Participants in a virtual workshop led by Lukas Graf present research on local, national and Europe-wide policy coordination.
In a virtual interdisciplinary workshop on 23 April hosted by Assistant Professor of Educational Governance Lukas Graf and the Hertie School’s Educational Governance Team, participants from 10 countries presented research papers exploring education and training policies in Europe.
Education and training are still considered strongholds of the nation-state. Nevertheless, European-level soft coordination has expanded in this policy field: innovative initiatives are increasingly being promoted through transnational exchange and mutual learning. Networks facilitating such an exchange are designed to help member states address challenges to their education and training systems. These challenges range from questions of social cohesion to global competitiveness and require novel forms of governance covering EU, national and subnational (e.g. state or local) levels.
As the European Union wraps up its decade-long Education & Training 2020 strategy (ET 2020), a framework for cooperation in education, participants in the workshop took stock of developments at the European, national and subnational levels. Their work took both theoretical and empirical angles to address questions such as: How does EU-level soft coordination shape innovation and policy learning in education and training? What role do innovative initiatives on the ground play? What is the role of non-state stakeholders? How do actors exchange good practices? What are emerging governance practices at the various levels? What risks and opportunities are there? Participants in the workshop aimed to address these questions from theoretical as well as empirical angles.
The workshop was divided into five breakout groups covering the following topics: Education reforms, policy learning in Europe and actors’ policy goals; Regional networks and European cooperation in higher education; New architectures, instruments and practices for cooperation and learning; Changing skill formation – Responses to technological changes and economic crises; and Multilevel educational governance and (sub-)national implementation.