Annual Report 2014, Porto
Proposals, Sessions, Participation, Keynote Speaker, Symposia and Themes
Network 28 organized 13 sessions in ECER 2014. In particular, the Network had 9 sessions and 4 symposia. The Network attracted 65 proposals; however, it selected 45 presentations, and redirected 24 proposals (6 proposals was directly rejected).
The sessions were very well attended (between 20 and 50 participants per session). The quality of the discussions, and of the exchange of knowledge and experiences reveals a consolidation of the network. Moreover, the increase in the acceptance highlights an improvement in terms of the selection of the research contributions the network is interested in. Only 5 decided to withdraw before the Conference started.
The Network sessions had the keynote speaking of Agnes Van Zanten who accepted to give a speech on how sociology studies educational choices.
The sessions were organized around the following themes:
a) Governing by Data and Standard
b) Standards, Knowledge and Assessment
c) Knowledge Production among Actor, Institutions and Communities in Education Policy
d) The Governance of Education
e) Elite Education, Intergenerational Transmission of Education and Inequality
f) Comprehensive School and Inequality in France and Italy
g) Sociologies of Mobile Students and Teachers
h) School Rethinking
i) Investigating the Capacity to Aspire.
The symposia covered four broad themes:
1) How to tame Monsters: Encounters among standards and deviants
2) The Post-Comprehensive School in Europe
3) NPM and the Modernisation of Education in Europe
4) Europeanization and educational knowledge/practice.
Symposia on standards and on NPM were realised in collaboration with Network 9 (the symposium on standards) and 23 (the symposium on NPM) as a result of the emergence of common issue of interest during the planning of joint network activities.
NW28 Recent Developments
The Conference in Porto represented a telling confirmation for the Network. The project of starting a network with clear foci of research interest, and of establishing a meeting point for encounters among sociologies of education was realized.
The network is contributing to the development of a 'niche' in the ecology of the Conference, by attempting to elaborate a framework (in terms of sessions, number of papers, foci of research interests, etc.) that offer high quality selection of paper contribution as well as good quality of discussion and interaction among peers. Overall, the Network started to 'give life' to new scientific enterprises, and contributed to support the development of new sociological knowledge on education.
The Network decided to launch a call for paper on standardization of education that attracted two sessions and a symposium. A symposium on post-comprehensive school in Europe kept the initial project of establishing joint collaboration among journals of sociology of education; other two symposia were added concerning NPM and the modernization of education in education and the relationship among Europeanization and educational knowledge.
Joint activities in terms of the realization of two symposia were realized with Network 9 and Network 23. Here, the quality of the participation confirmed promising collaborations and possible projects to develop in the future.
In particular, the Network welcomed the launch of the Laboratory for International Assessment (<link http: www.international-assessments.org _self external link in new>international-assessments.org), an 'inter-disciplinary network that brings together academic researchers, testing agencies, policy makers and the end users of international educational assessment data'.
The Network completed the envisaged Special Issue of EERJ 'Mobile Sociologies of Education' (edited by Paolo Landri and Eszter Neumann) and realized the first book of the Routledge serie 'Shaping the European Education' (edited by Martin Lawn and Romuald Normand). Additional books in preparation are:
1) a book on New Public Management edited by Roberto Serpieri, Emiliano Grimaldi and Heln Gunther and
2) a book edited by Romuald Normand and Jean Louis Derouet on 'How to think the European politics in Education? A Dialogue between Sociology and Political Sciences' that is expected to be the result of a Conference that will take place at the University Picardie Jules Verne of Amiens on 17th, 18th and 19th November 2014.