Youth Work and Schools in ‘Full-day’ education systems: International Comparison of Links between Formal and Non-formal Education

In this article I will outline the methodological approach of a non-empirical comparative research project which I began in 2003. The project is situated in the context of the research training group “Youth Welfare in Transition” at the universities of Bielefeld and Dortmund, funded by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). In that context I have organised an international conference about the modes of cooperation between school and youth work agencies with colleagues from Canada, France, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, and Germany. Meeting in Bielefeld from the 9th to the 11th of October 2003, we compared the respective national arrangements of formal and non-formal education (www.uni-bielefeld.de/paedagogik/agn/ag8/Ganztagsbildung.html). This note is based on the scheme of comparison which was given to the contributors in order to help them preparing their presentations. At the moment the scheme is nearing completed with significant data prepared by the contributors/authors (see Otto/Coelen 2004), supplemented with data from research works published in German and English. The next step will be to set up an empirical project about the relationships between schools and youth work agencies in three European countries (probably France, Finland and the Netherlands).

Women in Prostitution and Social Responsibility

The aim of the paper is to show how prostitution is embedded in historically changing gender relationships regulated by the state and part of each societies understanding of sexuality. An important role to improve the situation of women in prostitution is played by engaged social work, often linked to the womens movement on a local, national and an international level in spite of differing positions on the institution of prostitution. The authors argumentation is based on qualitative and quantitative empirical findings concerning shared experiences as well as differences between women in prostitution and findings on professional possibilities and limits of supporting the women. Important dimensions of heterogeneity amongst the women are legality versus illegality, decision making possibilities respectively dependencies und choice versus force, which also are the base of different political and professional positions taken by experts.

Christina Higgins. 2009. English as a Local Language

Christina Higgins credibly presents the situation of English in East Africa as scrutinized from four areas, which she investigated in the field: the newspaper journalism, annual beauty pageants for young women, the hip hop music of the youth, and advertisements. For me, as a Tanzanian, it has been a pleasure to review a book that illuminatingly documents the language situation, the cultural conceptualization and the localization of English that is taking place in the multilingual society in Tanzania.