In this paper we map out the debate concerning a new mandate for European education policy based on recent socio-economic, political and educational developments, seen from the perspective of educational researchers located on the European (semi)periphery. The first part of the paper looks at the category 'preparation for the labour market', while the second part concerns itself with the category 'citizenship'. With regard to the former, it is argued that a new mandate for European education policy finds itself inextricably linked to the new education mandate of the new middle class, in a setting of globalisation and, closer to home, European construction. The latter attempts to conceptualise the emergence of new forms of citizenship at a time when the modern social contract suffers a process of transformation (or, what we term, reconfiguration). Based on the distinction between 'attributed citizenship' and 'demanded citizenship', we analyse changes taking place in state regulation as well as explore some of their implications for schooling.

This article argues that a reconfiguration of the modern social contract is taking place as a process that involves the reconceptualisation of citizenship as difference. At the base of this process is one the authors have previously described as ‘the rebellions of differences' (Stoer & Magalhães, 2001). The rebellions are against the cultural, political and epistemological yoke of Western modernity. What characterises differences and their social relations today is precisely their heterogeneity and their inescapable resistance to any attempts at epistemological or cultural domestication. The implications of this rebellion of differences for the concept and practices of citizenship are profound. The main implication explored here is the reconfiguration of what we call ‘attributed citizenship’ into ‘demanded’ or ‘claimed citizenship’. The authors conclude by relating the latter to the political management of education systems.

Neste artigo, retoma-se o trabalho publicado no livro Transnacionalização de Educação: da crise da educação à "educação" da crise, com o objectivo de o interrogar em três aspectos: 1) a utilização do conceito de transnacionalização no título (e não utilização, por exemplo, do conceito de globalização); 2) a concepção de mudança social que está subjacente à "crise da educação"; e 3) a relação, no livro, entre regulação e emancipação. * Agradecimentos ao António Magalhães pela sua valiosa colaboração na produção deste texto.

This paper proposes that the teacher, on the basis of action-research methodology, can produce two types of scienti® c knowledge: one based on the teacher as researcher (the teacher as ethnographer), and another based on the development of pedagogic action (the teacher as educator). The education of such a teacher, simultaneously a researcher and an educator, is carried out through the concretisation of that which has denominated the interface of intercultural education. The development of this interface renders possible the management of diversity by the teacher. This diversity is present both in the school, as well as, more speci® cally, in the classroom. It can also be seen as a source of wealth for the further deepening of the democratic nature of both the school and the education system.In the rst part of this article, we reiterate the claim that education is structured (and informed) by speci c epistemological characteristics distinct from those that organise research in the experimental sciences. On the basis of these characteristics, it is argued that an educational process that endeavours to take into account the socio-cultural diversity of its pupils will need to develop within a climate of action-research.The "hybrid and polyglot nature" of education: source of wealth and/or factor of vulnerability?In 1992, the French epistemologist Jacques Ardoino wrote:"The paradox of the Educational Sciences (ill-loved due to the domestic character of educational praxis, which itself is a consequence of the hybrid and polyglot nature of their notions, a result of the different languages they use and of the complexity of the representations they elaborate) is, undoubtedly, connected to the fact that such 'impurity' (even more noticeable than in other elds of study) does not allow us to easily forget that the acknowledgement of heterogeneity and temporality, thought to be irreducible, are none other than the fundamental conditions of scienti c work insofar as the sciences of man and society are concerned" (Ardoino; 1992: 8).

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