The ECER 2018 in Bolzano played the mayor role of reflecting the Network 12 activities. A special and outstanding activity was the EERA session about “Open Science and Educational Research? Inclusion and Exclusion at the European Open Science Cloud”. Katarzyna Szkuta, Policy Officer at the Open Data Policy and Science Cloud Unit at the Directive General Research & Innovation of the European Commission, presented the main ideas and recent developments on this topic. A fruitful discussion followed with experts from educational research, educational research infrastructures, and the audience. Thereby, the special intradisciplinary situation of educational research was emphasised and its role as an ideal testing ground for large- scale infrastructural developments.
This year, the Network 12 sessions started with a panel discussion about “European and Country Reports on Infrastructures in Education”, with several national and European perspectives. Gerda Winkler and Paolo Buoso from the library of the Free University Bolzano presented the situation of South Tyrol/Italy, followed by national reports from France and Germany.
The Network Meeting was followed by a NW 12 paper session focusing on three presentations about “Research Synthesis and Methodologies - Beyond the Evidence Movement” by Britten Ekstrand, “Transforming the Publication Landscape in Educational Research through Open Access - Exploring the Situation in Educational Science” by Klaus Rummler and Christoph Schindler, and “OER Research: a comparison of approaches” by Luca Mollenhauer and Markus Deimann.
Two joint paper sessions marked a special collaboration with Network 09 (Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement) in the context of assessment infrastructures and information practices. The topic of one session was “Translation and Cross-cultural Comparability in Large- Scale Assessments”. Here, Britta Upsing and Marc Rittberger presented the paper “Information Use and Needs in Translation Processes for International Large-Scale Assessment Studies”. Hana Vonkova, Ondrej Papajoanu, Jiri Stipek, Miroslava Cernochova,and Katerina Kralova talked about “Enhancing the Cross-Cultural Comparability of Self-Reports Using the Overclaiming Technique”. Huseyin Husnu Yildirim, Selda Yildirim, Eren Ceylan and Norman Verhelst pursued the issue ”Do PISA 2015 Items Function Equivalently Across The Participant Countries?”.
The second joint session with Network 09 was entitled “Educational Research Infrastructures”, which offered close insights for both networks. Here, Marius Gerecht presented the paper “The Research Data Centre Education – collecting and providing instruments for educational research”, and Federica Ferretti, Giorgio Bolondi, and Alessandro Gambini presented “The GESTINV Database: a tool for enhancing teachers’ professional development”.