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Governments worldwide have reformed early childhood education (ECE) to equip young people with competitive skills for an increasingly specialized workforce. These reforms have coincided with a widespread acceptance of meritocratic beliefs holding that talent and effort, rather than uncontrollable factors (e.g., luck, social context), determine individuals’ lifetime success and achievement. This study examines whether recent ECE reforms may have promoted an economic meritocratic mindset that favors skills linked to individual competition for future achievement. Data came from a total of 92 documents published between 1999 and 2023, including ECE advisory reports from international organizations and government-endorsed ECE curricula from 53 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. (DIPF/Orig.).

Future teachers first come into contact with diversified teaching strategies, such as Project-Based Learning, in initial teacher education programmes. Such strategies contrast with the type of methods that they experienced throughout their own schooling, which are essentially teacher centred. The present research aims to understand how Project-Based Learning is being integrated into the curriculum of primary school teachers' initial teacher education programmes. The participants were three higher education institutions located in different regions of Portugal, all of which offer initial teacher education programmes for primary school teachers that include Project-Based Learning at some point. The data were collected through document analysis of the programmes' curricula, as well as through semi-structured interviews with the programme coordinators in each institution. The results show that the institutions value Project-Based Learning and make an effort to include it in their programmes, whether in theoretical, didactical or practical terms. However, they encounter some difficulties in promoting more significant experiences that would enable the students to feel confident to use this strategy in their Supervised Teaching Practice internships. (DIPF/Orig.).

This paper argues that legislative intervention rather than deontological rules could be an adequate tool to address academic integrity concerns, particularly in civil law jurisdictions, which is the case in the majority of European countries. The recently enacted Montenegrin law on academic integrity offers a promising foundation for developing such an intervention in the European context, along with suggested improvements drawing upon four years of the implementation experience. Analysis of the law is also conducted with regard to several provisions of the Council of Europe's recently adopted Recommendation on Education Fraud. The paper does not offer a ready-made concept, but its deliberation can serve as an inspiration for governments trying to improve existing rules on academic integrity. A legal approach will be taken in examining the problems and the relevant legislation. (DIPF/Orig.).

This paper reviews existing policies related to anti-racism and anti-discrimination at five major universities in Canada and assesses the equity initiatives undertaken by university authorities to promote greater access and inclusion of different ethnic minority groups. The study is based on secondary data sources. Therefore, policy papers, documents, study reports available in those universities, government policy and legislation, journals, and similar were consulted to construct the piece. Findings reveal that although the universities have some sort of anti-racism and anti-discrimination policies to combat racism and discrimination in their educational setting, they face challenges or limitations in adopting holistic and inclusive measures for the different ethnic and diverse minority groups studying there. The study argued for promoting discussions and responses to specific policies, programmes, and practices, including behaviours and attitudes in the institutional and professional contexts, for combating racism and discrimination. The findings may be helpful for academics, policymakers, and administrators to develop their understanding of institutional racism, identify challenges, and adopt policy measures to address it. (DIPF/Orig.).

Purpose: The years 1960-1970 were decisive years in the development of Swiss vocational education and training (VET). The post-World War II economic boom, technological innovations and the debate concerning equal opportunities and the democratisation of education put the VET system under pressure. Reforms were thus undertaken to increase the attractiveness of the system and to respond to the urgent shortage of qualified workers at the time. At the same time, reforms were adopted increasing the theoretical and general knowledge content of VET and improving the quality of training. The aim of our article is to describe these reforms and to show how they relate to a certain image of the future of society. Method: Our article is based on an analysis of historical documents written between 1960 and 1972 in Switzerland on the subject of VET. These documents will, firstly, be used for a historical reconstruction of the situation and of the major challenges of the time; and secondly, they will be subjected to a discourse analysis in order to identify the main arguments that characterised the public debate at the time. Results: Our article shows how the reforms undertaken take shape on the basis of a certain image of the future of society and of VET held at the time: an image characterised by constant and rapid changes, increasing insecurity, need for adaptation and flexibility, complexification and specialisation of the work tasks. Conclusion: The article will also underline how the responses to the challenges posed by this image of the future will be at the origin of five trends that will characterise the evolution of Swiss VET until today: a trend towards academisation, with more academic and general content; a trend towards pedagogisation, with increased pedagogical attention to curricula and teacher training; differentiation, with the creation of new certifications; permeability, with the opening of vocational tracks to higher education; and \"learnerisation\", with the gradual change of the figure of the apprentice from a \"worker\" to a \"learner\". Far from being limited to the evolution of Swiss VET, these five trends describe movements that recent studies by CEDEFOP show also at the European level. (DIPF/Orig.).

