Maurice Ravel: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography concerning both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources which deal with him, his compositions, and his influence as a composer and theorist.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For anyone wishing to understand the process of transforming education in Spain, Inmaculada Egido has presents a detailed and encyclopedic description of events. Against historic background, this book discusses the impact of recent and current change, a process which has transformed education from a very centralised to a decentralised and democratic system. As the author indicates :In the last three decades education in Spain has been characterised by a profound transformation. Practically, there is no aspect of the educational system that has not been modified during this period, including both the administration and government of education and the structure and content of educational levels, the education financing and the training and work conditions of teachers... despite the delay in the starting point the achievements of the Spanish educational system in the last years are undeniable'. The autonomy of schools receives much attention not the least because of the changes which affect school governance, the participation of parents and the role of the school principal. The author concludes that, despite democratisation, there remains the need to further this process in relation to the internal functioning of schools and especially in relation to the actual participation of parents and pupils. PARTIAL CONTENTS: Acknowledgements; The Spanish Educational System; Historical Overview of the Spanish Educational System; Key Features of the Educational System; Legislation, Principles and Administration of the Educational System; Structure of the Spanish Educational System; Teaching Staff; An Overview of the Spanish Educational System: Light and Shade; School Management: Meeting the Challenges of the New Millennium.

Payne's study places Spain's Second Republic within the historical framework of Spanish liberalism, and the rapid modernisation of inter-war Europe. He aims to present a consistent and detailed interpretation, demonstrating striking parallels to the German Weimar Republic.

Based on more than 500 hours of interviews with key political elites (under both the Franco regime and the current democracy), extensive analyses of public opinion and electoral behavior surveys, and other original research, the book sheds important new light on Spain's democractic regime and its key institutions."--BOOK JACKET.

This book discusses current market-based educational discourses and how they have undermined the notion of “the public” in public education by allowing private visions of education to define the public democratic imagination. Against this discouraging background, this text embraces Freire’s understanding of hope as an ontological need and calls for finding new public grounds for our public imagination. It further articulates Freire’s mandate to unveil historically concrete practices to sustain democratic educational visions, no matter how difficult this task may be, by (1) presenting an indepth description of the pedagogies and curriculums of eleven schools across historical and geographical locations that have worked or are still working with disenfranchised communities and that have publicly hoped for a better future for their students, and by (2) reflecting on how the stories of these schools offer us new opportunities to rethink our own pedagogical commitment to public visions of education. To promote this reflection, this book offers the notion of publicly imagined public education as a conceptual tool to help understand the historical and discursive specificity of schools’ hopes and to (re)claim public schools as legitimate sites of public imagination.

Studying Spanish? Spending a year-out in Spain? Or maybe going to work there? Then you'll need this handbook of contemporary Spain and the Spanish language. Revised and expanded, and packed with essential information on politics, economy and institutions, it covers the basics that are taken for granted by most Spaniards. This new edition includes recent events such as the 2004 Madrid bombings and the subsequent election of a socialist government, ETA's 2006 ceasefire and its later revocation, and the country's recent economic success. Each chapter also contains a Spanish/English glossary giving guidance on the use of specialist terms in context. This handbook is invaluable for all those with a wish to learn more about Spain, its language and its people.

Education is a contested terrain. The symmetry of education reform among the seven countries examined in this volume is remarkable. There is much commonality in the issues they raise, in the competing groups battling over education policy, their policy choices, and the implementation of such policies. Also, all seven countries address the same issues: equity, global competition, the performance of their students. There are at least six important traits characterizing these battles: the context, the combatants, the issues, the process, and the policies. To begin with, history, culture, and governance regime set the context for education policy and reform. Second, there is the process of how these battles are waged--is compromise an outcome or is it a zero sum contest? Third, there appear to be four groups of combatants each with its own ideology representing a particular social class in society and their views about education and its uses: Conservatives, Socialists, Neo-Liberals, and Elites. Education is an important and valued resource that each status group tries to control and shape to its own views. Fourth, there are key issues that drive education reform: how education can best flatten a social system, how education train students for work, and how education socializes students to be functioning citizens. In recent years, fifth issue has emerged: student performance on international standardized tests. Not only is a society’s international reputation based on their students’ performance, but nations see such performance as an indicator of the quality of their educational system and if it is good enough to secure its economic future. Finally, there are the policies themselves--do they reduce or increase inequality, who benefits and how? The chapters in this volume clearly point out that education reform is not a homogeneous process as some scholars have conjectured. Rather, education reform involves heated battles over the control of the educational system because education is seen as a key factor in maintaining a society’s vision and social structure.

In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values – the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?

Federalism has played a central role in charting educational progress in many countries. With an evolving balance between centralization and decentralization, federalism is designed to promote accountability standards without tempering regional and local preferences. Federalism facilitates negotiations both vertically between the central authority and local entities as well as horizontally among diverse interests. Innovative educational practices are often validated by a few local entities prior to scaling up to the national level. Because of the division of revenue sources between central authority and decentralized entities, federalism encourages a certain degree of fiscal competition at the local and regional level. The balance of centralization and decentralization also varies across institutional and policy domains, such as the legislative framework for education, drafting of curricula, benchmarking for accountability, accreditation, teacher training, and administrative responsibilities at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Given these critical issues in federalism and education, this volume examines ongoing challenges and policy strategies in ten countries, namely Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. These chapters and the introductory overview aim to examine how countries with federal systems of government design, govern, finance, and assure quality in their educational systems spanning from early childhood to secondary school graduation. Particular attention is given to functional division between governmental layers of the federal system as well as mechanisms of intergovernmental cooperation both vertically and horizontally. The chapters aim to draw out comparative lessons and experiences in an area of great importance to not only federal countries but also countries that are emerging toward a federal system.