Events 

 Social Cohesion: Schools and their Communities

Strategies for inclusion and social cohesion in Europe from education (INCLUD-ED) is a five-year European Union-funded Sixth Framework Programme Integrated research project (2006-2011). The project involves national and comparative research conducted across 14 European countries. INCLUD-ED is focused on the study of the interactions between educational systems, agents and policies, up to the compulsory level (i.e. pre-primary, primary, and secondary education, including vocational and special education programmes). 

Based upon this research, a half-day public seminar will take place at the University of Nottingham-Jubilee Campus on Friday, February 13, 2009 from 9:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. At this seminar, national and comparative results will be presented by members of the scientific community from different European countries involved in the INCLUD-ED project. The seminar will also include presentations on recent policy trends in the UK focused on the relationship between schools, families and communities, given by national, regional, local and community organisation representatives, as well as members of the scientific community engaged in educational research.

For further details please contact: Dr Laura C Engel, laura.engel@nottingham.ac.uk

Research News 

A new pan-European virtual library has been launched. Called Europeana, this multilingual resource offers access to over two million digitised books, maps, recordings, photographs, archive documents, paintings and films. This site initially had some technical difficulties, and is still in development, but already has a wide range of resources available for viewing.

The European Commission and European Science Foundation (ESF) have launched a new web portal, the European Portal on Research Infrastructures Database. This online database provides information about ‘research infrastructure’ in member states and can be searched by country, discipline (including ‘socio-economic sciences’) and type of infrastructure. The database is not yet exhaustive, but may help researchers find research partners in other member states.

Policy Developments 

Publications   

• In 2009, the Journal of Curriculum Studies will publish a series of articles from EEPN members on the theme of "Citizenship Education Curricula: The Changes and Challenges presented by European and Global integration". Further details about this issue can be found here.
• Grek, S. (2009) 'Governing by numbers: the PISA 'effect' in Europe'. In: Journal of Education Policy. Volume 24, Issue 1 January 2009 , pages 23 - 37