Education and the Knowledge-Based Economy in Europe

Book excerpt: This book addresses the recent impact of the ‘knowledge-based economy’ as an economic ‘imaginary’ and as a set of real economic developments on education, and especially higher education in Europe, including educational strategies and policies such as those of the Bologna process on a European scale. The contributors come from various disciplinary backgrounds (education, history, linguistics, sociology) but share a commitment to trans-disciplinary research and a view that changes in educational policy and practice can productively be researched with a focus on discourse. The papers in this collection apply a range of approaches to discourse analysis, as well as narrative policy analysis, and several contributors use a cultural political economy perspective which incorporates a version of critical discourse analysis. The book will be of interest to researchers, post-graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in several subject areas, including education, discourse studies and political economy.