This has been a very good year for N27. The higlight of this years conference was the many newcomers and high interest in the network, as well as finally getting eveyone together again at a physical conference.
2023 has been a very good year for the network, with a record high number of submissions and large interest in the network. We initially received 153 submissions, and after some withdrawals they were sent to review. We had a 24 % rejection rate, which is among the highest for ECER, but this is in line with the established reviewing routines for the network. In the final program, the network had 5 symposia, 83 papers, 34 sessions, “4 paper sessions”, 1 ignite talk, 3 posters.
This year we had two new initiatives: a Tuesday morning workshop on what constitutes the field of didactics, and a roundtable ”Connecting with Scottish Research in Didactics” where local scholars presented and debated their work. There were several symposiums in our network, and they were well-visited. Several of them had a comparative didactics perspective, where different countries collaborated on showing findings from their respective contexts. There was also a double symposium on the more conceptual, theoretical and methodological aspects of didactics where different research frameworks were presented and discussed - this has obtained very good feedback both during and after the conference, and this line of work should definetly be encouraged also going forward.
Many participants were new to this network and expressed that they felt welcome and well taken care of by the chairs in their sessions. Several participants were also very satisfied with the long reviews and good feedback prior to the conference. Several network members at the Network meeting expressed that they liked the new workshop and the roundtable, but next year we have to make sure even more attend the roundtable, for example by making it clearer and advertising it on Whova for N27 presenters.
There was disappointment about the fact that some sessions had four papers. This is a well known problem as ECER and the network are growing, and it has been reported to EERA. One specific thing we will do next year, is to contact the participants in sessions with four papers and explain why this choice was made. We belive it is better to be in a coherent session with three other papers, than in a session with presentations that are less coherently aligned.
There was a suggestion presented at the network meeting to have a panel debate with scholars across countries and traditions about didactics, inspired by similar debates in other networks. Overall, this was a very good conference for Network 27. There is a strong interest in didactics across the European community of researchers, and the N27 members are looking forward to the next ECER.