exclusion, racism and xenophobia and hence in promoting the fundamental values shared by European societies, such as tolerance and the respect for human rights

4. ‘Any education reform can be regarded as the outcome of a struggle to project and institutionalise a particular pedagogic identity’. Bernstein, B. (1992) A pedagogic identity emerges out of embedding a desired career in a collective base. The career of the student is a moral career and a skill career . . . The collective base is the principles of social order institutionalised by the state and reproduced in education. Bernstein, B. (1992)

5. A typology of pedagogic identities in Europe Reorganisation and globalisation of capitalism European Union Pedagogic identities project resistance linear flexible pluralistic emancipatory retrospective

6. Resistance pedagogic identities These pedagogic identities are constructed by established (or revived) educational policies and pedagogic practices which resist the EU’s educational discourse. They are distinguished here in three types: Linear. Constructed by education systems destined to serve national and political solidarity and the national industrial economy. The main assumption here is that learning precedes entrance to the labour market, which more or less can ensure a linear and relative stable career. Centralised control, uniformity and bureaucratic managerial and pedagogic hierarchies prevail in the formation of these identities. Emancipatory. They draw from the ideological and theoretical discourses of the so-called New Education movement or ‘child-centred’ or ‘progressive’ education. The main aim here is the personal emancipation, self-regulation, empowerment and self-fulfilment of the learner. There is total opposition to the use of learning for economic purposes. Retrospective. They are constructed by a strong emphasis on the national, religious and cultural past, real or imaginary, and by its projection to the future. Their formulation, which may not always be supported by the official state, stresses the threats posed by globalisation, cultural diversification and the increasing presence of aliens or infidels and strengthens discrimination boundaries against the ‘other’, living outside or inside a given nation-state, as a strategy of safeguarding these identities from cultural contamination.

7. Project pedagogic identities These pedagogic identities are promoted by the education reform policies of the EU which aims at ensuring its economic competitiveness and creating a base of social and cultural solidarity between the citizens of the Union’s state-members. They are distinguished here into flexible and pluralistic. Flexible. All educational policy and pedagogic practice here is orientated to the (uncertain) future, a development future for the EU and a career future for the individual. Effective transmission and acquisition of useful, exchangeable knowledge in various contexts and modes is of high priority. The individual must be able to learn in order to make stronger the European ‘knowledge economy’and change jobs according to labour market needs. Flexible trainability is a sine qua non condition for employability. Pluralistic. Here values are drawn from humanitarian and liberal democratic principles, aiming at the acceptance by citizens of the cultural pluralism they experience inside and outside of the borders of their nation-state, virtually and physically. Citizenship education with a European dimension is highly emphasised in the school curricula. The main purpose is the creation of a new basis of social solidarity at the EU level and the enabling of the individual to manage cultural diversity and continuous personal reformulation.

8. Main features of the typology

9. Main References • Bernstein, B. (1992) Educational Reform and Pedagogic Identities. Paper Presented at World Bank Seminar, Department of Education: Santiago, Chile 11-11-1992. • Bernstein, B. (1996) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. London: Taylor & Francis. • Carnoy, M. (2000) Sustaining the New Economy: Work, Family, and Community in the Information Age. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. • Castells, M. (1997) The Power of Identity. Oxford, Blackwell. • Cowen, R. (1996) ‘Last Past the Post: Comparative Education, Modernity and perhaps Post-Modernity’. Comparative Education, 32(2): 151-170. • Davis, J. E. (2000) (ed.) Identity and Social Change. London, Transaction. • European Commission (2002) Education and training in Europe: diverse systems, shared goals for 2010. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. • Harvey (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. • Moutsios, S. (2004) ‘The Identity of the European Union and the European Pedagogic Identities’ In Buk-Berge, E., Holm-Larsen, S., and Wiborg, S., (eds) Education Across Borders: Comparative Studies. Oslo: Didakta Norsk Forlag [in English]. • Sennett, R. (1998) The Corrosion of Character. New York: W.W. Norton.