This volume revisits the book edited by David Phillips and Michael Kaser in 1992, entitled Education and Economic Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (https://doi.org/10.15730/books.42). Two and a half decades later, this volume reflects on how post-socialist countries have engaged with what Phillips & Kaser called ‘the flush of educational freedom’. Spanning diverse geopolitical settings that range from Southeast and Central Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia, the chapters in this volume offer analyses of education policies and practices that the countries in this region have pursued since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This book explores three interrelated questions. First, it seeks to capture complex reconfigurations of education purposes during post-socialist transformations, noting the emergence of neoliberal education imaginaries in post-socialist spaces and their effects on policy discussions about education quality and equity across the region. Second, it examines the ongoing tensions inherent in post-socialist transformations, suggesting that beneath the surface of dominant neoliberal narratives there are always powerful countercurrents – ranging from the persisting socialist legacies to other alternative conceptualizations of education futures – highlighting the diverse trajectories of post-socialist education transformations. And finally, the book engages with the question of ‘comparison’, prompting both the contributing authors and readers to reflect on how research on post-socialist education transformations can contribute to rethinking comparative methods in education across space and time.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Incisive and forward-thinking in its approach, this prescient book investigates the conditions of the often unstable school-to-work transition (SWT) period, calling for an improvement in labour market entry processes in order to facilitate the smooth integration of school leavers into employment. It captures the complex nature of SWTs by proposing and evaluating a new set of metrics which can act as a composite indicator of early employment security.

The book Post-Socialist Translation Practices explores how Communism and Socialism, through their hegemonic pressure, found expression in translation practice from the moment of Socialist revolution to the present day. Based on extensive archival research in the archives of the Communist Party and on the interviews with translators and editors of the period the book attempts to outline the typical and defining features of the Socialist translatorial behaviour by re-reading more than 200 translations of children's literature and juvenile fiction published in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Despite the variety of different forms of censorship that the translators in all Socialist states were subject to, the book argues that Socialist translation in different cultural and linguistic environments, especially where the Soviet model tried to impose itself, purged the translated texts of the same or similar elements, in particular of the religious presence. The book also traces how ideologically manipulated translations are still uncritically reprinted and widely circulated today.

This book offers vivid insights into policies of religious education in schools since the series of wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990's. It traces the segregation among members of different ethnic groups in Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia, which has never been greater or more systematic. It aims to be a necessary step in understanding the origins of this systematic segregation and how it is reproduced in educational practice, asserting that the politicization of religion in the school textbooks is one of the motors responsible for the ongoing ethnic segregation. It also deals with complex aspects of this issue, such as the general situation of religion in the different countries, the social position of churches, the issues of gender, the reconciliation after the Yugoslav Wars, and the integration of the EU.

This title brings together contributions from around the world that analyse and reflect on the way curriculum is configuring and reconfiguring that world.

Gendering Post-Socialist Transition presents economic, political, social, and cultural effects and traces of system changes in the lives of women and men after 1989 in 11 countries of Central and Southeastern Europe. The contributions by nine research teams from different countries look into the meaning of these changes for the relationships between men and women, for gender roles and representations, and for the development of normative discourses about femininity and masculinity. With respect to gender relations, these case studies deal with changing values and mentalities in transformation and once again show that poverty, social exclusion, nationalism, social systems, and healthcare systems all have a profound gendered dimension. (Series: ERSTE Foundation Series - Vol. 1)