ECER 2014, Porto
Network 4: Inclusive Education report
General and Thanks
Researchers in Network 4 in general had a very good 2014 ECER. Travel in Porto was easy, and the city delightful. The river area is stunning. This was the first year that the 3 new conveners, Liz Todd, Katja Petry and Gottfried Biewer were managing the organization of the sessions. A very warm thanks is extended to the team who did a lot of abstract reviewing: Lani Florian; Jo Rose; Jonty Rix and Sip Jan Pijl. All abstracts were reviewed twice. A very warm thanks is also extended to the people who agreed to act as chairs in each session.
Submissions and Sessions
There were 161 submissions and 26 papers rejected (16.1%). Of the papers accepted, 120 papers were presented. There were also 8 symposia and 2 workshops. There were 5 posters. The geographical spread was broad, and session chairs were taken from a very wide range of nationalities. When planning the conference we put 4 papers in most of the sessions, since this would almost certainly be reduced by drop out of presenters before the conference. Sure enough, only 4 sessions in the end actually had 4 papers. Of course the symposia had 4-6 papers. We had one session this year jointly with the networks of intercultural education and with social justice (NW 7 &20). This session was well attended and went very well.
For most sessions there was a high level of coherence in topic between the papers. There was a generally good attendance at sessions with higher attendance for symposia. So, for the paper sessions, 4 sessions were attended by 1-10 people, 7 by 11-20 people, 7 by 21-30 people, 1 by 41-50 people, and 1 by 50+. Of the symposia: 1 was attended by 11-21; 3 by 21-30;1 by 31-40; and 2 by 41-50. A small number of sessions were attended by a very small group of people but sometimes the discussion in these sessions was very rich. The 2 workshops were on marginalisation and on the research methodology theory of change. Both were well attended. Most sessions were rated pretty highly.
Paper Quality
In the view of the convenors, the quality of the papers was good, slightly better than the previous year, but nevertheless pretty mixed. There were some excellent papers but some papers were poorly delivered and were poor in quality. The research experience of presenters was very broad. We attracted some highly experienced researchers and there were also many in the main conference who were post graduate students or early career researchers.
Network Dinner
The conveners, with help from Silvia Alves, organised a network meal overlooking the river in a very good restaurant on the Wednesday evening and this went very well indeed. Music was provided. The tables were small enough to enable some good conversation. 42 people attended.
Network Meeting
The network meeting was very well attended. There was lively discussion on a number of topics. The most heated discussion was about whether to have 3 or 4 as the max number of papers per paper session, and how to deal with no-shows in terms of paper presenter. 9 people who were supposed to present papers did not turn up and had not previously withdrawn from the conference. The conference committee allocated many papers to sessions of 4 to prepare for a number of papers being withdrawn before the conference. They believe this decision to be wise since in the end only 4 paper sessions had 4 papers. However, by making 4 the usual number at the start, there is more likely to be coherence between papers.
At the network meeting delegates were encouraged to put in symposia next year. There was some suggestion that paper quality could be improved if less strong papers were offered a poster. However, many people cannot get funding unless they are presenting a session. It was noted that it is rare that a keynote focuses on inclusive education and this would be taken up with the EERA committee.
A long discussion wad had of the website and of ways to communicate with each other. We decided to continue sending news to Gottfried to email to the network if he though suitable. And for any discussion people were encouraged to form a facebook page ie to talk about horizon 2020. David Rodriguez attended and spoke about ISEC 2015 and encouraged people to attend.
Reviewing
Next year reviewing will be completely blind. This year some networks could identify authors and suggested that this helped them not to reject younger researchers so readily.
Liz Todd, Katja Petry, Gottfried Biewer