Unifying Higher Education for Different Kinds of Europeans. Higher Education and Work: A comparison of ten countries

This article discusses the European Union's ongoing campaign to create a common European Higher Education Area against a set of comparative results on the current state of university education within the envisioned area. Our data on 25,000 university graduates from ten European countries reveal both similarities and differences between these countries in the relationships between education and the world of work, degree structures, actual study duration, quality of education, and student mobility. Our results show that university education is interwoven with various social, cultural and economic factors. There are various national peculiarities that have evolved over decades in response to the problems thrown up by the expansion of higher education. Therefore, in order to be successful, pan-European higher education policy has to take into account the constant functional and institutional diversification of 'mass higher education' as well as the persistent cultural differences and regional inequality within Europe.     

Teaching the Force Concept: A Constructivist Teaching Experiment in Engineering Education

The aim of this teaching experiment, which was performed with first-year engineering students at a technical institute, was to teach the force concept in a new way. In general, the research was based on constructivism and, especially, the planning of the new course was based on constructivism research into students' learning. As expected, the new course helped students to understand the interaction idea of the force concept, whereas the idea of relating force to motion remained common even after the course. In general, the results reinforce the importance of the teacher's awareness of students' preconceptions.