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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights promises free elementary education and free choice of the type of education. International fora emphasise the first right while neglecting the second. This is unfortunate, since school choice can reduce costs and increase the attractiveness of an educational system. This essay examines arguments for limiting choice of free education, often to schools owned and operated by the state. It finds each of them to be unconvincing.

This paper presents research which questions the relationship between traditional education and democratic education in Portuguese schools in order to understand the reason an education supported by the standardization of methods and programs is maintained instead of a participatory pedagogy, which is more appropriate to teaching and for the overall development of the child. Methodologically speaking, the study is based on guiding principles of research-action, studying the potential practices of integrated education and the contributions of training in context. The results emerging from the discourse with the collaborating interviewees pointed out an insufficient training (initial and continuing) for the practice of integrated and participatory education and that disciplinary fragmentation is also a constraining factor. Despite the rhetoric of the need to redefine the teacher's work, namely: self-reflection about practices, sharing these practices with their peers in professional development and lifelong learning, the cooperative work focuses almost solely on pair sharing. The discourse analysis also confirms that the hypothesis of teaching practices tends to be more of a transmission pedagogy than a participatory pedagogy.

Die Autorin des vorliegenden Beitrags plädiert im Sinne der österreichischen "Prinzipien und Richtlinien für Basisbildungsangebote" dafür, statt mit einer Alphabetisierungsarbeit "Defizite auszugleichen", Basisbildung wieder als permanente gesellschaftspolitische Entwicklungsaufgabe zu sehen. Anstelle eines autoritären Verständnisses von Alphabetisierung im Sinne von Lesen, Schreiben oder Rechnen können (müssen), fokussiert sie auf soziale, demokratische, teilhabende, selbstkritische und kritisch-handlungsorientierte Dimensionen des Lernens. Defizitorientiert sind, wie die Autorin ausführt, jene Bestrebungen, in denen es darum geht, den "funktionalen Analphabetismus" zu verringern, um in der Gesellschaft "funktionieren" zu können wie auch das österreichische Integrationsgesetz, in dem es ausschließlich darum geht, die deutsche Sprache (und Werte) zu erlernen. Der Begriff der "Alphabetisierung" wird dabei rein "mechanisch", im Sinne des Buchstabenlernens verwendet. (DIPF/Orig.) ; In the spirit of the Austrian Principles and Guidelines for Basic Education Offerings (Prinzipien und Richtlinien für Basisbildungsangebote in German), the author of this article argues that instead of eradicating deficits with literacy work, basic education should once again be seen as a permanent task of socio-political development. In lieu of an authoritative understanding of literacy in the sense of people having to be able to read, write, and do arithmetic, she focuses on social, democratic, participative self-critical and critically action-oriented dimensions of learning. As the author explains, attempting to reduce "functional illiteracy" in order to be able to "function" in society is just as deficit oriented as the Austrian Integration Agreement, in which learning the German language is the sole purpose of Basic Education. The term "literacy" is used purely "mechanically" in the sense of learning letters. (Dipf/Orig.)

This article is about the way in which justice and procedures are related in the development of policies meeting new claims to choice in basic education. Building upon established approaches to procedural justice, I propose to study the interaction between questions of justice and procedures by way of the "gate model" as developed by Peters (1993) and Habermas (1994). This model is then applied in an analysis of education policymaking in Great Britain and Germany to demonstrate how the procedures through which political decision making is channelled reflect persisting problems of substantive justice.

The South African society is plagued with a "complex and fascinating landscape of multilingualism that comprises of eleven official languages post the apartheid era" (Pluddeman et al, 2004: 13-14). The apartheid era saw only "English and Afrikaans recognised as languages of official status across the nation even though indigenous languages existed in the country" (Cakata & Segalo, 2017). The post-apartheid era which commenced in 1994 have been years in which extensive political negotiation and transition have been occurring which have encompassed establishing constitutional rights for indigenous languages in the South African dispensation. This included the choice for "indigenous languages to uses as languages of learning and teaching (LoLT) and being offered as subjects at schools" (Pluddeman et al, 2004: 13, 14). The aim of this study is to focus on language policy implementation practices in basic education with particular reference to a primary school in Western Cape, City of Cape Town as a case study. It seeks to observe the language practices within the school in order to assess the various patterns of implementation and contribute to scholarly debate pertaining to policy implementation across disciplines. The study will analyse the language policy planning in South Africa at large using Ruiz's (1984) three orientations to language planning: language as a problem, language as a resource and language as a right. It seeks to observe the language practices within the school in order to assess the various patterns of implementation and contribute to scholarly debate pertaining to policy implementation across disciplines. The findings of this study aim to assist language planners in developing a language policy framework in basic education which includes strong monitoring and evaluation systems to alleviate problems at the implementation stage of language policies.