Annual Report 2015, Budapest

In 2015, Network 1 had a total of 122 individual papers, six symposia and three posters within the programme of 31 sessions (Tuesday noon through Friday). Two-thirds of presentations were deemed by the chair to be excellent. Attendance at sessions was high: one session had over 50; two sessions had 41-50, one session had 31-40, eight sessions had 21-30, another eight had 11-20 and only six had fewer than 10 attendees.

Network 1 presenters came from many different countries in  Europe and beyond. There were especially high numbers of presentations from Northern and Western Europe.

Session themes included induction and mentoring; different aspects of teachers’ and organizational learning; leadership development; contexts that support or hinder CPD; theories and dilemmas;  teacher assessment; knowledge transfer; action research; the role of feedback; professional identity; policy; professional development communities; theoretical and practical aspects of researching CPD; early years development.

Symposia were held on mentoring (3 sessions); knowledge mobilisation and improving schools. This was pleasing as they had been formed as a result of discussion groups set up at last year's network meeting. There were three Posters.

We were especially pleased to see an increasing number of collaborations that had been initiated at previous ECER conferences and our 2014 network meeting.

The process of review, allocating papers to sessions, choosing titles and chairs for sessions is lengthy so it was disappointing that 16 papers that had been accepted were withdrawn. This was fewer than in the previous conference in Istanbul, but still needs to avoided.