The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between lifelong learning, intergenerational learning and social capital by reporting on an analysis of the concepts and an investigation of one instance of intergenerational interaction, namely “the granddad programme” – an intervention project run by a limited number of schools in the Stockholm area. The theoretical background concerns both the lifelong perspective

and the lifewide perspective of learning across the lifespan. The lifewide perspective includes both formal and informal learning. Social capital is also explored, in order to establish the extent to which this concept is compatible with the conceptual framework outlined in this study.

First a structural model is developed in order to elucidate the conceptual framework and its relationship to classroom practice. Indicators for measuring social capital are then constructed on the basis of questionnaire data. Responses from a total of 580 pupils, 19 granddads and 27 teachers in 17 schools were collected, after which Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), using the statistical software LISREL, was applied in order to test the model. With regard to the granddads themselves, an additional qualitative analysis was also carried out on a set of narrative data, regarding their perceptions and experiences of their work in the schools.

The results indicate that the granddads’ work itself is forming part of the social capital between individual granddads and the pupils. The pupil responses indicate that boys and girls consider that they enjoy similar opportunities in school, that they feel equally secure in school and that the granddad assists everyone. The results support the claim concerning increased social capital for the pupils, although there are differences between boys and girls with regard to the relative significance of the various entities of social capital. The responses from the granddads, indicate that they find their work demanding, but nonetheless rewarding because of the social network that it has established for them with the staff and pupils and the positive response from the pupils. This indicates an increase in social capital for the granddads themselves in the school context. These results support the theoretical model because interaction that occurs in the classrooms in schools where there is granddad intervention provides opportunities for both formal and informal learning and for increased social capital to be generated on the part of both the younger and the older generation.

The purpose of the study is to theorise on participation in recurrent training and to estimate a statistical model. The main focus is the links between latent variables, such as observed skills based on literacy proficiency, firm size, literacy practices at work and at home, and other latent correlates, such as educational attainment, labour force status, experience, occupational status and earnings. Three models are specified: A model predicting literacy proficiency; a model predicting earnings; and a model predicting participation in recurrent training. The two first models represent intermediate steps in the construction of the final model.

The data set employed in this study is derived from the International Adult Literacy Survey. It combines tools from educational assessment and household survey, in order to collect background information about the participants and their labour force experience, and makes use of an innovative measure of human capital stock, namely proficiency on a functional literacy assessment. The analysis also includes countries from different parts of the world: Eastern Europe; Northern Europe; Southern Europe; and North America. Structural Equation Modeling has been used.

The results show that all three models confirm the importance of educational attainment as one of the main predictors of literacy proficiency, earnings and recurrent training, with the effects of educational attainment most often mediated by other variables. Hence literacy proficiency and educational attainment are both important for modeling earnings or participation in recurrent training. The magnitude of educational attainment is seen to provide justification for signalling theory, job matching theory, and principal agent theory, as earnings and occurrence of recurrent training are related more to employees' educational attainment than to their actual levels of knowledge and skills. Work related learning and home related learning are strong predictors of the outcome variable in all three models. The main policy implication of this finding is that no form of education should be favoured, but rather each should be considered valuable and complementary to the others.

The total effect of parents' education suggests that parents continue to have an influence on the life careers of their children a long time after the completion of initial, formal education. In other words, the kind of start a child has in life is a very strong predictor of his or her actual level of literacy proficiency, earnings, or whether or not he or she will take part in further training, lending support to social capital theory, as well as to resource conversion theory.

The importance of the long arm of the job is confirmed for the prediction of earnings, as well as for the prediction of recurrent training. Labour force status, firm size and, to a lesser extent occupational status, are important indicators.

No particular relationship is observed between men and women as regard to models predicting literacy proficiency and earnings. Conversely, gender differences in recurrent training are evident, with, on the one hand, determining factors for women, for example, earnings, and, on the other hand, determining factors for men, such as firm size and literacy practice at work. Hence, the study suggests that women's participation in recurrent training is determined by different factors than that of men.

Reading literacy is becoming a crucial skill for the success in the modern society. Since Latvia is an industrialized country, with a relatively small population, it is of a crucial importance that the educational system produces well literate people. This is important both in order to sustain and to improve country's social and economic development.

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) was organized in the 1960's as a non-governmental and cooperative organization to conduct comparative studies concentrating on educational policies and practices in order to improve learning within and across systems of education. The IEA Reading Literacy Study was the first national study in the field of comparative education carried out in Latvia in early 90's. About 1000 nine-year-old students from 54 classrooms and 800 fourteen-year-old students from 53 schools participated in the study. The study provides us with important information about student reading habits, home background, as well as about teaching strategies. Whenever it is possible, an international comparison is given.

