Annual Report 2016, Dublin
In 2016, Network 1 had a total of 117 presentations, including 88 individual paper presentations and 29 symposium papers in 8 symposia within the programme of 27 sessions. Attendance at sessions was quite high in the morning and midday sessions but the number of participants decreased towards the end of the week. Compared to the previous year, the number of papers was slightly lower (140/2015; 117/2016) but the number of thematic symposia increased (6/2015; 8/2016). 20 papers were withdrawn, which represents a great amount of time spent in double reviewing, allocating to sessions and choosing titles for sessions. While there will always be unavoidable reasons for drop-outs this is something we need to avoid in future.
As usual, most of participants come from Northern and Western parts of Europe and from Central Europe. There were some representatives from overseas: USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Session topics included the following themes: (1) Educational Research in Ireland, Principals’ Professional development, (2) Professional Identity, (3) Approaches to literacy, (4) Student Voice for Professional Learning, (5) Professional Learning Through Masters’ Programmes and University Involvement, (6) Mentoring Policy and Practice, (7) Professional Learning in Early Childhood Education, (7) Teacher Professional Development, (8) Evaluating Professional Development, (9) Approaches to Professional Development for School Leaders, (10) Professional Development and the Science Curriculum, (11) Professional Learning Policy and Teacher Accountability, (12) Micro, Meso and Macro Perspectives on Professional Development, (13) Perspectives on Professional Values, (14) Community and Collaboration, (15) Narrative and Reflection on Professional Learning, Approaches to Mentoring, (16) Collaborative Professional Learning, (17) Professional Learning from an Individual Perspective, (18) Perspectives on Teacher Learning, (19) Social Interactions and Teacher Development,(20) Developing Schools and Enabling Teachers for Professional Learning, (22) Intergenerational Learning in the Workplace, (23) Teacher Mentoring: Barriers, Benefits and the Reflective Practitioner Model, (24) The Professional Learning and Development of Teachers in England and Shanghai: Opportunities and Effects, (25) Early Career Teacher Retention: A Critical Examination of the Issues, (26 and 27) ) Academic, Espoused and Tacit knowledge in Education: Reciprocal Influences and Outcomes (Part 1 and Part 2).
The team of conveners has been reorganized during the last two years so that instead of 3 link conveners and 3 other conveners (until 2014), we have now a larger team of 2 link conveners and 6 conveners. Sara Bubb stepped down as link convenor, having held the position for 4 years but continues as a convenor. Three new conveners were elected in the network meeting in ECER2016 (see below). Ken Jones joins Hannu Heikkinen as link convenor from ECER2016 onwards. In ECER2015 in Budapest, we decided to honour three past convenors who had previously chaired the network for a long period (Vivienne Collinson, Ene Silvia Sarv and Maureen Killeavy) by appointing them as honorary network members. The EERA council accepted their nomination in early 2016.