Annual Report 2008, Göteborg
This year’s conference meeting in Gothenburg of the network Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments Network in the European Education Research was organized as four paper sessions and one poster session.
The Network promotes innovative strategies dealing with intercultural teaching and its learning environment. Key issues are cultural identity and diversity, multi-ethnic learning groups and communities, intercultural discourses and the role of intercultural education in promoting both the local identities of groups and a sense of common citizenship in Europe.
The Network established itself this year for four paper sessions, containing 14 papers, and one poster session, most of them based around the idea of innovative intercultural education in a changing educational/professional environment 'from teaching to learning?'
The thematic focus of the sessions were:
- Challenges within teaching and learning,
- Curriculum developments, and
- Cross cultural studies.
Most of the papers reflected that the perspective of the network is to create new ways of working and new combinations of ideas and practices in intercultural education. Some of the sessions were drawing upon the projects and the way of working developed within earlier international seminars. Maria Angels Subirats, Raimonda Bruniviciute and John Willumsen were chairing the sessions which were initiating interesting discussions and also gave a variety of researchers a chance to present a lot of new ideas and approaches.
The numbers of attenders were varying and at some sessions, lower than last year whereas others were well attended. At the network meeting it was discussed to continue the thematic organization of papers, which mostly reflected both the variety and the innovative nature of the network leading to quite fruitful discussions.
It was suggested to try to make contacts with the Postgraduate Network in order to attract postgraduate students for the network emphasizing the innovative character of the network and creating more space for future promising projects. Three new members of the network will be acting as contact points. The Network will keep in contact through email and in the future by the elaborated website. The website will be developed with facilities such as Exchange forums for papers, presentations and links as well as a discussions bord.
At the next conference the network title and description will be disccussed for possible future ajustments. Raimona Bruneviciute was willing to join as co-convenor instead of Pavla Polechova.
The conveners of Network 20 are now: John Willumsen (Link convenor), Tony Cotton, Manfred Bayer, Maria-Angels Subirats de Bayego and Raimonda Bruneviciute.