Rita Hofstetter - Böcker

Border-crossing in Education comprises a series of case studies covering a variety of cultural areas, in order to reveal the density of connections and exchanges that inform educational practices, policies, and systems. It attaches particular importance to individual and collective actors that govern these flows – initiating, promoting, or reconfiguring transfers of policy models. The contributors explore various aspects of the circulatory mechanisms that have been deployed in the field of education during the modern and contemporary period. Varying the observation scales, from local to international, they demonstrate the multilateral character of the circulatory dynamics observed. The implementation of rich and varied approaches to these complex processes offers a perspective that complements and renews our knowledge of the genesis and evolution of educational policies and systems, most notably highlighting their foreign inspirations. However, these studies do not merely evoke borrowings and hybridization, as if national borders proved porous or non-existent. Instead they show that the phenomena of resistance, reinterpretation, and rejection are also an integral part of transnational mechanisms of exchanges. The book thus demonstrates the relevance of a historical approach in addressing these transnational mechanisms in the field of education and childhood policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Paedagogica Historica.

Border-crossing in Education comprises a series of case studies covering a variety of cultural areas, in order to reveal the density of connections and exchanges that inform educational practices, policies, and systems. It attaches particular importance to individual and collective actors that govern these flows – initiating, promoting, or reconfiguring transfers of policy models. The contributors explore various aspects of the circulatory mechanisms that have been deployed in the field of education during the modern and contemporary period. Varying the observation scales, from local to international, they demonstrate the multilateral character of the circulatory dynamics observed. The implementation of rich and varied approaches to these complex processes offers a perspective that complements and renews our knowledge of the genesis and evolution of educational policies and systems, most notably highlighting their foreign inspirations. However, these studies do not merely evoke borrowings and hybridization, as if national borders proved porous or non-existent. Instead they show that the phenomena of resistance, reinterpretation, and rejection are also an integral part of transnational mechanisms of exchanges. The book thus demonstrates the relevance of a historical approach in addressing these transnational mechanisms in the field of education and childhood policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Paedagogica Historica.

This open access book offers a critical analysis of the history of the International Bureau of Education (IBE) from its founding in 1925 to its integration into UNESCO in January 1969.

This open access book offers a critical analysis of the history of the International Bureau of Education (IBE) from its founding in 1925 to its integration into UNESCO in January 1969. Based on the conceptual and methodological tools of the transnational turn and on archives, fully exploited for the first time by the research team, this book enriches knowledge of the phenomena of globalization. It does so in a field, education, which is currently one of those most invested in globalization, but whose sociogenesis in the era of its first period of institutionalization remains to be explored more profoundly. The authors do this by analyzing how the actors of the IBE tried to realize their aspiration towards universal aims in education, the contradictions they were confronted with,  the causes they invested in, their operating mode and the governments and international organizations with which they cooperated.

The two-way immersion program Filière Bilingue (FiBi) is a choice-based educational alternative in a public school in Biel/Bienne. It integrates French-speaking, German-speaking and allophone students and strives to promote bilingualism and biliteracy in addition to grade-level academic achievement. This book presents a longitudinal study of oral proficiency development of K-4 learners in French and German (languages of schooling). Data were collected over four years and analyzed by using a mixed-method approach. Whereas the quantitative analysis shows the emergent multilinguals’ ability to use the two languages communicatively, the qualitative analysis provides some illustrative translanguaging examples of learners in their beginning stages of moving along a bilingual continuum.

There is a clear and pressing need for collective action to develop alternative approaches to the way we organize our activities. This necessity implies the development of a robust theory that outlines a potential, attainable, and desirable future, which is embedded in the inherent contradictions of the present. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory represents such a strong interventionist theory.The initial section of this publication outlines the evolution of this theory, from its origins in the work of 20th-century Soviet psychologists to its more recent developments. The second part of the book provides insight into the key concepts and their application in research. The third part of this book describes the potential for intervention aimed at transforming activity systems. It also explains the methodological principles of formative intervention and the change laboratory.