National Associations Archives - Page 6 of 7

How to prepare for your first ERG conference

by Dr Estella Ferraro | DFG, Emerging Researchers' Group

The Emerging Researchers’ Group holds an annual conference, the Emerging Researchers’ Conference (ERG), preceding the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). We asked Estella Ferraro for some tips on preparing and attending your first ERG Conference.

Going to an international conference for the first time can be overwhelming and exciting at the same time. It is an excellent opportunity to meet fellow colleagues from all over the world – I have met colleagues from Europe but also from Australia, Asia, South America, and Africa. It also gives you feedback on your research from outside the own academic framework, which can really open your eyes to entirely new perspectives.

You can’t just show up on the first day of the conference. There are a number of preparations you should undertake, and some of them start months before the conference even takes place. Especially when planning to go to ECER for the first time, it is easy to lose track of the upcoming necessary deadlines. So here are some tips on how to prepare for your first (or second or third) ERG conference.

Deadlines and preparations in advance to the conference

The Proposal

Many reasons may have led you to want to attend the ERG conference. Perhaps the topic is of great interest to you, or you have always wanted to travel to the place ECER takes place that year, or maybe your supervisor asked you to come along. The first decision is if you wish to present yourself or if you are attending to watch, learn, and network. Both have their advantages: it can be very inspiring to participate for the first time without being nervous or stressed about your own presentation, especially if your funding permits that.

On the other hand, I would suggest that if you have a chance to present you should go for it! The ERG conference is a great place to practice your presentation skills and get helpful feedback on your research in an extremely friendly atmosphere on an international scale.

Submission usually starts in December before the conference and ends in January. You can find the current deadline here. This timeline is something you should keep in mind and plan for so you can write the proposal and hand it in in time.

Funding

With that in mind, you might also consider funding opportunities. There are many opportunities for travel grants and funding you can apply for (from EERA, your home country, or home university). It is worth researching the conditions and deadlines for funding opportunities so that you don’t miss a chance! Make sure you can get all necessary documents in time, especially if you need something from others who might take some time such as a recommendation letter.

Accommodation, Visa and Flights

Obviously, this won’t apply if the conference takes place digitally. In April review results are usually announced, and this is when things get real! It can be advisable to book accommodation even before results are announced if you have an option to cancel free of charge. ECER is a huge conference and often in small cities so affordable accommodation can be booked out quickly. Don’t leave this to the last minute. Similarly, if you need to apply for a visa, check the deadlines so you don’t miss anything.

Deadlines and Preparations Closer to the Conference

Preparing your Presentation

Once time draws closer to the conference, you should start preparing your paper if you have been accepted to present one. Here it is important that you don’t overload your presentation as timing can be tricky. Participants often want to include too much information, while often it’s better to keep it simple and clear. Don’t be scared about presenting in another language. Your English doesn’t have to be perfect and, in my experience, everyone at the ERG conference is really helpful even if you forget how to say something. If you have questions on your research or about something you’re stuck with, it’s fine to ask for that in the discussion too, so that you can really get the most from your experience and presentation at ECER.

Scheduling your conference

Look at the schedule and think about what interests you, and what you want to get out of the conference. Be prepared to pick out some sessions in advance but also accept that sometimes you might end up spontaneously changing your mind. Don’t overschedule yourself Leave some space for networking opportunities and meeting other academics as well.

Finally, all I can say is the emerging researcher conference is an amazing platform to learn, engage and network, so: Enjoy your time there!

Further Information

Find out more about the ERG Conference, including deadlines, programme, and accepted presentation formats on the EERA website.

Want to know what to expect? Have a look at the previous ECER and ERG conferences and check out our YouTube channel for videos of the ECER keynote sessions in 2020.

Dr Estella Ferraro

Dr Estella Ferraro (née Hebert) is a Post-Doc researcher at the Goethe University in Frankfurt at the chair for theory and history of education. She is also a co-convenor for the Emerging Researchers Group and for Network 6 Open Learning: Media, Environments, and Cultures of the European Educational Research Association (EERA). Her research interests focus on questions of media education including teaching and learning with new media, datafication and big data, digital surveillance, identity in the light of personal data, and questions of digital ethics. Her PhD thesis published under the title of „Willful Blindness – on the relationship of identity, agency and personal data“ exemplifies the intersection of a bildungs-theoretical perspective with post-digital theories that characterise Dr Ferraro as a researcher.

She has over six years of experience in teaching and researching media education and has worked and studied internationally. For more information on her research and work go to: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/55826755/Estella_Hebert

How Dialogic Educational Research Reconnects Communities

by Professor Ramon Flecha | AMIE, NW 14 Communities, Families, and Schooling in Educational Research

At the European Conference of Educational Research in 2020, Professor Ramon Flecha presented his keynote “How dialogic educational research reconnects communities”. Here he shares his research with our readers.

My presentation was part of the panel at the European Conference of Educational Research in 2020, shared with two excellent speakers, with the outstanding coordination of Joe O’Hara. It was entitled ‘How dialogic educational research reconnects communities’, and it was organized around four sections:

Dialogic social impact and the human right to science and education
Dialogic Educational Research (DER) and Co-creation
DER and educational communities
DER and ethics.

What is a Dialogic Approach?

Language is one of the most remarkable human capacities. Through language, individuals are capable of action and, in consequence, of transforming their context in the direction they desire. Drawing on this idea, the dialogic approach refers to the fact that in our current societies, individuals turn more and more frequently to dialogue as a part of their social behavior.

In this vein, reaching understandings, making choices, solving conflicts, and transforming realities, all take increasingly place through an egalitarian dialogue. In it, arguments are valued according to their validity, and not to the position of power of the person that used them. This allows for the emergence of a violence-free and democratic context, in which new consensus can be reached and new meanings can be created.

