The Urgent Need to Integrate in the Sector of Higher Education

The networking option that has been promoted as a result of the Bologna Declaration of June 1999 on the European Higher Education Area has stimulated the formation of local higher education networks of various kinds. The birth of one of these, the Network of Pedagogical Universities of the Caucasian Region, is described. Linked to the UNESCO‐Caucasus project, to the UNESCO Associated Schools, and to the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme, this network looks forward not simply to promoting a constructivist approach to teaching and learning but to serving as a means of defusing ethnic tensions in this very ethnically and linguistically diverse region, the countries of which are undergoing transition.