EERA Sessions

In 2024, EERA celebrates its 30th anniversary. This makes ECER 2024 in Nicosia the ideal moment to look back at the previous conferences in order to get a grasp of the central topics that were addressed throughout the years.

In the current education discourse there are no any models of education that can navigate pedagogical challenges in uncertain situations. War and conflict creates unique levels of uncertainty. How these shape educational settings and pedagogical situations is not well understood yet.

This EERA session picks up on current developments under the name Open Science. The open movement and digitalization in scholarship are promoting a cultural shift in research towards accessibility, reusability and participation (UNESCO 2021). Open science has become an umbrella term for these developments. Open access, open data and open metrics are just some of the terms used.

Increasing teacher and school leader shortages and, simultaneously, an increase of demands regarding student achievements and teacher quality force schools to invest in their ‘human capital’ (OECD, 2023). While this means a challenge in itself, due to all kinds of social, political, and economic problems (see also the call of proposals of ECER, 2024), the context wherein schools operate has become more and more complex and uncertain. For example, younger colleagues often have other job-expectations than their older counterparts (Skýpalová, 2023) causing challenges to retain them; more diversity in the classroom and the call for more equal chances among pupils force schools to formulate specific policies (Donlevy et al, 2015); uncertainty and instability in funding causes problems in policy implementation (Waslander, 20123); technological developments, such as AI, alter our conceptions of assignments and assessments, leading to curricular changes and professionalization needs.