ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the volume. It clearly explains the main objectives of the book: to examine the role of education in the process of European cooperation and integration and to analyze the repercussions of the European integration process on education. This dual question is put within the context of the recent reflections on the very multifaceted concept of Europeanization, which generally undervalued the complex interplay between Europeanization through education and Europeanization of education. Following the structure of the book, the chapter outlines the main initiatives aimed at spreading pro-European sentiments both insides and outside of schools in the era after the Second World War, and highlights the diversity and significance of organizations, institutions, movements, and networks that embodied and implemented this pedagogical action. Meanwhile, the chapter sketches out the contested attempts to establish a European education space, while emphasizing the obstacles that they met and the impact that they made on European education policies, systems, and practices. The chapter concludes with reasoned summaries of all chapters; each of them gives an account of respective methodologies, sources, contents, arguments, and relationship with the central idea of the volume.
