Network 11 received proposals of a reasonable number of papers and some posters to be presented at ECER 2007. The received proposals were reviewed and assessed with researching criteria. Some of the authors received some recommendations for them to suitably accommodate their proposals before acceptance; but most of the presented proposals were of good researching quality.
The accepted proposals were organized in eight sessions to be held during the Conference. Two proposed posters were accepted to be shown at the arranged time and room. Of the accepted papers, one of them did not show up the corresponding presentation. As a consequence, sessions were held regularly, with good attendance of fifteen to twenty people and all of them started and finished on time. The atmosphere was very friendly and participation was quite intense, and in some cases with interesting and profitable debates on themes presented by the corresponding paper presenters. By contrary, none of the proposed posters were shown up.
Attendants to session were 70 in total. They proceeded from different countries from Europe and from other continents. Countries that sent attendants were the following ones: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States of America.
Sessions were held in a comfortable room with space for attending people and with suitable equipment of computer and beamer in every session. Ghent University staff took very good care of the equipment, of the room opening and closing, and of helping organizers, presenters and attendants. Papers presented referred the diverse themes coherent with the network content of "educational effectiveness and quality assurance".
Papers treated aspects such as: progress associated to ethnicity and social class, effectiveness in intercultural contexts, performance on foreign languages learning, higher education quality in general and in the European context, use of technology to promote quality of education, models of assessing quality assurance, effectiveness of financial investment, quality assurance in diverse culture values, controlling students' background features, methodology to improve quality in education, school measure of quality, instruments to evaluate quality of academic performance, support of students with particular difficulties and needs, clarification of performance achievement, culture learning improvement, students' attitudes, context based curriculum to reach quality of education, growth curve models to assess students' performance, quality of teaching, professional coach training to improve educational quality, democratic values as feature of quality of education.
Communication was good, in general, throughout the sessions. Most of the presenters were quite fluent in English speaking and understanding. There were some few presenters who could not use English language very fluently: most of these were able to transmit their presentation content - with the help of some transparencies, computer and beamer. Only one presenter did not accept questions due to her linguistic difficulties, but suggested interested attendants to send her possible questions by email for them to be answered. Approximately 1/3 of presenters did not give attendants a written copy of their paper or summary. Some who did not give a copy at the session promised to send it to those who asked for it at the session.
At the network meeting it was suggested a proposal to be transmitted at the link convenors meeting and council: that all session chairs and network link convenors in every network should receive a specific certification of their specific role accomplishment. This certification could be extended by ECER Presidency or Secretary. At this session it was also approved to send our network appreciation to ECER 2007 Secretary and to Ghent University staff for their valuable and effective support and help. Other approved proposal was to promote papers publication, especially of those with high quality.
Due to the good atmosphere, intense interchange of ideas and enthusiasm in continuing working on researching to promote educational effectiveness and quality assurance, the network attendants and organizing network suggested to participate at the ECER 2008 to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Samuel Gento
José Cajide
Jean-Pierre Verhaeghe