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Narratives of Change: Between Global Idioms and National Legacies

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Europe in the Classroom

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Educational Media ((PSEM))

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Abstract

Szakács explores discourses and patterns of legitimisation expressed in education policy documents, reports and interviews with policymakers and asks to what extent these refer more to the EU (the outside) or the nation (the ‘self’) in how they account for education reform. By analysing in-depth narrative accounts of the reform process (i.e. its aims, rationale, values, actors and failures), she finds that rather than putting forward an exclusively ‘national’ story of self-aggrandisement, Romania increasingly speaks in a global/neoliberal idiom, whereby the role of the EU is both exaggerated and instrumentalised as an aspirational ‘self’. Nationally framed arguments persist only to explain the reform’s failures, notably under two thematic guises: a cultural mismatch theme and a national victimisation motif.

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  1. Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Member of the Leibniz Association, Brunswick, Germany

    Simona Szakács

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Szakács, S. (2018). Narratives of Change: Between Global Idioms and National Legacies. In: Europe in the Classroom. Palgrave Studies in Educational Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60258-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60258-5_3

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