Annual Report 2013, Istanbul
During the second participation to ECER 2013, Network 28 (Sociologies of education) organized 14 sessions. In particular, the Network had 12 sessions and 2 symposia. The Network attracted 72 proposals; however, it selected 36 presentations, and redirected 26 proposals (10 proposals were directly rejected). The sessions were very well attended (between 20 and 40 participants per session).
A comparison with ECER 2012 highlights, then, an increase in the proposals, and in the presentations. Moreover, the quality of the discussions, and of the exchange of knowledge and experiences reveals the consolidation of the interest towards the thematic foci of the network. The interest is also confirmed by the low rate of withdrawals (5) before the start of the Conference, and of no-show at the sessions (only 1).
The Network sessions were introduced in the first session by Roger Dale who accepted to give a keynote speaking on the sociologies of comparisons in the sociology of education.
The sessions were organized around the following themes:
a) Getting out from Methodological Nationalism
b) Theorizing and Analyzing the Agency of Teachers and School Leaders
c) Equality, Justice, and Excellence
d) Education, Otherness and the Future
e) The Making of New Spaces of Education and Learning
f) Knowledge, Policy and Society
g) Identities, Social Reproduction, and Cultural Capital
h) Educational Choices: Theory and Practice
i) Knowledge, New Perspective in Educational Research and Subjectivities
j) Learning and Identity among School, Work and Everyday Life.
The symposia covered two broad themes:
1) Reassembling Education Policy Trends with Actor-Network Theory and
2) Dissemination of the Research Findings of the European Sociology of Education in a globalized academic world: the role of the Journals.
The latter symposium was a further development of Jean-Louis Derouet’s project to create a meeting space for European Journals of sociology of education for discussing and taking initiatives on the circulation of knowledge in the changing landscape of globalised academic world. The symposium was attended by representatives of many European journal of social sciences published in English, French, Italian, Portoguese, Spanish, etc. The symposium was attended by representatives of: Scuola Democratica, Educacao, Sociedade e Culturas, Globalisation, Education and Society, Education et Sociétés, European Educational Research Journal, Italian Journal of Sociology of Education , Revista Lusofona de Educacao.
Yet other representatives from other European journals participated at the meeting (e.g. from Spain). The symposium had two stages: a) in the first stage, the journals have been presented to the common audience b) in the second stage, the representatives tried to develop a common program for 2014 and 2015 (see the summary of the symposium enclosed herewith).
The Network Meeting was very well attended as well, and included new participants interested in the development of the network agenda and its projects. The overall comments on the sessions were positive. A particular appreciation was expressed for the keynote speech, and more in general, for the practice of envisaging a keynote speaking at the beginning of the network sessions as a strategy to provide a general framework where to insert the presentations of the diverse sessions. An emergent advice was to work even more to keep the network focused and to avoid possible overlaps with other network topics that may result in the reduction of the proposal redirected. To this end, it was agreed to prepare a call for paper for ECER 2014 that may provide a framework for potential proponents, but also for facilitating the work of the reviewers in the process of selection.