Annual Report 2016, Dublin

The network programme was slightly smaller in terms of number of sessions (no parallel sessions) compared with ECER 2015 in Budapest. Additionally there were more cancellations and no-shows this year compared to previous conferences. Nevertheless, Research on Health Education Network had a full agenda and stimulating discussions at the sessions. There was one symposium, one workshop and one poster, the rest were paper sessions. The attendance of the sessions was satisfactory, between 10 and 27 people depending on the schedule in the conference programme. As usual, early morning and late afternoon sessions were less attended. The conference programme covered the usual scope of thematic areas for the network, including, for example research on: health-promoting schools; wellbeing in schools; health literacy; curriculum issues; school leadership and health education; research methodologies; physical activity, health and learning; school meals and learning; sexuality and relationships education. Again this year the conference programme was launched with session 0, with an invited talk to feature Health Education Research in Ireland as ECER host country.

Quality of the discussions following the presentations was improved this year, perhaps partly due to the fact that many of the paper sessions consisted of two papers so there was more time for discussion. This year, the collaboration with other EERA networks was the most intensive compared with previous years. We organized 4 joint sessions with other networks and all were rather succesful. The collaboration with network 18 (Sports pedagogy) is continuing from the previous conferences. In addition, in Dublin we had joint sessions with Network 3 (Curriculum), Network 14 (Families and community) and Network 26 (Leadership). The experience was positive and we hope to continue the collaboration.