Network Activities

NW 03. Curriculum Summer School: “Boundaries, Borders and Frontiers in Curriculum Research: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges”

EERA’s Network 3 “Curriculum” is running a summer school in August 2024 and is opening a call for participants to attend it. It is designed for postgraduate/doctoral, post-doctoral and early career researchers, whose interests lie in curriculum studies, as an opportunity to engage with current research and debates in the field, while connecting between them and with experienced curriculum scholars. 

Aims and Scope:
The summer school’s title is Boundaries, borders and frontiers in curriculum research:  theoretical and methodological challenges and revolves around different lines of division between different fields or sites or areas of curriculum research. These refer to the notion of ‘boundaries’ between school subjects as well as between school subjects and disciplines, and questions of boundary-crossing and transfer in vocational education and training and other types of schooling, since issues of knowledge and its recontextualization has been a consistent problematique for the field, becoming especially topical in light of discussions on inter- and -trans-disciplinary approaches in school curricula (e.g. STEM, STEAM, CLIL, VET and others) and on ‘soft’ or ‘horizontal’ skills. The notion of ‘borders’ refers to other kind of divisions that historically modernist curricula have tended to reproduce, based on national, religious, gender, racial and so on grounds. Such structural certainties have been challenged as the preparation of citizens to live, thrive and participate in contemporary, diverse, fluid and pluralist democracies has rhetorically become the ideal for different agendas.  As shown in the programme below, half day is to take place in the historical city centre, with a historical tour focusing on the green line dividing Nicosia, so the city itself will be understood as a curricular space for our participants’ learning, focusing especially on challenges of conducting research when such legal, political and geographical divisions present both obstacles and inspirations for research.  Finally, the notion of ‘frontiers’ refers especially to how younger generations of researchers, in dialogue with existing ones, can discuss how through their research they can contribute to challenging and extending the frontiers of curriculum research.

Pedagogically the programme has been developed to feature keynotes by the tutors/experienced academics in curriculum research, response sessions to these keynotes, dialogical workshops from different epistemological stances and methodological approaches in curriculum research, covering different approaches to researching curriculum within the field but also opening discussions on the frontiers of such research, especially as multi- and inter-disciplinary research. This is a valuable opportunity to build capacity in this field, as the ECER conference systematically attracts international curriculum scholars (involved in Network 3), who have been asked to arrive earlier to run sessions at the summer school, as well as local scholars who will also offer sessions. The speakers are:

  • Professor Daniel Alvunger, Linnaeus University, Sweden
  • Professor Nienke Nieveen, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
  • Professor Mark Priestley, University of Stirling, UK
  • Dr Majella Dempsey, Maynooth University, Ireland
  • Dr Dominik Dvorak, Charles University, The Czech Republic
  • Dr Eleftherios Klerides, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
  • Dr Stavroula Kontovourki, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
  • Dr Stavroula Philippou, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
  • Dr Antigone Sarakinioti, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

The aim of the summer school is to stimulate dialogue around key epistemological and methodological issues in curriculum research, involving participants from differing traditions of scholarship in the field; as participants/young researchers will be invited to engage in these discussions and interactively address some key issues in the field, both onto-epistemological and methodological, we are hoping that a new generation of curriculum researchers will develop capacity by being exposed and involved in these ‘old’ discussions in the field while at the same time they will be renewing, extending and challenging them through their own doctoral or early career research.  The notions of boundaries, borders and frontiers, always highly topical in a political sense for the divided context of Cyprus, will be brought in to examine disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in curriculum studies, thus extending participants’ horizons of the field as well as supporting their reflexivity on their own personal research and how it will hopefully extend the frontiers of curriculum research.

Dates and Location:
The summer school will take place between the 23rd-25th of August 2024, immediately before the ERC (26th-27th August) and ECER (27th to 30th August), and will be hosted at the campus of the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus. It will run for two and a half days, with participants arriving at the student accommodation on campus in the afternoon of the 22nd of August and departing in the morning of the 26th of August. The indicative programme can be found here (LINK).

Applications:
Applicants need to fill in and submit this application form until the 15th of March 2024. EERA will cover accommodation and subsistence from the 22nd to the 26th of August (4 nights).

The budget will be targeted in the first instance at applicants from low GDP countries – only if these funds are not taken up by such applicants will they become available to subsidise costs for applicants from high GDP countries.  Travel expenses will need to be covered by the participants. If the summer school participants will stay on the ECR and ECER conferences, they need to book their own additional accommodation for the rest of their stay.

General Activities

Members of the network were involved in a country visit organised by convenor Dominik Dvorak to Prague, Charles University Faculty of Education in May 2023. This event over two days was on focused on curriculum development and implementation.

Publications

Mark Priesley and Stavroula Philippou (editors of the Curriculum Journal) updated us about the healthy status of the journal. Members of the network are well represented in papers published by this prestigious journal.

Future Plans

  • NW03 Season School in August 2024
  • NW03 30th Anniversary celebration in August 2023

NW 03 runs a mailing list and invites researchers to join. To join the mailing list, send a blank message to nw03-subscribe(at)lists.eera-ecer.de .

Interview with Link Convenor 2019