International Education I

If a student is looking for information about international education standards and practices, we may be asked:

Are there websites that provide data about education research outside the Kingdom?

Our reply might be:

We can try The Eurydice Network, which provides information on, and analyses of, European education systems and policies.

As its website states:

The mission of the Eurydice Network is:

• To provide those responsible for education systems and policies in Europe with European-level analyses and information which will assist them in their decision making.
• The Eurydice network primarily focuses on the way education in Europe is structured and organised at all levels. It provides a vast source of information, including
• Detailed descriptions and overviews of national education systems
• Comparative thematic reports devoted to specific topics of Community interest
• Factual reports related to education, such as national education structures, school calendars, comparison of salaries and of required taught time per countries and education levels.
• All reports are available free of charge or in print (if in stock) upon request. To be informed of our new publications, please register to the RSS feed available on our home page or subscribe to our newsletter.
• The Eurydice network’s work programme highlights the work to be carried out in 2017/18. You will find here a leaflet describing the Eurydice activities in different languages.

ORGANISATION

• The Eurydice network supports and facilitates European cooperation in the field of lifelong learning by providing information on education systems and policies in 38 countries and by producing studies on issues common to European education systems. It consists of:
• 42 national units based in 38 countries participating in the Erasmus+ programme (28 Member States, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Republic of North Macedonia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey)
• a coordinating unit based in the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency in Brussels
• Since 1980, the Eurydice network has been one of the strategic mechanisms established by the European Commission and Member States to support European cooperation in the field of education. Since 2014, Eurydice has been included in Erasmus+, the EU programme for education, training, youth and sport. It is an action of Key Action 3 (Support for policy reform) of the programme.

The student may reply:

That’s interesting, but I am researching education in Africa.

We might explain:

In that case, let’s try African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO), an open access archive of texts about the study, practice and governance of higher education in Africa. Included are research reports, journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, working papers, booklets, and policy documents. The AHERO website states:

AHERO is administered by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.  The East Africa Institute for Higher Education Studies and Development at Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda) is a project partner actively involved in recruiting texts for the archive.

The project aims to improve the visibility, utility and impact of existing studies and research on the practice of higher education in Africa. The focus of AHERO is on texts that are relevant to the study, practice and administration of higher education at a professional level.  Analytical and theoretical papers are also invited as a means of advancing the field of higher education studies.

The success of the project depends on the willingness of experts and researchers to share their knowledge by contributing their papers to the digital library.  This is done by uploading papers to the website.  In this way a central body of knowledge and experience becomes available.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)