Network 8 special call for ECER 2020 title included a reference to the overall conference theme “(Re)connecting Communities”: How can health and wellbeing education expand opportunities to lead a valuable life, in the context of a cooperative democratic society?
The network received 47 contributions, of these 44 where accepted and 3 rejected. The accepted contributions included 37 papers, 3 symposiums (health literacy, school wellbeing and a joint network 8 and 30 symposium on utilitarian conceptions of education), 1 workshop (conceptualizing student wellbeing), and 3 posters (bullying, IT and mindfulness). This would have made a full and exciting program and some parallel sessions as well - we hope that many of these contributions can be presented in the forthcoming conference in 2021.
Themes in the contributions centering around school-community collaboration on health promotion, and as in the previous three years there were quite a few contributions on wellbeing (student and teachers). Other themes included and school leadership for health promotion, critical thinking, health literacy, life skills, mindfulness and resilience, inclusion and stress issues.
With the cancelation of ECER 2020 due to the pandemic, the convener group discussed the possibility of offering non-official network-related events with informal presentations, allowing authors to present the submission again at a later point in an official programme, should they wish to. Due to organizational issues following the late opening up of universities, the convener group didn’t see any possibility to offer to facilitate these. This doesn’t mean that we haven’t been able to see each other as many network 8 members are engaged in the activities of our ‘sister’ organization Schools for Health in Europe (https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/), and participates in the research group seminars. One (zoom)seminar was for example organized 11. June 2020 focusing on COVID-19 and its relevance for school health promotion.