Two-level structural equation modeling is applied in a reanalysis of the IEA Reading Literacy Study data from Latvia. The aim is to present the relations between the factors derived from student home conditions and reading performance factors at the individual level and at the classroom level. The results shows that at the nine-year-old student classroom level a general socioeconomic factor has rather high connection with the reading performance, while at the individual level factors called "good reader" and "reading resources" had a strong effect upon student reading achievement. In the fourteen-year-old students group the factors "liking school" and "good reader" have influence upon reading achievement on student level, and the factors "liking school" and "reading resources" - on the classroom level.

Since the current situation in beginning reading instruction in Latvia is still influenced by the educational policies and practices that were in use during the Soviet era, the analyses on the beginning reading instruction in Latvia is given. Basic terms and categories such as the definition of reading, reading models, and goals of reading instruction are presented as they are used and understood in Latvia and compared with those described in Russia and the literature on reading research in other countries.

The study has notable implications for teachers and policy makers, as well as for future research.

The aim of the study is to examine how policies for minority education in Britain and Sweden have developed over the last twenty-five years. Policy has been used in a broad sense, including not only central but also regional and local decisions, not only written documents but also administration, interpretation and application of policies. During the initial stage the authorities in both countries encouraged immigration and only later did they realize the implications for the education systems. The acquisition of the majority language by the minorities has been emphasized in both countries. The role of the mother tongue in education is a major issue in Sweden, where all children are entitled to mother tongue teaching. In Britain the mother tongues of the minorities have normally not been included in the curriculum but some projects have started during the last few years. Multi-cultural aspects of education for all children have been more emphasized in Britain than in Sweden. Within the devolved British education system local policy patterns have developed differently whereas in Sweden the policy pattern is more uniform. A trend towards policies for minority education on a supernational level in Europe has been observed in the EEC Directive on education of migrant workers’ children.

This study explores and illustrates the process of language maintenance and shift among greek background students in Sweden, who attend home language instruction. The results show that students' attitudes learning greek were positive. The great majority of students indicated a strong in-group identification. Although the picture revealed in this study is one which in many respects seems to favour language maintenance, it is clear that there is a process of gradual shift taking place among the second generation greek students.

This study is a meta-analysis of the manner in which global relations impact on national level policy spaces and policy formation. As the International Financial Institutions tighten their grip through the Structural Adjustment Programmes over African countries, and donors steadily shift their ground and push conditionality beyond economic policy into institutional arrangements, the issue of political sovereignty of African countries, and of indirect rule through aid becomes a key concern.

Using conceptual and analytical tools developed in social psychology, sociology, peace studies, linguistics and political economy, the study challenges the neutrality of the combined thrust by the IFIs and donors, and argues that genuine progress and recovery of Africa is hampered not by the presence of the state, but by the structural violence so necessary for the maintenance of western hegemony.

The policy domain is chosen as a point of focus because policy-making defines the functions of the state; and the policy arena is one in which state policies are objectified and elaborated. Precisely because the policy arena is one in which values, ideologies and principles are given concrete expression, it is also this space that, in a context of the hegemony of neo-colonial relations, is targeted for effective control. As the analysis of the pattern of happenings at the United Nations reveal, the more the poor countries attempt to create an alternative, the higher the level of vigilance on the part of the west to contain, derail, or neutralize it.

Development is thus exposed as not being anymore about how a people might develop according to their own definition, in their diversity, but rather, about becoming transmogrified into an inverted mirror of other's identity, a mirror that belittles them and sends them to the end of the queue. Modern aid is also revealed to be far from the good Samaritan binding the wounds of the man who fell victim to the robbers, but as a cold calculating instrument for the imposition of "good conduct", subjecting the needy to the cold gaze of the helper, demanding of the crier, scientific, ideological, and externally verified proof of need.

The study holds that by maintaining a silence over whose normative heritage is being transmitted through education, by avoiding to discuss the philosophical basis for education, and by evading the issue of self-reliance as a core imperative for any development, educators have voted to participate in this framework by encouraging the misrecognition of this violence.

The study calls for a second liberation in Africa, a project of conscientizing the west, a renewed interest in policy studies, and a focus on dialogue as a method, as a strategy and as an objective at all levels of human interaction. Most of all, it reiterates the plea to give the African continent credibility, and thereby a better chance to consolidate itself and prepare for a genuine recovery.

This study examines the effects of two models of school bilingual programs on Tibetan children's cognitive development and school achievement.

Based on the findings of empirical studies, Cummins' threshold theory was critically evaluated. It is hypothesized that children's general IQ, language development and achievement in content subjects have different developmental frameworks and are therefore affected by different factors. The effects of bilingual programs on children's general IQ are mainly determined by the total strength of the intellectual stimulations of the programs and also by the pupils' developmental curves. Bilingual children's language development is more sensitive to the total time input in learning the particular languages and also sensitive to achieved general IQ. The achievement in content subject is affected not only by the achieved IQ level and the time input, but also by the proficiency of the working language.