Taking this idea to the educational field implies acknowledging that any member of the community can contribute through dialogue to the improvement of the quality of education in that context. In turn, this demands the creation of spaces of dialogue in which the diversity of voices of that particular context can be heard, including those of the most excluded. Adding “research” to this equation implies for researchers to recognize the valuable contributions participants, regardless of their background, can provide to the reality under study, by sharing their understandings based on their daily-life experiences and knowledge.

Dialogic Social Impact and the Human Right to Science and Education

Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that “everyone has the right…to share scientific advances and its benefits”. This right has been neglected for a long time. For instance, in education, students, parents, and communities had been excluded from their participation in the co-creation of knowledge about education. These groups had also not received information about scientific advancements in the field. In such scenarios, it is impossible to achieve the right to education for all, which is not only the right to attend school but also to receive in it the benefits of scientific advancements in education. The dominant discourse imposed a hierarchical perspective, in which researchers created knowledge, teachers received this knowledge in their training, and students, parents, and communities were the objects of its implementation.

Dialogic Educational Research (DER) and Co-creation

Horizon Europe and other international research programmes have now incorporated a dialogic demand from citizens. Social Impact and Co-Creation are the new priorities. Citizens want to see that the public investment in research yields results leading to the improvement of society and the lives of individuals. This demand was formulated in a European Conference on “Science Against Poverty” in this way:

“if society invests € 1.000.000 in research on poverty, scientists receiving this resource have to present evidence that their research contributed more to the overcoming of poverty than if this money had been given directly to poor people”.

Even though there has been resistance from researchers in education (just as in other fields), this change has been clearly co-led by educational researchers. Some studies in education have not only generated excellent improvement of educational results but also have been successful examples to orient researchers in all sciences towards the respective social impact.

Citizens are also demanding the co-creation of knowledge in dialogue with researchers. An increasing number of researchers and research institutions want a continuous dialogue with citizens too, not only with the aim to apply that knowledge, but also to create it. This increasing dialogic research is generating more improvements in society and a growth in scientific knowledge. Dialogic educational research has also co-led this change towards more democratic, transparent, and egalitarian societies.

DER and Educational Communities

Dialogic educational research promotes dialogic educational communities. Parents and communities have a lot of experiences with schools and children. Those experiences are an excellent resource for the co-creation of scientific knowledge and also for the improvement of educational results for all children.

Some people are afraid that this dialogic transformation can decrease the original status of science for society and the original status of teachers in schools. Instead, this dialogic process recreates in current society the original sense of the schools and the educational sciences. Both the universal educational systems and the social sciences were created by democratic revolutions. The objective was citizen sovereignty – to enable citizens to decide about themselves and their societies. In order to do so, universal educational systems were created to facilitate the basic knowledge to all people, and the social sciences were created in order to allow citizens and societies to know themselves.

As Max Weber demonstrated, a process of bureaucratization moved those human creations away from the voices and the decisions of citizens. Current social sciences, including educational sciences, are now overcoming this bureaucratization and recreating their original sense.

We, educational researchers, do not need a hierarchical distance from teachers or citizens in order to have status. The reality is the other way around. When we dialogue openly with citizens, they can see directly how much knowledge we can provide them in order to improve the educational results of their students or children. Besides, we learn a lot from those dialogues. One decade ago, educational sciences (and other social sciences) were under the threat of being eliminated from the European scientific programme of research; the main argument for doing so was that citizens did not see an improvement of their lives as a result of such research. This argument was refuted by successful scientific research on education: it was demonstrated that research in education (and other social sciences) can contribute to a greater improvement of society than if the resources allocated to it had been dedicated to other areas. The status of researchers for teachers, parents, communities, and students significantly increased with these studies, as well as for policymakers and institutions.

DER and Ethics

The continuous dialogue between researchers and citizens is also a guarantee for maintaining the anti-sexist and anti-racist values of education and science. The status and prestige of educational sciences decrease when some researchers behave against those values. Furthermore, we need a continuous dialogue with citizen movements such as #metoo in order to improve the values of research and research institutions. A minority of researchers harm the prestige of our field when they engage in sexually harassing behaviour or second-order sexual harassment. In order to overcome their conduct, we need a continuous dialogue with those movements and with citizens in general.

The democratic, transparent and egalitarian transformation of research is creating the most profound and fast revolution of knowledge in all human history. We are lucky to have the opportunity to be part of this transformation. In that way, we can make possible and real the ideals that moved most of us to dedicate our professional lives to this field: the right to education for all and the creation of excellent knowledge for humanity.

Watch the Keynote

Learning by Doing Research: the Ukrainian Educational Research Association

by Professor Oksana Zabolotna | UERA

Maintaining reliable contacts, networking, and sharing ideas are some of the best ways to empower educators. And professional and research associations help educators achieve these goals.

The Ukrainian Educational Research Association (UERA) was created five years ago to boost interdisciplinary research synergy in the field of education.

Freeing Educational Research from dusty bookshelves

Historically, educational research in Ukraine was purely in the domain of Pedagogy which in Ukraine is a discipline dealing with history and theory of education, including its forms and methods.

A quick search of the National Library of Ukraine database shows that 2729 candidate dissertations (Ph.D. research papers) in Pedagogics were defended in Ukraine in 2013-2015. Not bad for a country with a population of 42.76 mln (Eurostat, 2015)! However, despite the rapidly growing quantity of dissertations, pedagogical research in Ukraine had not gained the respect or trust of the research community or the broader public. Moreover, all the findings and recommendations were overlooked and neglected as if they had been created more for the ‘dusty bookshelves’ than for any policy impact. These findings tended to benefit the researcher but rarely reached as far as the classroom. There was even a saying: ‘Pedagogics is not a science; pedagogical research is not a research’.

One of the reasons for that was that in Ukraine, a monodisciplinary approach had always dominated in educational research. Pedagogues, politicians, sociologists, economists, and school teachers did not come together to gain insights into the field that gives the life start to each person. So for the Ukrainian Educational Research Association, bringing together researchers from various disciplines to work to make research evidence-based and school practice applicable was a real challenge. Moreover, over the years, it became clear that the real challenge is not gathering people under the UERA umbrella, but in keeping the members together in a vibrant association.

