The network program consisted of 43 contributions, which made a full program and some parallel sessions as well. About a third of the contributions addressed wellbeing, with themes centering around ‘school wellbeing’, ‘high school students, education and wellbeing’, ‘mental health and psychological wellbeing’ and ‘occupational wellbeing’. Other themes included policy- and curriculum perspectives in health and sexuality education, health literacy and health awareness, and school health promotion programmes.
Network 8 didn’t have a special call this year but several sessions included references to the overall theme of ECER 2019 ‘Education in an Era of Risk’. Hereunder the workshop offered as an EERA invited session in collaboration with five networks (4, 7, 8, 20 and 30) on Education Research At Risk In Europe: What are the scientific, ethical, political and practical implications?
The network furthermore had a workshop on ‘The impact of the impact agenda in Health Education’ (addressing challenges as well as openings), a joint session with network 4 on ‘Gender, body and risks’, and a joint session with network 33 on Gender stereotypes and representation. Due to last minutes cancellations, the joint session with network 18 was unfortunately cancelled.
The session consisting of 2 papers was placed in the last session on Friday (a pre-call for a joint session and a more attractive placement might be a good idea for next year). As in previous years workshops and joint sessions were stressed as appreciated session forms, workshops giving a much needed room for discussion, and joint sessions an opportunity to meet different disciplinary perspectives.
In relation to ideas for ECER 2020 special calls and symposiums “Embodiment” was mentioned (following up on the 2019 symposium “Embodied Conceptions of Wellbeing in Education”) , as well as an idea for a call related to the 2020 Conference Theme: Educational Research (Re)connecting Communities (fits the focus on school-community partnerships in the network).