Purpose: Education policy implementation is as important as policy design. This study applies a literature-based, multi-dimensional framework for success factors and barriers to vocational education and training (VET) reform implementation in the case of a new dual VET law in Serbia. We use the framework to assess factors related to implementation, then relate these factors to actual implementation progress to determine how factors relate to progress. In this application of the framework, we examine whether implementation success requires high scores in every dimension. Methods: This is a mixed methods study. We conduct document analysis of key resources related to the structure and intention of the reform. We also statistically analyze a dataset of two rounds of interviews conducted during the pre- and early-implementation phases. These interviews include key stakeholders from the public and private sectors, and from national, regional, and local-level actors. We examine how the framework's dimensions and determinants relate to implementation progress. Results: The implementation of the law is moving forward in Serbia, making this a successful case of progress in policy implementation. Despite this progress, the factors for implementation are not all strong. We find that the content dimension of the framework is a barrier, capacity is unclear, and context, commitment, and clients-actors' engagement- drive implementation progress. Thus, although the implementation process is imperfect in its determinants, it is successfully progressing and already forming the new system. Conclusions: Based on our results we argue that-even if the framework describes factors that affect VET reform implementation-not all elements are necessary for VET reform implementation to progress. Policymakers can start without perfect implementation conditions and may benefit from striving for \"good enough\" across dimensions rather than perfect in any one dimension. We discuss potential mechanisms and identify pathways for future research, including moving in the direction of causal research. (DIPF/Orig.).

Der vorliegende Beitrag berichtet Ergebnisse einer ländervergleichenden Dokumentenanalyse bezüglich zentraler rechtlicher Regelungen zur Benotung schriftlicher und mündlicher Leistungen an Gymnasien und fragt nach Implikationen der Befunde. Deutlich werden klare Differenzen zwischen den verschiedenen Bundesländern, die den Blick weiten, und hohe Freiräume in den rechtlichen Bestimmungen, die durch einzelschulische Übereinkünfte gefüllt werden können und müssen. (DIPF/Orig.). This article outlines central results of a comparative analysis of documents from different federal states regarding the legal regulations on the grading of written and oral performance at the Gymnasium and discusses implications. Substantial differences were found between states and a wide scope for individual schools to implement the regulations. (DIPF/Orig.).

An accessible and contemporary introduction to the methods for determining cause and effect in the social sciences Causal inference encompasses the tools that allow social scientists to determine what causes what. Economists-who generally can't run controlled experiments to test and validate their hypotheses-apply these tools to observational data to make connections. In a messy world, causal inference is what helps establish the causes and effects of the actions being studied, whether the impact (or lack thereof) of increases in the minimum wage on employment, the effects of early childhood education on incarceration later in life, or the introduction of malaria nets in developing regions on economic growth. Scott Cunningham introduces students and practitioners to the methods necessary to arrive at meaningful answers to the questions of causation, using a range of modeling techniques and coding instructions for both the R and Stata programming languages.

Context: Sense-making, understood as meaning making or giving meaning to experience, is an integral part of everyday life, work and learning, and is a process critical in enabling people to recognise how and when to respond to situations appropriately so that they can resolve problems effectively (Weick et al., 2005). Earlier studies on sense-making in educational or organizational settings (e.g. Harverly et al., 2020; Weick et al., 2005) tended to focus on the sense-making process per se in particular setting such as classrooms or organizations, few of them have paid much attention to the sense-making process in blended learning (BL). BL in vocational training mainly aims to enable adult learners to apply what was learnt in classrooms to solve authentic problems in workplaces or simulated settings. High quality of sense-making is crucial to help the learners achieve the aim. This timely study is to offer a comparative look at how different dynamics of BL interplay together to mediate the quality of sense-making in achieving learning outcomes. The dynamics include industry and training connections, policy and institutional contexts, the inhabited pedagogical practices and curriculum design. Methods: This study adopted phenomenological (Moran, 2000) and semi-ethnographic approaches (Hammersley, 2010), including semi-structured interviews, observations, analysis of relevant documents (e.g. curriculum and learning materials) to capture the rich data in case studies to understand learners' sense-making experience in BL. Researchers focused on seeking to understand how different environments, tools and artefacts mediate the quality of sense-making as the learners progressed through their learning journey. To triangulate the data, adult educators, curriculum designers and where possible, workplace supervisors, were also interviewed and observed for their perceptions and behaviours in learners' sense-making in BL. Findings: The findings from two different BL courses (ICT and HR) surface that the degree to which learners' sense-making is fragmented (low quality) or seamless (high quality) is mediated by the interplay of different contextual factors in BL in multiple ways, such as, the connections (or not) with industry, the use (or not) of authentic problems and tasks. Conclusion: The interplay between different dynamics in BL is of great importance to mediate the curriculum design and pedagogical approaches used in BL for high quality of sense-making of adult learners in vocational training. (DIPF/Orig.).

This paper examines the effect of data management platforms on professional educators. The ways in which platforms re-shape new professional patterns of school leaders and education bureaucrats is presented through the data management platform, OneSchool. OneSchool is used across 1,258 public schools in Queensland, Australia. Empirical data were gathered from interviews with senior bureaucrats, policy officers, and school leaders from Queensland's public schooling system. Thematic analysis identified shifts in educational practitioners' professional roles as they performed their tasks through OneSchool. Analysis of traditional school roles and tasks on the one hand and demands of online security and information privacy legislations on the other were brought together in an access assemblage. Access was provided by the authorized allocation of 'roles' embedded into the platform's technical code. A dual perspective of the development and use of the OneSchool platform is used to show how educational behaviors, skills and qualities are mutually constitutive of platformized professionalities. To make sense of these platformized professionalities, a diffraction lens is employed, derived from Barad's (2007) considerations within new feminist materialism and physics. Recalling Foucault's (1983) adage that everything is dangerous rather than bad, this paper provides insight into the positive and negative ways platforms disrupt and re-shape educational practitioners and their professionalities. (DIPF/Orig.).