UERA’s Mission

UERA’s mission deals with:

the development of educational researchers’ competence
raising the quality of educational research to influence the educational system and society
defending the rights and freedoms of its members
meeting the professional, scientific, social, and cultural interests of its members

The best way to realise this mission, as we see it, is to help the UERA members learn by doing high-quality research in a team of people united by a project.

This idea inspired us to submit the project “European Quality of Educational Research for Empowering Educators in Ukraine” for funding from Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Support to Association.

Project Proposal and Objectives

As a part of the European Educational Research Association, UERA aimed with this project to promote European Educational Research Quality Indicators (defined in the FP 7 collaborative project coordinated by Prof. Dr Ingrid Gogolin and Dr Diann Pelz-Rusch, University of Hamburg, Department of Comparative and Multicultural Education)

The project objectives were to:
· foster the dialogue between the academic world and policy-makers in the field of education
· promote innovation in research through cross-sectoral and multi-disciplinary studies, as well as networking with other institutions
· promote excellence in research in EU educational issues
· equip young professionals with knowledge of European Educational Research Quality Indicators relevant for their academic and professional lives
· foster the engagement of young academics in teaching and research on European subjects.

Project Scope and Results

The 3-year project has come to an end, and we can now say that it has proved to be of great importance for the UERA community.

We conducted three Winter Schools for emerging researchers. Each year about 30 participants were taught about the European Educational Research Quality Indicators, and have learned the methodology of conducting Teaching and Learning International Survey.

Train the Trainer courses have helped the Winter School participants to conduct workshops in their home institutions.

The project team has conducted interdisciplinary research based on the results of TALIS in the EU countries and of the study by TALIS methodology in Ukraine (coordinated by UERA in 2017) and published the book “Teachers and Learning Environment: Cross-cultural Perspective“.

We have also organised three National conferences for educational researchers involving policy-makers in the field of education. It has become a platform for discussing contemporary education issues in Ukraine as well as building collaborations between researchers nationwide. We were pleased to have the EERA President Joe O’Hara and the council member Saneeya Qureshi as key speakers at the conference in 2020.

The project supported the UERA annual council meeting which serves to the development and promotion of the association as a permanent national platform for education researchers. It has also enabled us to start the Journal of Ukrainian Educational Research Association “Educational Insights: Theory and Practice“.

All these activities supported UERA in the implementation of its statutory activities and in performing research in the field of education. The research has produced some evidence that can be used to advise policy-makers at local, regional, and national levels. The UERA has provided critical, data-driven input to the policy debate in the form of roundtable discussions, policy briefs, literature reviews, research papers, and policy recommendations.

But the most important thing is that the project has helped to create a community of more than 400 educational researchers from different fields who share the UERA’s values and academic integrity principles.

The Future

The best way to learn is to do. So, we create teams and do educational research together. We are currently engaged in two endeavours. In the project “When Science is a Women”, together with researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, we trace women’s careers in STEM-related subjects in Poland and Ukraine (funded by Dauphine foundation). In the project “Learning through Play at School”, we cooperate with the Australian Council for Educational Research as a national partner to investigate the impact of playful approaches to teaching and learning in five regions of Ukraine (funded by LEGO Foundation). We are continually learning from our partners, and we are always learning from each other.

Professor Oksana Zabolotna

Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor, Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University

A leading expert in comparative education with special attention to alternative education in the EU countries. She is a specialist in research methodologies and data analysis. She has 18 years of experience working as an educational researcher and research consultant for academic institutions. She has extensive experience in designing and managing projects, both academic mobility and research.

She has worked in ERASMUS MUNDUS projects (EMINENCE and EMINENCE II) as a joint-coordinator (Adam Mickiewicz University as the leading institution), and coordinator of Jean Monnet Module “Ukraine-EU: Transcultural Comparisons in Educational Research” (2016-2019). Team member of New Generation School Teacher (Joint project of British Council Ukraine and Ukrainian Ministry of Education) (2013‑2019). Joint coordinator of the project «European Quality of Educational Research for Empowering Educators in Ukraine» (2017‑2020), joint coordinator of the UERA project «At the Educational Crossroads: Evidence-based Dialogue with National Minorities in Chernivtsi and Zakarpattia Regions» (2019), regional coordinator of the project «Development of Regional EFL Professional Hubs in Ukraineі» (2019), member of the project team «Intercultural Dialogue about National Minorities in Chernivtsi Region Learning the Ukrainian Language», member of project team of All-Ukrainian Monitoring Survey of Leaching and Learning among Teachers and School Principals (with the use of TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) questionnaire (2017)

She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Studies in Comparative Education (http://sce.udpu.edu.ua/en/). As a vice-president of the Ukrainian Educational Research Association, she is engaged in capacity building and networking activities in Ukraine and abroad. She has been a research consultant for 11 research projects (PhD and Doctor’s dissertations in the field of comparative education). She has coordinated fourteen youth exchanges with the partner of Uman-Gniezno (Poland) (2009-2019). The projects involved school students and focused on intercultural communication with different emphases in particular projects.

School Uniform Policy in Scottish schools: Control and Consent

by Rachel Shanks | NW 6 Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures, SERA

A topic that is of continued interest to educational researchers – but also to teachers, pupils, and their parents – is school uniforms. As you may know, there is a marked difference between what pupils wear in school in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Ireland and the rest of Europe (recently Malta changed from formal uniforms to tracksuits). We set out to look into the reasons that schools give for having school uniforms.

I conducted the research with thirteen students from across the University of Aberdeen. A week-long course was designed to teach the qualitative data analysis software NVivo while taking part in an authentic research project. This was to provide undergraduates both research skills and experience.

I chose to analyse secondary school uniform policies because the policies are publicly available on school websites and do not involve confidential or sensitive information. We began our work with the identification of school uniform policies, school handbooks, and other information related to uniforms on each school’s website. After uploading the files, we read and coded the materials where we saw the reasons that were given for having a school uniform. Over the week, I benefited from over 300 hours of research assistance while the students learnt NVivo and applied this learning in the project.

