Suchergebnisse

This article provides the results of classroom research involving university students training to be secondary school teachers of geography and history. The research is based on the analysis of a word association test on Europe and the European Union. The results constitute an approach to the geographical and historical representations these students have of their own European continent. This is a fundamental question considering that this collective group is training to teach the contents and values of European geography in secondary school education. From here on, our intention is no other than to carry out an exercise of synthesis and overall reflection on the test results and introduce issues which could generate some debate in the educational community.

This article provides the results of classroom research involving university students training to be secondary school teachers of geography and history. The research is based on the analysis of a word association test on Europe and the European Union. The results constitute an approach to the geographical and historical representations these students have of their own European continent. This is a fundamental question considering that this collective group is training to teach the contents and values of European geography in secondary school education. From here on, our intention is no other than to carry out an exercise of synthesis and overall reflection on the test results and introduce issues which could generate some debate in the educational community.

This article provides the results of classroom research involving university students training to be secondary school teachers of geography and history. The research is based on the analysis of a word association test on Europe and the European Union. The results constitute an approach to the geographical and historical representations these students have of their own European continent. This is a fundamental question considering that this collective group is training to teach the contents and values of European geography in secondary school education. From here on, our intention is no other than to carry out an exercise of synthesis and overall reflection on the test results and introduce issues which could generate some debate in the educational community. ; This publication was prepared under the framework of a project called Social skills for a democratic citizenship: analysis, development and assessment [EDU2015-65621-C3-1-R], funded by the State Programme for Research, Development and Innovation Focusing on Challenges in Society for the Government of Spain [R+D+I, call 2015], the network of excellence - Red14 (State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2013-2016, EDU2014-51720-REDT) and NEDAT (Programme for the Consolidation and Structuring of Competitive Research in the Galician University System, Network mode, R2014/018) ; SI

Frequent examination has been made of the problems confronting the student arriving from Europe; the major problems of adaptation arise from diff's in pedagogical methods, the rules of U soc life, & the habits governing people's daily lives, from rules of courtesy to methods of cookery. But these are secondary problems governed by an historical situation which is the perpetually renewed dialogue between the US & Europe. Moreover, the problem is a completely individual one & must remain so; there are no prefabricated solutions. In this perspective, cultural exchanges are part of an immense historical movement, the signif of which still partially escapes us. Thus, a solution should not be sought merely to the problems which are posed today by diverse national pasts, but a cultural policy should be formulated in preparation for a future. On a practical level & in order to facilitate the arrival of this future, the major problem to be examined today, insofar as the European student is concerned, is that of scholastic equivalences. This problem is the result of an increasingly closer international & cultural cooperation. Furthermore, its solution would result immediately in the disappearance of numerous secondary problems which now beset the exchange student. AA.

This paper analyses some of the theoretical and empirical arguments that serve to legitimate regional policies in Europe. We start by reviewing the existing evidence that European integration has led to a process of convergence between countries but not between regions inside countries and suggest some mechanisms through which this can happen. Taking the example of France, we show that in the past twenty years regional divergence in production has indeed occurred. However, the geography of incomes has, during the same period, become more equal producing a "scissors effect" between the geographies of production and income. This suggests that transfers, which have nothing to do with regional policies, have, at least in France, more than compensated the increase in production inequality. Hence, "regional convergence" is not a synonym of "regional cohesion" at least at the national level. We then review evidence on a possible trade-off between growth and regional inequalities to suggest that efficiency motives can not easily be used to defend regional policies. Both evidence and theory suggest that regional concentration leads to efficiency gains. This also implies that the EU is faced with a choice it has tried to avoid until now. Either, it puts its effort in slowing or even reversing the process of spatial economic concentration at the national level or it concentrates on policies to speed up the convergence process between poor and rich countries. Finally, we analyse the relation between spatial and social inequalities. We report empirical evidence for Europe that suggests a strong empirical relation between the two: even after controlling for transfers and other possible determinants of individual inequalities, we find that countries with more regional inequalities are also those with more individual inequalities.

This paper analyses some of the theoretical and empirical arguments that serve to legitimate regional policies in Europe. We start by reviewing the existing evidence that European integration has led to a process of convergence between countries but not between regions inside countries and suggest some mechanisms through which this can happen. Taking the example of France, we show that in the past twenty years regional divergence in production has indeed occurred. However, the geography of incomes has, during the same period, become more equal producing a "scissors effect" between the geographies of production and income. This suggests that transfers, which have nothing to do with regional policies, have, at least in France, more than compensated the increase in production inequality. Hence, "regional convergence" is not a synonym of "regional cohesion" at least at the national level. We then review evidence on a possible trade-off between growth and regional inequalities to suggest that efficiency motives can not easily be used to defend regional policies. Both evidence and theory suggest that regional concentration leads to efficiency gains. This also implies that the EU is faced with a choice it has tried to avoid until now. Either, it puts its effort in slowing or even reversing the process of spatial economic concentration at the national level or it concentrates on policies to speed up the convergence process between poor and rich countries. Finally, we analyse the relation between spatial and social inequalities. We report empirical evidence for Europe that suggests a strong empirical relation between the two: even after controlling for transfers and other possible determinants of individual inequalities, we find that countries with more regional inequalities are also those with more individual inequalities.

Frequent examination has been made of the problems confronting the student arriving from Europe; the major problems of adaptation arise from differences in peda gogical methods, the rules of university social life, and the habits governing people's daily lives, from rules of courtesy to methods of cookery. But these are secondary problems governed by an historical situation which is the perpetually renewed dialogue between the United States and Europe. Moreover, the problem is a completely individual one and must remain so; there are no prefabricated solutions. In this perspective, cultural exchanges are part of an immense histori cal movement, the significance of which still partially escapes us. Thus, a solution should not be sought merely to the prob lems which are posed today by diverse national pasts, but a cultural policy should be formulated in preparation for a fu ture. On a practical level and in order to facilitate the arrival of this future, the major problem to be examined today, insofar as the European student is concerned, is that of scholastic equivalences. This problem is the result of an increasingly closer international and cultural co-operation. Furthermore, its solution would result immediately in the disappearance of numerous secondary problems which now beset the exchange student.

The challenges and opportunities of the Europe of Knowledge run alongside the competing requirements of peer review and regular 'research assessments' for many academics, not least in the UK. In this personal reflection, Julie Smith considers the impact of the Europe of Knowledge on research for social scientists and how its requirements fit with a need to demonstrate excellence and impact both in academic and practical terms. She notes that there is often a tension between attempts to deliver 'excellence' and 'impact', even within a context where both these concepts and the broader idea of 'knowledge' are difficult to measure. On balance, researchers are increasingly integrated into European networks and aspire to excellence but the constraints of funding, both nationally and at the EU level, mean that blue-skies research is not often possible.