Annual Report 2007, Gent

As in previous years, Network 7 received a great number of papers. While deciding which to accept and which to redirect, we wrote to some of the authors to invite them to specify some aspects of their work in greater depth. Our queries were received as a positive contribution by authors.
 
Network 7 hosted 7 paper sessions, one symposium and a joint roundtable with network 4 Inclusive Education. It was remarkable that four authors did not show up for the presentation of their paper and quite a few authors had to cancel their presentations at a very late stage. This has not happened to any significant extent in previous years and had a negative effect on the quality of the conference. We were forced to re-arrange the sessions several times.

Themes around which papers were grouped ranged from

• “ Segregation, identity and social justice”,
• “Intercultural competence of teachers”,
• “Citizenship, democracy and inclusion”,
• “Daily pedagogical practices in diversity”,
•  “Diversity and commonality”,
• ”Selection, school outcomes and social justice” to “Intercultural education”.
• The symposium was entitled “Researching identity and social engagement in divided and segregated school communities”.

The contributions came from different European countries. At ECER 2007, the attendance was probably lower than at previous ECER conferences, especially for the first morning session. Usually there were 15-25 people. Network 7 was located in a building at a 10 minutes walking distance from the main conference building. This did not facilitate the possibility of switching between networks.
 
The network meeting was attended by several colleagues, some of whom had not been able to attend many of the Network 7 sessions this year, but whose abiding interest in the future course of the network and whose presence and contribution to the meeting was greatly appreciated. The presenters appreciated the way in which various papers had been organized, around a central theme or focus that enhanced the meaning of each presentation.

A book was presented to participants during the meeting. The network convenors have edited this Network book based on a selection of papers from ECER 2004 and ECER 2005. Social Justice and Intercultural Education: an open-ended dialogue was published by Trentham in May 2007. The network book acknowledges and represents the rich complexity presented by the notions of both “intercultural education” and “intercultural practices” intertwined with ideas of justice as seen, experienced and explored by educational researchers in Europe today.

Network convenors were invited to present the book at the 13th World Congress of Comparative Education Societies, held at the University of Sarajevo in September 2007. The special roundtable where the book was presented was directly related to the conference theme “Living Together”: Education and Intercultural Dialogue.