Key Findings

Together we identified the different reasons that schools gave for requiring a school uniform. These included:

ethos, identity, pride, sense of belonging
safety, security/reduce truancy
preventing competition/discrimination
discipline and reduce bullying
employability
the reputation of the school
financial benefits
attitude to learning/improving standards of work

Students noticed more areas of interest, including the formality of the compulsory uniform from informal (no blazer or tie), mixed (blazer or tie) to formal (blazer and tie).

Of the 357 publicly funded secondary schools in Scotland we discovered:

343 schools (96%) require a uniform and just 14 schools do not
320 schools mandate the wearing of a school tie by both girls and boys
235 schools require a blazer to be worn
200 schools ban jeans

Three students have continued to analyse the data in areas of interest they identified, and we are close to submitting journal manuscripts. The students have also been involved in teaching doctoral students and university staff how to analyse qualitative research data using NVivo.

I asked the students to provide a summary of the analysis conducted so far and some of the questions or issues that arose from the research.

Uniform Policies & Gender – by Kirsten Phelps

Our analysis of school uniform policies regarding gender found that there were generally more rules and prescriptive policies for girls. Many policies mentioned the length of girls’ skirts using language that centred on the idea of decency or modesty. This suggests a placing of normative categories on girls and young women using school uniform policies, with those that follow the rules seen as moral/good and those who break them immoral/bad. Most schools in Scotland include ties as a mandatory part of their uniform for both boys and girls. This is notable as ties are not something usually worn in the workplace, or otherwise by women, yet they remain an entrenched part of the British school uniform.

School uniforms and employability discourse – by Annabelle Olsson

One specific justification for the uniform, employability, was analysed through the lens of governmentality. ‘Employability’ (Fotiadou, 2020; Moreau and Leathwood, 2006) is a concept referring to the ‘human capital’ – i.e., the skills, knowledge, and personal attributes – that makes an individual more likely to gain employment. Such discourses of employability generally overlook structural causes of unemployment, instead of placing the responsibility on the individual to continuously develop their skills and adapt to a precarious and competitive job market. In the policy documents, we discovered a rationale for the uniform based on such discourses. Fifty-three schools (15%) made linkages between the uniform and the world of work, illustrating a semi-hidden curriculum that implies that pupils should be presentable and employment-ready, conforming to the market and the workplace as well as their subordinate role within it.

Power and control in schools– by Jasper Friedrich

There appeared to be a tension between the practice of enforcing strict uniform policies and the way these practices are justified. While almost all policies include highly detailed regulations (some go as far as specifying the minimum length of girls’ skirts) and strict enforcement measures, justifications tend to focus on ‘soft’ values such as creating a sense of belonging and giving pupils self-confidence. We found it useful to analyse this in terms of Michel Foucault’s theorisation of different historical modes of power . When school uniforms were first introduced in the early modern period, they were what Foucault terms a technique of disciplinary power: one that ‘compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes’. We still very much see this in how the policies homogenize dress while differentiating between girls and boys, creating hierarchies (prefects often wear special uniforms) and excluding those who do not conform.

In contrast, the justifications for these strict uniform policies are often cast in terms of what Foucault would call ‘governmentality’, a type of power that seeks to manage people with their consent instead of controlling them. The emphasis here is on how students will feel more included and improve their ‘human capital’ as a result of wearing uniforms – the uniform is justified not as a convenient tool of administration and control, but rather as a valuable part of the ‘product’ schools can offer parents.

Next Steps

Further analysis of the data set includes looking at the affordability of school uniforms, to what extent religious/philosophical beliefs are taken into account in the policies, and what is in place for pupils who identify as non-binary or who are in the process of transitioning gender. I hope to conduct research in schools that have involved pupils in decisions around uniforms.

I also hope to collaborate with researchers in other countries on school uniforms, dress codes, and appearance policies, so please get in touch if this interests you.

Finally, this project showed how it is possible to combine the teaching of qualitative data analysis software such as NVivo with actual data analysis providing a win-win for the academic and the students involved.

References and Further Reading

Maria Fotiadou (2020) Denaturalising the discourse of competition in the graduate job market and the notion of employability: a corpus-based study of UK university websites, Critical Discourse Studies, 17:3, 260-291, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2018.1546606

Marie‐Pierre Moreau & Carole Leathwood (2006) Graduates’ employment and the discourse of employability: a critical analysis, Journal of Education and Work, 19:4, 305-324, DOI: 10.1080/13639080600867083

The Power Thinker – Why Foucault’s work on power is more important than ever

School sends pupils home for wearing unpolishable shoes, no blazer and old footwear – Metro UK

Affordability of secondary school uniform in Scotland – University of Aberdeen (PDF).

Authors

Dr Rachel Shanks

Senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland

Dr Rachel Shanks is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. She sits on the Executive Committee of the Scottish Educational Research Association (SERA) and is the link person with the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI). She is a co-convenor of EERA Network 6: Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures. Rachel is the Programme Director of the BA in Professional Development at the University of Aberdeen and regularly runs workshops on how to use NVivo. Her research interests fall into three main categories: professional learning and mentoring; digital technologies in education; and school uniform/dress code policies. Rachel is also a member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and is currently conducting research funded by BERA on teacher preparation and new teachers’ responses to teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kirsten Phelps

Graduate Student, St Andrews University

Kirsten is a graduate student studying Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asian Security at St Andrews University. Her interests include social movements and post-conflict transitions.

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Annabelle Olsson

Graduate Student, University College London

Annabelle is a graduate student in Health Humanities at UCL. Her interests include emancipatory education and student wellbeing, social and anthropological perspectives on mental health, and interdisciplinary research methods.

Jasper Friedrich

Graduate Student, University of Oxford

Jasper Friedrich is a graduate student at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He is interested in social and political theory, especially critical approaches and theories of power.

