National Educational Systems and Academic Profession: Portuguese and Spanish Cases

The transformation by which the universities are faced now is a global phenomenon that is affecting all regions on the globe. This has led some states to unite in regional blocs to seek strategic responses to position themselves favourably in the global context increasingly competitive. In Europe there is an ongoing process of construction of the European Higher Education Space. In this regard, national political agendas are heavily influenced by what Dale’s calls globally structured agenda for education. Despite identifying processes of convergence in national policies at the time of legislating there is a hybridization of the educational policies in higher education.

Assuming that the impact of political reform are felt and asked differently by social actors in two countries (Portugal and Spain) with consequences in demands on professional competences of professoriate and with the guidance methodological perspective of comparative education, this proposal aims to examine how the European guidelines for the Construction of a European Area of Education, firstly legislated by national governments, produce changes in the what is a professor in the context of economic knowledge societies and thereby assess the importance of the national state in the process of recontextualization of these policies.