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Although engineering education has played important roles in China’s growing power and influence on the world stage, engineering education policy since the Reform and Opening-up in the late 1970s has not been well documented in current English-language scholarship. Informed by historical and sociological studies of education, engineering and engineering education, this paper attempts to address this scholarly gap by relating contemporary Chinese engineering education policy-making to its broader historical, cultural and ideological contexts. Based on analysis of policy documents and reports released by the Chinese government and engineering schools, and drawing on prior scholarship of Chinese (engineering) education policy, this paper employs the concept of ‘past/forward’ as an analytic lens to interpret and understand four major areas of engineering education policy change in contemporary China: institutional reform, disciplines and majors, training objectives, and curriculum reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through the example of the establishment, functioning, and closing of bilingual schools during the Soviet occupation of Hungary, this paper aims to introduce this segment of public education in Central-Eastern Europe. In the period between 1945 and 1989, the learning of Russian as a compulsory subject was introduced, teaching other languages was restricted, and Hungarian-Russian bilingual schools were launched. The features of their establishment can be connected to political and professional power relations in different sub-periods within the structures of closed language policy. The objective in both states was the education of committed political elite. The first school was established by direct political control and closed because of the 1956 revolution. The second school was established in 1974, through professional and political compromises. The third school opened at the end of the period, as part of a top-down development project involving 14 schools. A number of European target languages (still including Russian) were introduced, which can be regarded as the opening up of language education policy. Relying on sources, documents, and personal recollections, the study aims to reveal the dynamics of the interrelations between controlled language education, University and the changes in Hungarian economic, social, domestic, and foreign policy in the given periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to highlight the prominence and relevance attached by the Franco dictatorial regime to emotions and sentiments in primary education textbooks. The authors of school textbooks employed a singular writing style, which enabled them to permeate the regime's ideology within the primary education community and classroom. Overcoming the censorship of their textbooks lent the authors a measure of authority derived from the government, increasing the schoolbook's relevance as the instructional resource par excellence. The sentimental narrative, reinforced by figurative, pseudo-poetic language and precise instructions on how and what to feel, represents prescriptive texts and reveals the objective of emotionally homogenising and indoctrinating the children in order to socialise them politically and religiously, moulding their socio-political self and identity within the pattern established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the formation and development of educational research institutions within the educational administration using the example of four research institutions in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The analysis gives insight into the institutionalisation process of education research outside the university with special focus on the formation process, actors involved and goals defined. Since the end of the 1950s cantonal parliaments and later the Swiss Science Council requested educational research to remain competitive in a changing post-industrial world. The study strengthens the assumption that educational research conquered a place in the world of relevance as scientific approaches became a necessary precondition for legitimising political and administrative processes. The transnational scientific discourse was of indirect and direct importance although the modus of influence often remains covert. The empirical material shows that certain collective and individual actors played an important role during the years of institutionalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper, largely based on new, previously unused documents from US archives, considers the consultancy group financed by the Ford Foundation in 1960 to support the school reforms the Italian Minister of Education Giuseppe Medici was promoting. The group was headed by James Bryant Conant, and its evaluations were based on principles of ‘meritocratic’ democratisation: universal access to comprehensive lower secondary school should have been accompanied by ‘cooling out’ mechanisms at subsequent levels. Conant’s suggestions were ignored. In 1962, the newScuola mediawas established thanks to a compromise between the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, and was founded on uniform treatment and equal outcomes rather than equal starting points in competition. In spite of this, the Italian experience was subsequently used within the Ford Foundation to integrate Conant’s ideas in their strategies for international programmes, and gave birth to planning studies for national education requirements based on manpower needs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the process of production and regulation of school textbooks in Poland under communist rule. The stages of textbook approval were as follows: selection of authors; editorial work at the publishing house; discussions in the commissions of the Ministry of Education; decisions of the censorship office. It is argued that the Polish United Workers’ Party (i.e. the Polish communist party) played a dominant role at every step of this process. The question of possible influence of the Soviet communists is also addressed. Some changes in the textbook approval process are traced in time, with emphasis put on sustainability of the principle of dominant position of the party. The constraints of power of the communist regime in the field of education are briefly discussed, with the human factor given most serious consideration. There had always been a shortage of people, from the party’s point of view, ready to implement rules, and far too many of those who undermined them. This analysis is based on the archival holdings of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of Poland and of the censorship office. Teachers’ press and other publications dealing with school textbooks and history of education in the People’s Poland have also been used. