EERA Sessions

The symposium intends to reconsider the measure in which education systems are able to amortize personal, social and economic differences among students and provide them with equal opportunities to academic success. Different aspects of equity in selected educational systems in Central and Southeast Europe, comparative data on student achievement and opportunities for their improvement through policy measures will be discussed.

The symposium interrogates Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (1) (TIMSS) data (2) collected in spring 2023 from pupils in the Grade 4, their parents, teachers, and school principals across European Educational Area as well as educational systems from the Western Balkan neighborhood. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia participated in this endeavor.

The session will include representatives from national educational associations, both as speakers and participants in the interactive component of the discussion. Their involvement brings grounded national perspectives and helps foster cross-border solidarity and dialogue. This panel also marks the foundation for a forthcoming collaborative monograph, currently in preparation, which will bring together extended contributions from this session and beyond. Following six concise research presentations, the session will include a round-table dialogue and an interactive open-floor discussion engaging researchers, national association delegates.

The initial input of this session is on the interactive web-app EduTopics which harnesses topic modelling to enable users to freely explore the central themes of ECER since 1998 as well as the relevance of those themes differentiated for the different EERA-networks, countries of affiliation and authors. On the basis of the presentation, the invited panel will discuss several questions regarding the identification, mapping and analysis of the European educational research landscape.

This panel will explore the evolving research landscape shaped by developments in Open Science, Open Access, and Open Research Data, with a particular focus on the implications for social sciences, humanities, and educational research.

By bringing together international perspectives and empirical research, this session examines how AI is transforming writing practices, its cognitive and pedagogical implications, and the necessary adaptations in higher education.