University of Essex

Graduate Student, Department of Sociology

Thesis Title: In search for the ‘new’ Romanian citizen: Pondering Europeanization in the Romanian school

About

Romania, a late comer to the EU club, is often associated with the ‘other’ of Europe: post-communist, Balkanic, backward, Eastern etc. However, efforts have been made to incorporate it in the newly defined ‘Europe’. Given important socio-political changes, a synchronisation of Romanian policies with the European trends is to be expected as precondition of legally joining the EU but also as a guarantor of Romania’s de facto belonging to the ‘new’ Europe.

Education makes no exception. It is presumed that Romanian education has also undergone identifiable changes in tune with the Europeanisation process.
The purpose of my study is to trace the extent of the expected synchronisation of post-communist Romanian education with European 'standards' over the past 20 years (1989-2009) within the context of extensive economic, political and social turmoil.

Beyond the extent of such transformations, I am interested in the shape(s) these changes took in education, their content as well as their shifting meanings, with a particular focus on discourses about ‘citizenship’ and ‘diversity’.
Finally, I am interested in exploring the process(es) and the mechanism(s) that produce and reproduce these new discourses in the educational system. My particular emphasis involves schooling and changing notions of diversity in civics/ citizenship teaching.

Empirically, I trace changes in educational policy, school curricula, textbooks and classroom interactions in two cities of Romania: Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest.

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