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Greek historiography of interwar education policy unproblematically accepts the assumption that the bone of contention between the ‘Liberal demoticists’ and the ‘Conservative purists’ was the language issue; particularly whetherdemoticorkatharevousashould be the language of instruction in schooling. This paper aims to challenge this assumption arguing that neither were the camps as homogeneous as has been traditionally assumed nor was the language what ultimately provoked the controversy. What was at stake here was the national and social ideology of education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the creation of the schools called ikastolas throughout the Basque Country from the 1960s onwards. The name ikastola refers to a unique school model whose major characteristic is to teach the majority of subjects in the Basque language, or euskera. It outlines the reasons why some of these schools took a co-operative organisational form and describes their major characteristics. The first part analyses the opportunities created under the Francoist regime for this kind of school, despite the repressive character of the dictatorship in other fields. The second part of the paper examines the important influence of the Mondragón co-operative movement, especially through its financial institution, in the creation of these educational co-operatives. The third and last part emphasises the role played by social mobilisation in defence of the Basque language in the creation of these schools and how this factor tied in with a co-operative governance system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an examination of the history of Scottish religious education (RE). Focusing on 1962–1992, it distinguishes the temporal processes that unfolded during this period to identify the circumstances that led to a serious case of neglect of the subject, especially in the non-denominational sector. Next, it highlights the less emphasised but important issue of how RE ‘survived’ in public education, going on to explicate the antecedents of a paradigm shift in the subject. Finally, curriculum reforms undertaken in the subject from the 1980s onwards are described, showing how these reforms helped to transform Scottish RE into an ‘academic’ subject well aligned with the curricular principles of ‘5–14’, the country’s first (1992) ‘educational’ RE programme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze primary education policy during the administration of the self-proclaimed "Liberating Revolution". The few studies that have examined this issue state that the Liberating Revolution government erased the traces that Peronism had left in the education system. Our interest is to review this process. To do this, we analyze the conflicts within the government, the institutional design of education governance and internal organization of schools. We ask whether despite the ideological and political ruptures, it is possible to find elements of continuity with the previous period. Our empirical observation area is the province of Buenos Aires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of physical education in Labour Universities (1955–1978) during Franco’s regime as an instrument of indoctrination and declassing of the working class. The conclusions obtained after the study and the analysis of various primary sources indicate that, initially, physical education was used as an instrument of indoctrination for the purposes of achieving the social and ideological model of Franco’s regime after the Fascist uprising (1936–1939). However, this initial orientation became less relevant in the 1960s, in favour of the inherent aspects of sport, which contributed to the declassing of the young workers. In fact, Labour Universities became national benchmarks in the area of sports within the education system. Physical education lost its indoctrinating and declassing roles after the General Law of Education was passed in 1970, and the focus shifted instead to its role as an activity for participation, education and comprehensive training. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study tries to make a revision of the conflicts, negotiations and coexistences that characterized the configuration of the pedagogical field in Argentina during the 1930s, as well as recognizing the place that the New School occupied in it. This school of thought was not totally consistent as a whole: in fact, there was a wide range of interpretations about these ideas. In the Argentine pedagogical field of this decade, the relationship between the State and the educationalists who promoted New School's ideas was not always characterized by imposition or transgression. The New School wasn't an outsider in the educational system and the educational policy received its influence. Argentine promoters of New School that gathered around La Obra tried to present themselves as innovators in terms of pedagogical knowledge in order to appear as the only group capable of transforming the educational system as well as the only qualified to become spokesman for all the teachers in the country. This paper will analyze the underlying logic of the speeches of teachers and educationalists. It will be stated throughout this article that even though the Argentine pedagogical field had close connections with politics, it also followed its own path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution looks into nationalization and education in European borderlands in the early post-World War II period. Belonging to Belgium and Poland, respectively, in the interwar years, the Eupen–St. Vith–Malmedy and the East-Upper Silesia regions came under German rule during World War II. Returned to the Belgian and Polish nation-states once the war was over, the regions experienced a pronounced upheaval in the population profile as a result of population transfers and reorientations in education curricula. The aim of these measures was to guarantee the national reliability of borderland inhabitants, with a special role being designated for teachers, who were perceived as crucial in the raising of children as national citizens imbued with certain core values. This contribution compares the methods employed by the authorities in selecting educational personnel for their borderlands, the nationalizing role teachers were to play and the way teachers gave meaning to their professional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]