ECER 2018 at Bolzano was featured by the quality of the presentations, a good attendance level and a significant increase of the number of symposiums presented (14 symposiums). A total of 11 joint sessions (both papers and symposiums) were organized with respectively NW3 (Curriculum), NW13 (Philosophy of education), NW16 (ICT), NW31 (Language education) and NW33 (Gender and education). The “joint session” policy that we have implemented since 2016 meets a demand from many submitters. In most cases, it results in an increased attendance and good quality of discussions during those sessions.
Following up the special call on “Gender and Educational practices” in 2017, gender issues in the classroom practices were discussed extensively this year again over 6 sessions shared with NW33. The researchers involved in this topic 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.
Besides this, there is still a growing interest for comparing classroom practices in different countries and across different subjects. Some highlights were the double symposium “Comparative Didactic Analyses of Science Education, Physical Education and Health in Sweden, Switzerland and France” and the round table on “Epistemic Quality for Equitable Learning across School Subjects”. A discussion of the relationships between research in didactics and teacher professional development was initiated through examples of collaborative research models. A new focus on didactics of social science, ethics and citizenship education also came up that we will seek to develop in the forthcoming years.