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Turning a leaf: a new procedure for European Education Research Journal Special Issues

by Professor Grek and Paolo Landri | BERA, EERJ, NW 23 Policy Studies and Politics of Education, NW 28 Sociologies of Education

2020 has been a year like no other. On 31st of December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of ‘pneumonia of unknown etiology’. Less than a year later, the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered social life as we know it. The disease has taken tens of thousands of lives, whilst confining billions to their homes in worldwide ‘lockdowns’, in an effort to mitigate the spread of the lethal disease. In a matter of days, the global health emergency led to an education crisis, too. As country after country ordered school closures, education was suddenly faced with an extraordinary new reality: billions of children around the world became homebound, unable to go to school.

Yet, education did not stop. From nurseries to schools to higher education, we saw concerted and speedy adaptation efforts to create home-schooling and online education environments where students and teachers can interact. The extent to which these solutions are effective, or even available to all learners, will be studied in depth in months and years to come. What is certain is that, similar to all other social policy areas, the effects of the pandemic in education are disproportionately worse for those from more unstable and weaker economic and social backgrounds.

This challenging context was the one in which the European Educational Research Journal changed editors’ hands; after the hard work of its founding Editor-in-Chief Professor Martin Lawn, and a successful five years’ spell under the editorial leadership of Professors Maarten Simons and Eric Mangez that followed, EERJ has now become an established and scientifically recognised journal in the field of education research in Europe and beyond.

EERJ is interested in the changing education research horizons in Europe. It sees the field as one that crosses borders through its subjects of study, our scholarly collaborations and the increasing complexity of a fluid and interconnected world. We see our work as the new EERJ co-editors as one of further enhancing the European research identity of the journal. We believe that this will be achieved by following the footpath of our predecessors in promoting the peer review and publishing of robust empirical education research, as well as balancing the journal’s publication profile by moving to a greater parity of the journal’s share of special issues with issues that feature independent article submissions.

As many of you know, EERJ has been closely associated to the annual European Conference of Education Research (ECER); we take part in the early career researchers’ conference, giving publishing advice to younger scholars; we organise the conference’s MOOT, a discussion forum around a topic of current interest; and we publish the keynote lectures. The journal, for a long time now, through this productive relationship with ECER, encouraged strong conference panels to submit articles as special issue proposals. Although EERJ will continue to do this important work, it also has to be acknowledged that the journal would now benefit from turning over a new leaf and allowing equal space for the publication of independent research papers, too.

Further, it has also become apparent that this is not just an aspiration that relates to scholarship only but perhaps also to practicality: at the moment there is a list of special issues in the pipeline; although all of them are high-quality contributions to the field of education research, the current reality of the global pandemic further increases the need for the journal to be able to be responsive to its contemporary, highly demanding and fluid historical and political environment by publishing independent articles timely and proactively.

Therefore, following a recent editorial board meeting and the agreement of all its members, EERJ will follow a new process for special issue submissions. This will be as follows:

EERJ will introduce a new ‘Expression of interest’ form with a deadline of the end of September annually. This form will be used as a tool for the evaluation of the significance of the proposal in relation to its empirical and conceptual analysis, and its contribution to the aims and the scope of the journal. At the end of this competitive process, only a certain number of special issue proposals will go forward. The successful candidates will be invited to submit full proposals by the end of December. Full proposals will be evaluated closely: we will retain the option of rejecting a proposal if they do not fulfil the specified criteria, although we will be giving feedback and helping authors submit strong contributions. Following this process, we hope that annually, by late January, we will have an outcome that will trigger the preparation of three special issues per year.

The context in which EERJ is working today is one in which the mobilizing discourses of the European Education Area, combined with other ‘borderless’ flows of internationalisation of programmes, public-private partnerships and university alliances, are re-shaping the milieu of research in education. Above all, the current global pandemic, with its catastrophic effects on European economies and societies, has had -and will continue to have- a direct impact on education research in Europe. Regardless of the detrimental effects of this crisis, education research in Europe is currently thriving: a recent EERJ call for papers for a special issue on ‘Education in the Pandemic’ drew almost 200 high-quality abstracts of empirical research. A continuous challenge for EERJ is to be able to reflect on our current education condition and respond to it by publishing reflexive, robust and innovative research. We hope that this shift in the journal’s profile will help EERJ continue to flourish and grow in an increasingly competitive academic publishing environment and a highly uncertain and unequal world.

Professor Sotiria Grek

Professor of European and Global Education Governance / University of Edinburgh

Sotiria Grek is Professor of European and Global Education Governance at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Sotiria’s work focuses on the field of quantification in global public policy, with a specialisation in the policy arenas of education and sustainable development. She has co-authored (with Martin Lawn) Europeanising Education: Governing A New Policy Space (Symposium, 2012) and co-edited (with Joakim Lindgren) Governing by Inspection (Routledge, 2015), as well as the World Yearbook in Education: Accountability and Datafication in Education (with Christian Maroy and Antoni Verger; Routledge, 2021).

Paolo Landri

Senior Researcher of the Institute of Research on Population and Social Policies at National Research Council in Italy

Paolo Landri is a Senior Researcher of the Institute of Research on Population and Social Policies at National Research Council in Italy (CNR-IRPPS). His main research interests concern educational organizations, digital governance and educational policies. His latest publication is: (2020) Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration through Actor Network Theory, London, Routledge.

Caring for Those who Teach Online – Reflections from a Virtual Staffroom

by Dr Sandra Cullen | ESAI, General, NW 1 Professional Learning and Development, NW 26 Educational Leadership

When schools and higher education institutions closed their doors in March 2020, some of the implicit and informal supports for teacher educators disappeared. As teacher educators migrated to new modes of teaching and learning, institutional supports such as IT upskilling, educational technologies, professional development, and assistance from HR were provided. However, many staff commented that the burden of the expectations placed on them often exceeded what they felt capable of responding to in a personal capacity. With this as the backdrop, I want to reflect on how staff in one institution developed more informal ways of supporting each other and building community in a time of isolation and fragmentation.

