Annual Report 2016, Dublin
ECER 2016 in Dublin proved once again that this conference has become the main exchange space for Environmental and Sustainablity Education Research in Europe. As in previous years, there were also presenters from oversea countries such as Australia and Canada. We had an invited guest from Brazil speaking at the network meeting.
This year at ECER in Dublin our network had 67 contributions of which 55 were accepted. This mean we achieved a rise in submissions (in 2015 we had 59 contributions). The rejection rate was high, because we attempted to apply our review guidelines more stringently to improve research quality and to create more coherent sessions. In Dublin our network programme finally consisted of 40 papers, 5 symposium and four posters. One of the symposia was a joint session with NW 13 Philosophy of Education. The attendance at sessions varied from 15 to 80 participants with typically fewer participants attending the early morning and late afternoon sessions.
The atmosphere in the network was very positive and encouraging. There was mutual respect for the diversity of research and criticism was friendly and constructive. A great majority of presentations were of a high standard. The research quality varied less this year and was said by many senior reseachers to be very high. Most of the sessions ended with explorative and constructive discussions. Further, the discusssions in our network extended to actual political topics such as the consequences of the Brexit decision on academia and the situation of academics in Turkey.
The third network meeting of network 30 brought new and old participants together. In the meeting the newly developed "Managament policy of NW 30" was introduced. For the first time, the network held a convenor election as required in the policy. Discussion on the network development took place. As in previous ECER, a network dinner was arranged and all members were invited.
The general ECER conference call is suitable to attract those already working in the area but also to provide new conference participants with suggestions for their proposal. However, from a network perspective, we had a special call for Dublin initiated by new members the previous year. This was titled "Assessing environmental and sustainability education in times of accountability, measurement and evidence". This call generated one symposium (the first in the program) and one paper session.
The call was fruitful and we have prepared a special network call for Copenhagen. We experience a lively discussion in our network where members feel free to provide comments about what they expect and suggest what timely topics could be looked at in the network call. We think that the network programme, after three events, has gained a robust framework of thematic symposia and shows ongoing cooperation between network members.
In 2016 we had new attandants from Norway and Brazil. As a network we intend to build cooperations with academics networks outside Europe, but as we are still a new network our number one priorty remains that of raising research quality within our network.
As in previous years, we actively sought contact with local researchers and/or NGOs to include them in our programme or social activities, but without success. However, for Copenhagen, contacts are already in place and we aim to have a presentation outlining national and loal research activities in Denmark, in the past and now. Further, there are plans for a field trip and a sponsored network dinner.