IngentaConnect Soft Governance and the Learning Spaces of Europe

Abstract:

The European Space for Education is a term that has come into use to describe the emergence of a multifaceted web of relations and a transnational flow of information and people, with heterogeneous forms. It is being created in sharp contrast to the older central roles played by organizations, statist jurisdictions, rigid borders and national sites. It has not emerged suddenly but it has been transformed by the push for a competitive Europe through the Lisbon process. Initially, it appeared within a framework of a pedagogical space for European culture, with the purpose of creating a shared identity. Overlapping with this stage, a period of encouraging and enabling networks across education areas (research, evaluation, policy, school, adult and higher education) was heightened by the emergence of open coordination, which has accelerated the formation, pace and scope of this space. The older Education Space, has been restructured, certainly re-imagined, as a European Learning Space, and the means by which it is to be achieved have intensified. The lack of visibility of this strengthening policy space and its changing significance and definition has meant that a range of particular governing devices (networking, seminars, reviews, expert groups, etc.), described here as `soft governance', have not been examined as a force in the Europeanization of education. The European Space is more than an ill-defined space of regulation or flows; it is a space of attraction and meaning, in which soft power is at work, creating a space in which actors are drawn to work within it and to produce it.Comparative European Politics (2006) 4, 272-288. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110081

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110081

Affiliations: 1: aProfessor of Education, Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh, St Johns Land, Edinburgh, EH8 8AQ, UK., Email: m.lawn@btopenworld.com

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