Tracing ‘symbolic’ policy ideas about an integrative curriculum in the Bologna Process post-2020 international agenda

Tools

Kushnir, I. ORCID: 0000-0003-0727-7208, 2022. Tracing ‘symbolic’ policy ideas about an integrative curriculum in the Bologna Process post-2020 international agenda. In: E. Sengupta and P. Blessinger, eds., Integrative curricula – a multi-dimensional approach to pedagogy. Emerald Publishing. (Forthcoming)

Text
1614438_Kushnir.pdf - Accepted version
Restricted to Repository staff only
Download (299kB)

Abstract

The Bologna Process (BP) remains a key international framework for guiding higher education development in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) until 2030. This chapter traces integrative curriculum ideas in the BP post-2020 and explains why they are symbolic policies. Prior research into curricula in the BP does not explicitly refer to integrative curriculum ideas and does not explore them in the post-2020 context. 2020 marked the deadline for the achievement of a fully-functioning EHEA and setting up new priorities for 2030. This study is informed by the theoretical ideas of soft governance and symbolic policies in the Open Method of Coordination. The study addresses the aforementioned gap in the scholarship by relying on a thematic analysis of the first EHEA communique that set the agenda for the post-2020 period – Rome Ministerial Communique (2020) with its three annexes. The findings highlight the following main areas of the integrative curriculum agenda as symbolic policies after 2020: student-centredness, research-based learning and the interconnectedness between learning and wider society. This analysis is significant for our understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the international policy rhetoric about the integrative curriculum which, in turn, defines the effectiveness of the implementation of these ideas in practice.

Item Type:

Chapter in book

Creators:

Kushnir, I.

Publisher:

Emerald Publishing

Date:

1 November 2022

Identifiers: