Annual Report 2017, Copenhagen

At Copenhagen, NW27 organised 34 sessions including: 9 symposiums, 1 round table, 1 workshop and 23 paper/poster/pecha kucha sessions (1 symposium and 1 paper session were cancelled). In comparison to previous years, the number of submissions accepted is still increasing (75 contributions accepted in 2017 against 67 in 2016), despite a rejection rate in NW27 (18.5%) that is higher than the overall network average (12%).

The very attractive special call on “Gender and Educational Practices”, launched by Carol Taylor, Chantal Amade-Escot and Florence Ligozat can partially explain this increase in the number of paper (20 papers, 1 symposium and 1 round table were directly related to the special call).

The number of contributions unavoidably leads us to organise at least two or three parallel sessions in the available time slots. From previous experiences, we know that when three parallel sessions are planned, the attendance tends to be scattered. For this reason we have initiated as much as joint sessions as possible with other networks.

Joint sessions were planned with

• NW 18 - sport pedagogy (1)
• NW 22 - higher education (1)
• NW 24 - math education (2)
• NW 31 - language education (1)
• NW 7 – social justice & 23 – Policies studies and Politics of Education (1)

This led to a significant attendance during these sessions and also new contacts emerging between the networks.

NW27 also had 2 Pecha Kucha presentations that were mixed in a same session with more “classic” presentation formats. Participants to this session reported mixed feelings about this new format. One Pecha Kucha was managed in a smart manner, but in the second one, the comments were not well synchronised with the slides. We need to extend this experience next year to make a decision about whether we pursue (or not) to offer the Pecha Kucha presentation format.

The special call on "Gender and Educational Practices" was definitely a success. This theme has been developing in the network for the past 3 years, and it responds to a stringent need for more research in the field, since at the same time a specific network is on the way (open meeting organized by Branislava Baranovic). In particular, the Symposium “Gender and Educational Practices across International traditions of Didactics, Learning and Teaching” gathered a very strong audience. The researchers involved in this topic (Carol Taylor, Chantal Amade-Escot, Andrea Abbas, Susanne Gannon, Ingrid Verscheure in particular) would like gender to be maintained as a specific and integral theme of work in Network 27 in relation to the issues of curriculum analysis, classroom practices and subject content specificity. There are opportunities to put on joint sessions with the new network, NW 33. Gender and Education, that is being set up. NW27 will continue to highlight this topic on its website for follow up activities at forthcoming ECERs. It is also important to mention that the book project entitled Gender in Learning and Teaching: Feminist Dialogues across International Boundaries,  submitted by C. Taylor, A. Abbas & C. Amade-Escot based on NW27 symposia on gender from previous years, has been accepted for Publication by Routlege publishers.

A new comparative dimension has strongly emerged this year i.e. international comparisons of classroom practices across different subjects (students’ engagement in mathematics and language arts in Norway, Sweden and Finland- symposium proposed by Kirsti Klette and Marte Blikstad-Balas) and the teaching of subjects in a foreign language in France, Germany, Thailand (symposium proposed by B. Gruson).  

Besides this, there is still a strong interest in the reflexion about

• the comparison of theoretical / methodological approaches to classroom practices analysis (symposium proposed by G. Breidenstein on the role of normativity in classroom research; workshop proposed by B. Hudson, M. Loquet, A. Wegner, M. Meyer)
• the relationships between didactics and curriculum research (symposium proposed by H. J. Vollmer)