European Identity and Teacher Education: IP Udine

Today the first day of our 11 day program on „European Identity and teacher education“ began in this really beautiful Italian Town of Udine. It is infernally hot – at least that is what the Italian newspapers said yesterday with up to 40 degrees celcius in some parts of the country. We will try to buy a fan today or tomorrow in order to make it a little bit more bearable.

This is a very intensive program and we will learn throughout the next 11 days and met and talk and learn from the some of the most important authors and lecturers in the field of comparative education.

Lennart Wikander, who is from the University of Uppsala, where the last years IP was held, gave a short introduction into this years program.

The Erasmus Network on Comparative Education started as Interuniversity Cooperation Network in 1997 became an Erasmus network. It started as student exchange thing. Back then Comparative Education was in crisis. But it became a topic again when people started to use the globalization and bring in new and young people into the field. In the network the participating universities changed and expanded.

The idea was to create a network throughout Europe with comparative researcher to better understand the relationship between culture, economic changes and education. Still a hot topic today as with the current situation in Europe.

One of the ideas was to ask yourself the questions: Are students full members of the university communities? Are they fully allowed do participate in the discussions. And make them full members of the faculty.

One of the objectives is to ensure that students understand the complex situation in Europe. First topic was “European Identity, Economic Competition and Education” the idea is to learn an create networks and mix between students and lecturers. Today “Learning in a Global Society: transnational Perspective”. In 1998 Lennart Wikanders introductory lecture was titled: “The cultural and economic pressures and processes within Europe, and the educational consequences”, the toppic is relevant again or still?

If you want to learn more about this years program you can find more infos at the university of Udine website.

I will use the #ipCE12 hashtag to twitter from here!

And some more Infos about this toppic:

Quietly sprouting: A European identity – The New York Times

Fukuyama on European Identity – in the Foreign Affairs Blog

„We are Europe! Manifesto for re-building Europe from the bottom up“ initiated by Ulrich Beck und Daniel Cohn-Bendit