13. Education, inequalities and social policies
Convener: Claudius Gellert
Goglio Valentina (University of Turin, IT)
Could regional Universities promote access to higher education for “less favourite” students?
Mampaey Jelle and Zanoni Patrizia (Hasselt University, BE)
Belgian schools engaging with cultural diversity: A neo-institutional perspective
Korpi Tomas (Stockholm University, SE)
Good jobs for all? Education policy, technical change, and job quality
Randhahn Solveig (University of Münster, DE)
Welfare-Oriented Education Policy - Wind of Change in the Relationship of Education and Social Policy in Germany?
This stream will assemble contributions on the relationships between educational opportunities and institutional channels on the one hand, the impact of structured social inequalities, particularly elite formations, on the other, and, finally, the role and influence of social policy provisions and programmes to remedy given discrepancies in the distribution of life-chances. While, therefore, social policy measures can be seen as tools to make up for uneven social conditions as primarily manifested in socially biased educational chances and careers, conditions which people are usually confronted with by birth, the welfare state can also be defined as an overall mechanism to prevent such reproductions of social inequalities and elite perpetuations by bringing about educational institutions which are an integral part of the welfare system. Education and instutional provisions themselves, in this perspective, can then be interpreted as social policy measures.
While, thus, contributions are invited on theoretical aspects, on the one hand, of the relationship between education and social policy, and of education as social policy, on the other, also papers dealing with more concrete examples of such socio-political fields are welcome. These can comprise all areas of pre-schools and schooling, but could also deal with specific examples of vocational or professional training, or with higher education. Particularly the socio-economic and political impact of universities and other forms of tertiary training, their access policies, their curricular conceptions, their overall aims, purposes and missions, not least in relation to processes of the perpetuation and reproduction of social elites and other forms of social inequality, can and should be addressed in this context.
All of the above research areas can be dealt with within national settings or comparatively, for instance on a European level. However, the multi-facetted and diverse institutional offerings of education, not least of higher education in North-America lend themselves to comparative studies of the respective conditions and mechanisms with those in Europe; in particular, with regard to the second of the two major theoretical dimensions, ie. the conception of education as social policy, the vast and diversified institutional opportunities of American and Canadian higher education are of enormous interest for European researchers of this field. Because, while there exists a popular myth in Europe with regard to the supposed superiority of the European welfare-systems over the one in the USA, more detailed analyses could reveal that for instance public expenditure in the field of social policy in the US is by no means lower than in most European countries, if educational expenditures by Federal and state governments are included.
Claudius Gellert
Visiting Professor at the University of Klagenfurt
Via Santa Maria 77
60013 Corinaldo – Italy
Tel. +39 334 1104318
cegellert@aol.com
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