The imperative to create what Noddings calls ‘a climate in which caring relations can flourish’, and through which a sense of belonging can be maintained, led to us setting up a virtual staff room. The staff room doors opened for a coffee break from 11.00 to 12.00 every morning. To date, this has happened on over 120 occasions with more than 90 colleagues engaging in the staff room at different times. This casual drop-in space was hosted on Zoom with a reminder sent to all staff ten minutes before the room was opened. The live interaction was supported by emails, phone calls, and some shared photography and cooking projects.

As with any staff room, the tone was set by the people in the room at any given time. Ultimately what emerged was a supportive conversational space which broke down barriers as people swapped the small details and intimacies of everyday living and allowed colleagues glimpses into one another’s lives. This online space was characterised by a framework of CARE: a space for free-flowing conversation on a range of topics from the sublime to the ridiculous, attention to each other, deepening relationships with colleagues, and an increasing empathy as we observed something of each other’s homes and family lives. What we learned from the virtual staff room is that each element of this framework of CARE has to be supported by a number of integrated principles for practice: presence, production, performance, persona, personal, pastoral, and peer-to-peer.

Presence: Developing and maintaining a supportive space for conversation demands the fully engaged presence of the host in the virtual space. The host cannot dominate the conversation but will have to facilitate it. The continuity of having the same host, meeting at the same time, and sending a regular reminder, offered people a sense of assurance that some things stayed the same. As one colleague noted: ‘Just knowing that there are opportunities like this to connect goes a long way to help you feel more connected right away’.

Production: We learned that there should be no agenda or expectation of having to engage in quizzes or activities so that participants have the chance to ‘switch-off’ from having to do something. Participants wanted to ‘be’ with each other rather than to ‘do’.

Performance: Some personality types were comfortable adopting a virtual persona and spoke comfortably to the camera in the early stages of the virtual staff room, whereas it took others time to be comfortable in the space. Trying to ensure that all participants can be seen on one screen is vital for bringing quieter participants into the chat.

Persona: During the early weeks of meeting each other, there was a sense that participants were conscious of performing for the camera and projecting a positive persona. This mitigated against revealing what was really happening for them. Empathic conversations ensued when someone risked saying that things were not going so well for them.

Personal: The host has to ensure that people are introduced to each other as many colleagues may not have met in real-life. Deepening relationships in a CARE framework means that the virtual staffroom welcomed children, partners, and pets and provided glimpses of each other’s homes and gardens as part of caring for each other. In the words of one participant: ‘I like meeting people’s children and pets and seeing their homes and gardens – makes me feel more connected.’

Pastoral: Taking a CARE approach to hosting the virtual staff room will occasionally draw the host into providing pastoral support for some participants. CARE will sometimes call for actions that we might not have anticipated.

Peer-to-peer: CARE is ultimately a peer-to-peer activity based on the realisation, again in the words of a participant, ‘that we are in this together, I look forward to seeing the familiar faces.’ The virtual staff room extended people’s social network by creating new links and new modes of engagement between colleagues.

What began as an informal approach to caring for staff and keeping us connected with each other, the virtual staff room has become an example of how taking a CARE approach to an online space can provide a positive space for conversation, characterised by empathic attention to each other in our evolving relationships.

The door remains open, and the kettle is on.

Dr Sandra Cullen

Assistant Professor of Religious Education, Dublin City University

Dr. Sandra Cullen is Assistant Professor of Religious Education at Dublin City University where she specialises in second-level religious education. As Director of the ICRE (Irish Centre for Religious Education) she supports research and teaching in religious education in a variety of contexts. She is the APF (Area of Professional Focus) leader for Religious Education on the Doctor of Education Programme at DCU, and serves on the Executive of EFTRE (the European Forum for Teachers of Religious Education) and on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Religious Education.

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The Challenges and Opportunities of Physical Education within the Context of Health and Wellbeing

by Dr Gray and Dr Sandford | NW 18 Research in Sport Pedagogy, SERA

During the #ReconnectingEERA online conference, that replaced the planned 2020 ECER conference in Glasgow, the Network 18 (Research in Sport Pedagogy) symposium on 27^th August 2020 was attended by around seventy delegates from across Europe. The symposium was originally planned as a ‘local context’ contribution within NW18’s programme of activities at the Glasgow conference, where it was intended to showcase just some of the excellent Physical Education (PE) research that is taking place in Scotland. The symposium was organised in collaboration with SERA and their PE network (ScotPERN) in order to build capacity, share ideas and facilitate conversations. Dr Shirley Gray and Dr Rachel Sandford provide an overview of the online symposium, reflect on the discussion generated and consider implications for future research agendas.

Curriculum for Physical Education in Scotland

Scotland offers a rich site for educational research, given that it is now ten years on from the introduction of a new curriculum, the Curriculum for Excellence (Scottish Government, 2004). During this time, there have been several curriculum reviews, recommendations and further policy developments, which have presented numerous challenges for teachers. This was particularly evident with the PE curriculum, which in 2010 was relocated from the ‘Expressive Arts’ curriculum to the ‘Health and Wellbeing’ curriculum.

Whereas initially, teachers were supported by just two pages of broad curricular guidelines (Scottish Government, 2009), today they work with twenty-two pages of specific benchmarks (Education Scotland, 2017). These benchmarks indicate what pupils should be able to know and do as they progress through school. The programme for high stakes examinations in the senior years (ages 16-18 years) has also undergone several changes over recent years, and debates remain ongoing as to how they might be further developed in the future.

Research in Physical Education in Scotland

Researchers in PE in Scottish universities have been fascinated by these developments and have spent the last ten years exploring the impact of the new curriculum on teachers’ learning, practice and the learning experiences of students. Specific areas of research have included:

exploring the curriculum development process;
understanding the nature and role of health and wellbeing within the context of PE;
teacher change;
in-service and pre-service teacher learning;
teaching social and emotional wellbeing;
the role of digital technology and social media in how young people learn;
gender issues in PE, and;
critical pedagogies of affect.

