Annual Report 2009, Vienna
ECER´09 was again a real success in Network 14. Two years ago re-designed and scoped network description seems to be workable. The number of proposals is still increasing significantly compared with previous years in network’s history. In this year we received 60 proposals and mainly those were proposals of paper presentations. More specificly, we had also 4 symposium proposals, 1 workshop and several poster proposals. It seems that researches have really found the Network 14 research agenda. The total number of accepted papers was 34 and in addition we had three symposiums and seven poster presentations in Vienna. Convenors followed rather high scientific criteria in the reviewing process and for this reason the quality of accepted papers was advanced and the scope of presentations was clearly connected to the network’s main themes.
Presentations covered widely the main interest areas of network 14, which are:
- Studies of transitions between home and school, phases of school or school to adult life (5 papers),
- studies of learning and teaching under marginal, unusual or atypical conditions, in rural vs. urban settings or in small vs. large schools (15 papers and 3 posters),
- studies of family education, in where the education is understood to include not only formal institutions like schools but also child-rearing and upbringing of children at home, i.e. parenting (14 papers, one workshop and 4 posters) and
- methodological issues or innovations in how to study transitions, community-school relationships or family education in changed regional, societal or pedagogical situations (is included in many papers).
As a whole within these themes international perspectives were actively reflected.
Like previous year there are increased number of studies and researchers who are interested in interrelations between community, family and/or schools from the perspective of educational transitions, teaching and learning in different kinds of pedagogical environments (especially in unusual or atypical conditions, e.g. place-based education) and not only formal institutions of education.
By continuing this discussion there are realistic possibilities to construct international research projects or databases and support the development of multidisciplinary research in this field. Now there is promising and potential variation in the fields of community-, family- and schooling research and NW 14 has proved to be an arena for discussing the European relevance of this research.
Each session gathered 18-25 participators and presentations raised relevant theoretical and/or methodological issues for the discussion. Especially in symposiums the coherence of papers were achieved. All participants brought up that local organising committee and facilities were excellent. In Business Meeting participators discussed about the scope of the Network 14.
Convenors were mandate to do minor revisions to the description of Network 14. In this meeting also two new co-convenors were appointed: Marta Soler, CREA - University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain and Pedro Silva, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, School of Education and Social Sciences, LEIRIA, Portugal. In addition prof. Rune Kvalsund, Volda University College, Norway was chosen as a new Link convenor in Network 14.