Annual Report 2009, Vienna

Network 11 on “Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance” received 75 submissions for ECER 09: 71 were of papers and 4 of posters. The number os submissions represents an increase of 31,48% in comparison to the 54 submissions received for ECER 08.
From the received sbmissions:

• 2 were redirected to other networks
• 6 were suggested of resubmission once authors had rectified or completed them; one was in fact resubmitted; the other one was finally rejected
• 2 were rejected as they did not accommodate to minimum requirements
• 72 submissions were finally accepted for their presentation, as they accomplished the content and format requirements. The number of accepted submissions represents an increase of 38,46 in comparison to the 52 accepted for ECER 08.

During the process of reviewing and evaluation of the received submissions, the EERA Secretary gave its support and effective assistance to convenors and reviewers.The accepted submitted papers were structured in sessions of maximum 3 presentations per session. After some presenters -for different reasons- rennounced to present their accepted papers, these were planned in 20 sessions: 5 more than in ECER 08, which represents an increase of 33,33%.One of the sessions was planned as a symposium, with participation of 3 representatives of different countries: Latvia, Spain and Mexico.Of the accepted papers and finally planned to be presented, 2 of them were not presented at all.

Apart from this circumstance, sessions were regularly held, with reasonable good attendance, with an average of 21-30 people (more than on ECER 08, which was 15-20 people). All sessions were started and ended in time.
Presenters and attendants expressed their satisfaction for the assistance given by members of the Vienna University. These were effectively in charge of opening and closing rooms, of preparing the technological support and of giving assistance to presenters and participants. Assistants were within the room throughout the whole session, from beginning to end: this was highly appreciated by presenters and attendants.
Although assistants were very effective in helping, in some sessions there were problems with the beamers installed in the room, as sometimes some of them did not work.

Attendants to sessions also expressed that, as screens where beamers projected were placed too high in walls, attendants could not see well images and text projected by the beamers and they had to adopt a somehow uncomfortable position to see the screen.

Presenters and attendants also expressed their satisfaction for the effective and friendly assistance given by the staff of the EERA Secretary.
Chairs, discussants, presenters and attendants expressed their high satisfaction for sessions general functioning.

The list of detailed sessions exhibited at the entrance of every room (prepared by the network organizing team) was very helpful to inform interested participants on every session content and details.

Troughout sessions, the atmosphere was very friendly and participation was increasingly active, participative, sometimes intense and with lively discussions on papers content.
Presentations were good in general, although some few slides were sometimes difficult to read or to decipher.

Communication in English was satisfactory, in general: somehow better than on previous ECER. Only in 1 presentation there were some difficulties in intercommunication in English with one presenter.

Full Papers and Handouts

Attendance numbers
Attendants to all session were 232 in total. This number represents an increase of 39,75% in comparison to the 166 people who attended our sessions on ECER 08.
Participants and attendants came from different countries of Europe and other continents. Representatives from Latin America participated for the first time.
Papers were presented by representatives of the following countries: Arabic Emirates, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, and USA

Attendants to network 11 were from the following countries: Arabic Emirates, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, England, Germany, India, Ireland, Iceland, Italy Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Nederland, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and USA.
The number of participant countries was, then, 33: this represents an increase of 17,85% in comparison to the 28 participating on ECER 08.

Sessions
Apart from paper sessions and posters, a symposium was organized with the intervention of a chair, a discussant and three presenters from three different countries: Latvia, México and Spain. Although this was the first time the network held this symposium, the session worked perfectly well and had a very active intervention of presenters and attendants.
Papers presented referred to different topics related to network 11 content on “educational effectiveness and quality assurance”. Papers were organized by themes, according to headings proposed by authors and with the intention of planning sessions of homogeneous topics.

The business network meeting was held with an important increase in the number of attendants in comparison to last year.Some treated themes and decissions made at this session were the following ones:

• Chairs and discussants expressed their wish of receiving their accreditation of having acted as such

• Some attendants proposed to transmit the EERA Council their wish that first sessions would start at 9:00, instead of at 8:30 am.

• 4 colleagues of 3 different countries (México, Czech Republic and Scotland) proposed themselves as reviewers for next ECER 10 submissions. Their proposalwas accepted. As a consequence, for ECER 10 there will be 12 reviewers, which represents an increase of 50% in comparison to the 8 who acted as reviewers for ECER 09

• With the incorporation of these new reviewers for ECER 10 a 2 step process of reviewing proposals is planned as a general rule

• A publication wih papers presented on the ECER 08 was presented at the business network meeting. All papers sent on time are included in a CD published as: GENTO, S. (Ed.) Educational Effectiveness and Factors of Quality Assurance. Madrid: Author. ISBN 987-84-613-3774-3. Authors attending this meeting received a free copy of such publication. This publication will send to authors who did not attend the network meeting.

• Publication of papers presented on ECER 09 is also planned. To such purpose, it was approved to send all presenters a message and some guidelines for them to accommodate to a homogeneous format. Accordingo to that, authors wanting their papers to be publised should send the paper on electronic format to the suggested e- mail address. This new publication will also be presented at the business network meeting on ECER 10.

• Presenters were also suggested that they could freely opt for sending their papers to the EERJ to be published on this journal, instead on our network publication.

• In order to facilitate mutual interchanges, a list with all participants’ and presenters’ address will be send to all who attended our network sessions.

Although some changes had to be made throughout the process of sessions planning, final headings of planned sessiosn were as follows

• Approaches, models and techniques of educational quality assessment
• Classroom practice and curricula effectiveness
• Discipline and school climate for effectiveness in education
• E-learning and informal learning
• Early intervention and Preschool Education to promote educational effectiveness
• Educational effectiveness of inclusive educational treatment of diversity
• Equal opportunities, rural and gender education of quality
• Evaluation of educational systems and research on educational quality
• Higher education effectiveness and academic’s professionalism
• Internationalization in education of quality
• Labour and economic impact of education of quality
• Leadership, supervision and educational effectiveness
• Learning outcome and attitudes towards education of quality
• Physical education and teacher’s training for its effectiveness
• Quality of Primary education
• School effectiveness according to students’ features
• School effectiveness evaluation
• Standards, predictors and rankings of educational effectiveness
• Teachers’ and students’ views and perceptions of educational quality assurance
• Teacher’s assessment for the quality of education.