This book provides an unconventional account of post-1989 education reform in Romania. By drawing on policy documentation, interviews with key players, qualitative data from everyday school contexts, and extensive textbook analysis, this groundbreaking study explores change within the Romanian education system as a process that institutionalises world culture through symbolic mediation of the concept 'Europe'. The book argues that the education system's structural and organisational evolution through time is decoupled from its self-depiction by ultimately serving a nation-building agenda....