Annual Report 2011, Berlin

ECER 2011 in Berlin was well organised and a rewarding experience for the members of our research network. The network programme consisted of some 50 papers. Evaluations showed that the overall quality of the papers was high. The papers and research covered the major topics of our research network:

• urban education and children and youth at risk
• multi-service schools/improving the social infrastructure
• engagement with schooling and school well-being
• students’ voices and researching with youth at risk
• student and teacher support services in urban schools
• dropout and violence prevention in regular schools and alternative programmes, and more

In Europe the notion that collaboration among educators and other practitioners, clients, community leaders and policy-makers is crucial to transforming the educational, (mental) health and social service systems that serve children and families is increasingly recognised among the stakeholders. This belief creates a momentum in which further experimentation with inter-agency collaboration, school-based or school-linked comprehensive services, behaviour and learning support teams, and alternative programmes for youngsters with severe behaviour problems is stimulated and supported.
Research is beginning to accumulate on programme characteristics, viability and effectiveness, and implementation, managerial and administrative issues. Fortunately, planning frameworks for coordinating, harmonising, and synchronising the internal, school-owned supports and services and community-owned services are increasingly available. This work entails institutional change involving schools, health and human services agencies, and their boundary relations. The assumption is that school improvement and renewal processes are destined to fall short of their intended aims until such time as the family and community contexts for children’s learning and healthy development are addressed simultaneously. The research network will prepare a symposium during ECER 2012 in Cádiz Spain on innovative education and health and human services partnerships. In Berlin 2011 this symposium has been discussed during our business meeting.

Furthermore it was decided that the research network, again, will encourage the development of collaborative and comparative reserarch projects. In Berlin 2011 we have agreed on planning to write an update of our 1997 book Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education; Research, Policy and Practice. For more information, please contact Dolf van Veen, network convenor (Dolf.vanveen@inholland.nl).

In Cádiz network 5, 7 and 19 will organize a cross-network symposium “New Methodological Approaches to Research on Education, Childhood and Youth”: methodological advances, choices and dilemmas”. Please read the call for abstracts (pdf).

Call for Papers:

<link file:939 _self>Download available here