The present study involved 508 pupils from Grade 2 and Grade 4 in a Tibetan area of China. The bilingual group consisted of 308 pupils enrolled in two models of Tibetan-Chinese bilingual programs (BL1 and BL2), and the monolingual group consisted of 200 pupils enrolled in Han Chinese programs. Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices were administered twice to all the sampled pupils with a one-year interval as the measures of general IQ. Pupils' records from two related uniform examinations were taken as the measures of pupils' language development and achievement in content subjects. Meanwhile, some questionnaires were administered to pupils, teachers and headmasters to collect background information.

Data were analyzed in three stages: (1) bivariate analyses of the test scores, (2) bivariate analyses of the background variables and (3) multivariate analyses (ANACOVA and LISREL modeling) of the total data. The results from the bivariate and multivariate analyses were finally synthesized.

The basic conclusions from the present study are: (1) pupils' development in general IQ was basically not affected by bilingual programs; (2) the bilingual pupils were significantly poorer than the Chinese monolingual pupils in Chinese language, but they were learning two languages; (3) there were no substantial differences between the BL1 pupils and their monolingual peers in mathematics, particularly at Grade 2, but the BL2 pupils performed worse than the monolingual pupils in mathematics, particularly at Grade 4.

This study examines problems of access to university education and graduate employment opportunities in Nigeria. Specifically, the study investigates issues of equality of opportunity in university education, quotas in admissions, geographical dispersion of higher educational institutions, student finance, university resources, student characteristics, university output, and the transition of graduates to the labor market. The research design of the study incorporates historiography and cross-sectional perspective with more in-depth case studies of two universities. The case studies have been selected based on specific geopolitical, historical, economic, and cultural factors in the country.

The findings suggest that in order to curb the general problems of university expansion, the availability of the following list of relative indices are important in making admissions decisions: ratio of acceptances to applications, student/academic staff ratio, rate of drop-out, number of graduates in relation to manpower demand by field of specialization, availability of teaching and research equipment, unit cost per student, and the proportion of accepted applicants from the different ethnic groups.

The results show that access to higher education, particularly in Business Administration, is highly restrictive and elitist. The socio-economic background of the sampled respondents by parental occupation and education shows that 83 percent come from the high-income groups. The study also found gender, age, and regional gaps in university education, and this has implications for student recruitment, assistance, geographical spread of university facilities, and job opportunities.

With regard to the relevance of university education to employment, more than 70 percent of the graduates indicated that they did not have the training that employers would have liked them to have had. About 65 percent of the employers reported that good academic performance bears no direct relationship to satisfactory job performance. The findings suggest that governments and institutions might consider the integration of manpower planning with educational planning. In Nigeria, manpower planning has not been effective due to lack of a comprehensive employment strategy and, consequently, graduate supply has always outstripped labor market needs. The results show that various means could be used to assist the transition from education to work. Newspaper advertisement and family contacts were considered important sources of obtaining first employment.

Anna Ahlström -- The Foundress

It would take almost forty years before Swedish women with academic degrees got access to posts in the government administration, which constituted the most important labour market for their male colleagues. Dr Anna Ahlström, born 1863, was one of many women, who with great inventiveness succeeded in creating a strong position in heir professions and at the same time manged to play a strategic role in the struggle for equal rights for women with academic degrees.

The article focuses on how Anna Ahlström, during a few years at the beginning of the twentieth century not only founded one of the most esteemed private upper secondary schools for girls (Nya Elementarskolan för flickor), but also through public adresses and petitions, laid the foundations for what would become ABKF's [Swedish Association of University Women] successful activities. Of particular importance for this anniversary publication is the fact that it was Dr. Ahlström who, in March 1904, invited to the first meeting during which the work on the constitution of ABKF began, and that the meeting took place at her school, in Stockholm city centre,where she was Headmistress.

Cultural Fields. Donald Broady (Ed.) (476 p): "This collection of papers presents studies by Nordic scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are putting Pierre Bourdieu's concept of "cultural field" to the test in empirical and historical research. The authors represents disciplines as diverse as the history of litterature, art history, sociology, ethnology, social anthropology, political science, education, American studies and media studies. The papers are devoted to people like artists, authors, dansers, intellectuals and priests, who in some sense produce culture, process symbolic capital, and take up positions and follow trajectories within different cultural fields. One main focus is on the genesis, structure and effects of the cultural fields themselves. A key question concerns the degree of autonomy of various field or subfields and their relations to each other."