Online Symposium at #ReconnectingEERA

The online symposium consisted of five presentations that exemplified just some of the work that has been done within these areas in recent years. Some of the references for this work can be found below.

The first presentation was by Dr Andrew Horrell from the University of Edinburgh. He presented findings from a study that took place at the time teachers were planning their new curricula in line with policy demands. He highlighted the ways in which regimes of accountability exerted a powerful influence on teachers and had a significant impact on the decisions they made about curriculum design.

The next presentation was by Professor Kirk, Cara Lamb and Dr Eishen Teraoka from the University of Strathclyde. They presented the findings from two studies that explored the pedagogies of PE teachers who paid specific attention to pupils’ learning in the affective domain. The first study explored the perceptions and experiences of teachers who were committed to engaging with pedagogies of affect. In the second study, they highlighted the challenges that teachers faced when attempting to learn and enact an activist intervention specifically designed to support girls’ positive experiences in PE.

Following this, Elaine Wotherspoon from the University of the West of Scotland reported the findings from her study that explored recently graduated PETE students’ levels of preparedness for teaching PE within the Health and Wellbeing curriculum. She discussed the factors that contributed to their feelings of preparedness, but also highlight that, the more they learned ‘on the job’, the less they felt that their PETE experience sufficiently prepared them for their entry into the profession.

In the final presentation, Dr Jess and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh presented their findings from the first phase of a longitudinal study exploring the professional visions of final year PE students. Guided by complexity thinking, they analysed twenty student essays that focussed on a future vision for PE. Results highlighted a diverse range of ideas and a discussion followed about the various factors that teachers will need to negotiate if their vision is to be realised.

In summary, these four presentations provided an insight into just some of the academic work that is being carried out in Scotland within the broad field of physical education. Together, they helped to showcase how the new Scottish curriculum has provided an exciting backdrop for educational research. This research provides academics, working with/alongside teachers, the opportunity to explore how PE practice might best ensure that young people have positive, healthy and meaningful experiences now and in the future.

In sharing this work and inviting comment, the symposium offered an opportunity for attendees to discuss key issues around health, PE and the curriculum, and make relevant connections to their own contexts. One exciting outcome here is that those delegates in attendance from Wales, a country that is currently going through very similar curriculum reform, sought to continue discussions with the panel beyond the symposium and now plan to organise a further joint symposium in the future.

The online symposium has served not only to raise the profile of educational research in Scotland but also to forge stronger connections between the ScotPERN and NW18 networks and identify opportunities for future collaborative research within Europe and beyond.

If you would like to see these presentations, then you can find them on the SERA ‘connects’ YouTube channel here:

Dr Shirley Gray

Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh

Dr Shirley Gray is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on issues relating to gender and equality, social and emotional learning, pupil motivation and the professional learning of teachers.

Dr Rachel Sandford

Senior Lecturer, Loughborough University

Dr Rachel Sandford is a Senior Lecturer in Young People and Sport at Loughborough University, UK. Her research centres on young people’s attitudes towards, experiences of and development in/through sport and physical activity. She has a particular interest in issues around popular culture, embodied identity and positive youth development.

References

Scottish Government (2004) A curriculum for excellence. (Glasgow, Learning and Teaching Scotland).

Scottish Government (2009) Curriculum for excellence: health and wellbeing: experiences and outcomes. (Glasgow, Learning and Teaching Scotland).

Education Scotland (2017). Benchmarks: Physical Education.

Scottish Research References

Carse, N, Jess, M & Keay, J. (2020), ‘Primary Physical Education in a complex world (Part 4): Advocating for the Education in Primary Physical Education‘ Physical Education Matters, pp. 21-23.

Carse, N, McMillan, P, Jess, M, McIntyre, J & Fletcher, T. (2018).Exploring the collaborative in a collective self-study. in D Garbett & A Ovens (eds), Pushing Boundaries and Crossing Borders: Self-Study as a Means for Researching Pedagogy . University of Auckland, pp. 489-496.

Craig, M, Thorburn, M, Mulholland, R, Horrell, A & Jess, M. (2016). ‘Understanding professional issues in physical education: A Scottish insight‘, Scottish Educational Review, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 80-100.

Gray, S., Wright, P., Sievwright, R., & Robertson, S. (2019). Learning to Use Teaching for Personal and Social Responsibility Through Action Research. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education.

Horrell, A., Sproule, J. & Gray, S., (2011). Health and wellbeing: a policy context for physical education in Scotland. Sport, Education and Society. 17(2) 163-180

Jess, M, Keay, J & Carse, N. (2019) ‘Primary physical education in a complex world (part 1)‘ Physical Education Matters, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 23-25.

Kirk, D., Lamb, C. A., Oliver, K. L., Ewing-Day, R., Fleming, C., Loch, A., & Smedley, V. (2018). Balancing prescription with teacher and pupil agency: spaces for manoeuvre within a pedagogical model for working with adolescent girls. Curriculum Journal, 29(2), 219-237.

MacIsaac, S., Kelly, J. & Gray (2017). ‘She has like 4000 followers!’: the celebrification of self within school social networks. Journal of Youth Studies.

MacLean, J., Mulholland, R., Gray, S. & Horrell, A. (2015) Enabling Curriculum Change in Scotland – PE Teacher and Policy Constructors’ Perceptions compared. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2013.798406.

Mcmillan, P 2017, Understanding physical education teachers’ day-to-day practice: Challenging the ‘unfair’ picture. in M Thorburn (ed.), Transformative Learning and Teaching in Physical Education. Routledge Research in Education, Routledge, Abingdon; New York, pp. 159-175.

Roberts, J, Gray, S & Camacho-Miñano, MJ. (2019). ‘Exploring the PE contexts and experiences of girls who challenge gender norms in a progressive secondary school’, Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/25742981.2019.1696688

Stewart, S., Gray, S., Kelly, J. & MacIsaac, S. (2019). Investigating the development of masculine identities in physical education. Sport Education and Society.

