The European Conference on Educational Research
Ksenia Tenisheva and Svetlana Savelieva have recently returned from ECER-2014, which was held in Porto (Portugal).
The annual European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) was held from the 1st to 5th September of 2014 in Porto. The SESL staff members have been participating in the conference for several years. This year, our laboratory was represented there by Xenia Tenisheva and Svetlana Savelieva.
The conference is traditionally organized by the European Educational Research Association (EERA). It is one of the most important events in the area of educational research Europe, and it involves researchers from various disciplines. This year's conference was attended by about 2500 researchers from many countries around the world. Even though that, formally, the conference is considered to be European, there were many participants from Australia, China, and other non-European countries.
The conference of 2014 was organized at the University of Porto, which is located at the so-called “second capital” of Portugal. The university city has the population of 30,000, and comprises over 1/10th of the population of Porto. By the Russian standards, the city is small, but it is the home of a large university, with a sufficient infrastructure for large-scale events like this one. The University can even boast its own symphony orchestra, which performed several pieces at a reception in honor of the 20th ECER anniversary.
The conference included 31 sections, which covered a wide range of topics, from philosophy and ethnography of education to comparative international studies of academic performance. Each section contained several sub-sections on more narrow topics.
Svetlana Savelieva gave her presentation at the section "Education in rural and urban areas”, which focused on differences in educational aspirations of high school students in a large city, small town, and rural area. This research was a part of the ongoing studies performed at the SESL, which aimed at researching of importance of local context for educational aspirations of students, along with the impact of segregation and tracking processes.
Ksenia Tenisheva gave her presentation at the section "Academic stability of students” and talked about the factors that affect the chances of students to achieve academic success at school, despite the negative impact of such parameters as the status of an ethnic minorities and low socio-economic status of their families. In her study, she has revealed the impact of the school as a contained environment that isn’t connected to the personal factors, and this finding provides a basis for further research on this topic.
The conference is an international platform for professional communication among colleagues. It is an open ground where fresh post-graduates and esteemed researchers can meet and talk. Giving a presentation is a good way to test one’s ideas and discuss them with like-minded colleagues. Discussions, which spark after the presentations and during the breaks, help to get a new, original look at old problems. One of the memorable moments of the conference was a provocative question from a Swedish researcher: why are scientists and educators so adamantly convinced that wide opportunities in choosing the school and parental involvement in the educational process are absolutely good. May it be that they try to shift the responsibility for academic success of children, which is traditionally assigned to the school and with which the leaders in the field of education don’t cope very well, to the shoulders of parents?
And of course, as ever, participation in such events means that we can strike new acquaintances and get new opportunities to develop our scientific social network. They are inspiring and stimulating for further research. Thanks to this trip to Porto, our laboratory has established new important contacts with other researchers, which should help us in further cooperation and, possibly, in launching international comparative projects.
By Svetlana Savelieva and Ksenia Tenisheva