Search

In the field of global education policy, it is common for scholars to reflect on the progress made toward internationally agreed-upon agendas, such as Education for All (EFA). However, scant research has turned the gaze back on the major multilateral institutions that commit to taking the lead in meeting these agendas in order to ask, what implications do such agendas have for these organizations? We respond in this article by investigating the way in which UNESCO used its position as the coordinator of EFA to help it regain some of the legitimacy it lost in the preceding decades. To do so, the article first elaborates a tripartite conceptualization of organizational legitimacy and then applies it to the two prongs of UNESCO's strategy--EFA coordination and the production of the Global Monitoring Reports (GMRs) during a key period, 2000-2014, that were at the forefront of UNESCO's efforts to rebrand and reposition itself in the context of multilateralism.

At its inception in 1993, the European Union (EU) did not consider education one of the pillars of its regional cohesiveness and identity. As time went by, recognition of the potential role of education at individual and social levels increased. This concern for education, however, is much more centred on the acquisition of knowledge and skills towards developing a competitive labour force than towards facilitating the integration of all citizens in the European community--a bias which is reflected in EU policies and recommendations. At local levels, communities need to offer educational opportunities to all members of society, irrespective of their social, cultural and linguistic background and their level of education. In many EU member countries, this kind of learning is offered by "popular universities" (PUs), which are not state-funded and run in close collaboration with their respective local communities. The authors of this paper carried out a qualitative survey, collecting data on PUs in Spain and France. Their purpose was to examine how European PU offerings align with community needs, and to what extent they address emerging issues such as immigration, the refugee crisis, an aging population and youth unemployment. In the evaluation of their comparative survey, the authors link the grassroots approaches of PUs in Spain and France to the broader European Union (EU) discourse on lifelong learning (LLL) as seen in policy documents such as the European Commission's "Memorandum on Lifelong Learning". Finally, they examine the ways in which PUs' approach to LLL works to contest the dominant consensus on the meaning and scope of lifelong learning, offering an alternative way forward.

This research note shares insights which resulted from a larger study into the ways in which the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)--during 2010-2014--used its position as coordinator of the post-Dakar Framework for Action (initiated at the World Education Forum held in 2000 and designed to reinvigorate the Education for All initiative) to help it regain some of the legitimacy it had lost in the preceding decades. The research study focused on the role of both the UNESCO Education for All Follow-up Unit and the production of the Global Monitoring Report (GMR) during the 2000s because they were at the heart of UNESCO's efforts to repair its image and renew its impact in one area of global governance, specifically in the global education policy field. The study's findings were based on an analysis of documents, archives and interviews (n = 17) with key actors inside and outside UNESCO, including representatives of UNESCO's peer institutions.

This study contributes to the literature on women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by examining the framing of engineering on college websites, a major recruitment tool. We take websites to be key sources of textual data that can provide insights into the discourses surrounding the field of engineering. We ask whether women-only institutions (WOIs) frame engineering in ways that appeal more broadly to women. Our sample comprises the full range of WOIs offering engineering degrees in the US (14) and a comparison sample of 14 coeducational universities also offering engineering degrees. We employ established methods for discourse analysis, and both deductive and inductive coding processes in analyzing the textual data. Our main findings indicate that WOIs' framing of engineering places a greater emphasis on collaboration, supports for students, interdisciplinarity, and the potential for engineering to contribute to improvements for society. In contrast, co-ed institutions tend to place a greater emphasis on the financial returns and job security that result from majoring in engineering. We conclude that co-ed engineering programs should consider a broadening of the descriptions surrounding the engineering field, since the inclusion of a wider set of values could be appealing to women students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]