European education policy initiatives and teacher education curriculum reforms in Greece

Abstract

The paper explores the ways in which university-based Teacher Education Departments in Greece have operated to promote changes to their undergraduate curricula. Our research approach views these changes as responses to the policies of the European Union and the Bologna Process for the ‘modernisation’ of higher education systems across Europe. Data are drawn from qualitative analyses of 18 curricula in two periods of their development, the middle of the 1990s and the late 2000s. The analysis of the study is based on Bernstein's theoretical concepts of classification, framing and meaning orientations, and describes basic types of university curricula regarding content organisation, pedagogical practices of teaching and learning, and knowledge evaluation. The findings reveal that, along with the disciplinary and professional criteria for knowledge recontextualisation, which have traditionally been legitimate in the field of Teacher Education, forms of weakly classified knowledge systematically oriented to problem-solving professional practices and school effectiveness are gradually crystallising and tending to become dominant. We argue that the marked shifts in the pedagogical means of teacher education may run the risk of thinning out teachers’ knowledge base and de-professionalising their practices and identities.

• teacher education
• European policies
• higher education
• study programmes

Notes

1 Secondary school teachers are trained and qualified for the teaching profession in the undergraduate programmes of study offered by the university departments of science, humanities and social sciences, with subject specialisms in mathematics, physics, languages, foreign languages, etc. Their pedagogical training is a long standing issue in Greece. Recent legislation concerning their pedagogical competence is at an early stage of its implementation by the relevant departments. At present there is no research on the rate of expansion of such courses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antigone Sarakinioti

Antigone Sarakinioti holds a Ph.D. in Sociology of Education and Education Policy, awarded by the University of the Peloponnese, Greece. Her doctoral research was supported by the Greek ‘State Scholarships Foundation’ (IKY). Presently, she works in projects as independent researcher. Her main research interests and publications revolve around curricula and quality assurance in higher education, teacher education, European and global education policy, and discourse analysis.

Anna Tsatsaroni

Anna Tsatsaroni is Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Social and Educational Policy of the University of the Peloponnese, Greece. Her intellectual interests lie within social theory, the sociology of educational knowledge and practices, and sociological approaches to education policy. Her research and publications focus on the recontextualisation of knowledge in diverse contexts and sites of formal and informal education. Her published work appears in a range of international journals, contributing critical approaches to education policy and research.