Teraoka, E., Ferreira, H. J., Kirk, D., & Bardid, F. (Accepted/In press). Affective learning in physical education: a systematic review. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education.

The Effects of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Children’s Education

by Prof McKinney and Dr Head | SERA

The theme of the ECER 2020 conference was Educational Research: (Re)connecting Communities. This focus was initially prompted by the concerns about the potential effects of Brexit and other fractures in communities in Europe. The conference aimed to interrogate the capacity of educational research to address the complexity of the challenges that are encountered in connecting and reconnecting communities in contemporary Europe.

The effects of Covid-19 and the consequent lockdowns that swept across Europe and the world led to further, more extensive, fractures and disconnects across Europe. Schools, universities and workplaces were closed. There were severe restrictions on travel and movement around Europe.

As the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns continued, a number of serious issues arose for children and the continuation of their education in Scotland. For many children and young people, school became an online engagement with teachers. The use of platforms and materials and the frequency of contact varied across Scotland’s 32 local authorities with learning resources provided by schools, media companies and commercial companies.

The Effects of Home Schooling

Recent research indicates that the move to learning at home for the majority of pupils led to mixed results for pupils, parents and teachers. Some parents and carers became anxious about adopting a greatly enhanced role in supporting the formal education of their children in the home. The formal education of children is normally assumed, almost exclusively, by highly qualified professional teachers in a school setting. There were not always sufficient resources at home to support formal home learning.

The effects of digital poverty, or digital exclusion, became apparent as awareness grew that some families did not have adequate equipment or even access to the internet to support their children in online learning. Not all members of the teaching profession had the skill set for the sudden move to online teaching and learning and, like many other professionals, had to upskill. Further, all teachers had to spend a substantial amount of time preparing and implementing online learning. There was serious disruption to the exam diet for senior pupils and a highly publicised reconfiguration of assessment practices leading to a controversial recalculation of grades for the major public examinations.

All of this unfolded in the context of serious concerns about rising levels of child poverty pre-COVID-19 and further increases as a result of job losses during lockdown. This situation contributed to a rise in food insecurity for many families and more families now seek free school meals for their children and access food from foodbanks. The effects of the rising levels of child poverty will have consequences for the physical and mental health and well-being of the children and young people.

The New Normal

There are other ways to view the outcomes of the lockdowns. As we came out of lockdown and schools resumed, ‘The New Normal’ was a phrase that came into current use. An important aspect of ‘new normal’ is the new knowledge, which will inform any altered concept of normality. New knowledge can emerge through any number of activities, but typically, it is the result of sustained engagement with others, materials and contexts during which we come to assimilate the nuanced experiences and perspectives of others in a new way.

Positive Effects of the Lockdown for Learners

Children and young people will have had a range of experiences of lockdown. As a result, they will have developed new knowledge about themselves as learners. There are likely to be pupils who will have experienced ‘schoolwork’ differently in a positive way; who have engaged with their learning at their own pace and on their own terms. Some will have enjoyed working alone, whilst others might have benefited from engagement with siblings and parents.

Anecdotally, we have probably all heard of examples of children and young people learning new things and developing skills and interests not directly connected to schoolwork. They have already blended their own ways of organising and engaging with their learning, their own interests and other people with whom they have interacted during this period.

The likelihood is that all young people will have learned new things and have a stronger sense of themselves as people and learners. It is important that this new knowledge is sought out, recognised and built on as our children, young people and schools return. We are in a unique situation and should take the opportunity to engage children’s and young people’s new skills, newly-realised abilities and personal interests. We should blend these insights into practice and pedagogy in schools as we simultaneously explore new ways to allow them to demonstrate their learning.

Positive Effects of the Lockdown for Teachers

Teachers will have learned new things about themselves, their colleagues and the children and young people with whom they work and the relationships among them. Teachers know that young people’s emotional experience of learning is as important as their cognitive experience. The current situation presents a unique stimulus for teachers to make sense of the relationships they have with each of their pupils.

Teachers already see their pupils as learners and not simply people who have to be taught. They will already be aware of pupils’ skills abilities and interests, and the new experiences which young people bring to school could be used to enhance and enrich the learning of all young people. Teachers’ interactions with pupils during lockdown will have enriched their own sense of themselves as teachers and their place in the lives of their charges. This new knowledge will help reinforce any new sense that pupils have of themselves as learners and teachers have of themselves as teachers.

EERA also has a role to play, and the recent online events had a significant role in reconnecting our research communities. The events provided new spaces in which education was explored, theorised and researched from the perspectives of all member associations and networks. EERA also has a role in generating the new knowledge that will increasingly and relentlessly nudge forward our understanding of education.

Professor Stephen J. McKinney

Professor, School of Education, University of Glasgow

Stephen J. McKinney is a Professor in the School of Education, University of Glasgow. He leads the research and teaching group, Pedagogy, Praxis and Faith. He is the past President of the Scottish Educational Research Association. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Beliefs and Values, Improving Schools, the Scottish Educational Review. He is a visiting professor in Catholic Education at Newman University, an Associate of the Irish Institute for Catholic Studies and on the steering group for the Network for Researchers in Catholic Education. He is a member of the European Educational Research Association Council. He is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the London School of Management Education. His research interests include Catholic schools and faith schools, the impact of poverty on education and education and social justice and he has published widely on all of these topics.

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Dr George Head

Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Glasgow

George Head is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Glasgow, Scotland. George is a past-president of the Scottish Educational Research Association (SERA) and has represented the association on the European Educational Research Association (EERA) Council and served as Senior Mentor to the EERA Emerging Researchers Group. He is a visiting professor at Newman University, Birmingham. His areas of academic interest include Inclusive Education and the learning and teaching of young people whose behaviour schools find difficult. George was a member of the Local Organising Committee for ECER 2020 which was scheduled to take place in Glasgow