ECER weblog and discussion space

For those readers unfamiliar with ECER, the European Conference on Educational research is the largest - I think - European conference on education. Last week the annual conference met in Dublin.

The conference is divided into strands, each convened by a network. The network of which I am a member of VETNET, focused on vocational education and training. There were some 1500 delegate registered at the conference, of whom perhaps 130 were part of VETNET.

Here, as promised, are a few quick impressions.

Technorati Tags: education and training research

Gerald Heidegger and Massimo Tommasini commented on James' presentation.

Issues raised included the degree to which VET is culturally embedded in national systems and how much agency VET research and researchers had in developing and shaping systems.

Thats all for today - more tomorrow - now I have a connection to the net.

Graham Attwell

For those readers unfamiliar with ECER, the European Conference on Educational research is the largest - I think - European conference on education. Last week the annual conference met in Dublin.

The conference is divided into strands, each convened by a network. The network of which I am a member of VETNET, focused on vocational education and training. There were some 1500 delegate registered at the conference, of whom perhaps 130 were part of VETNET.

Here, as promised, are a few quick impressions.

Technorati Tags: education and training research

The calendar of ECER 2005 events is available for browsing in this site. We have also made a downloadable "iCal format" version of the calendar, so you can install it in your own computer's calendaring application, set up reminders, etc. Just use the download link above. You can see a screenshot of the calendar opened in iCal below.

The UCD organisers have helpfully included some maps of the campus and of Dublin in their website for ECER 2005, but I since the wonderful google-maps came out a few months back, I much prefer maps in that format as opposed to images. Google-maps are graphical, but they also expose geo-location data, which provides context and zoomability, and also opens them up to 3rd-party services and powerful user-actions. So I found the campus on google maps and include a link here: google-map of ECER 2005 location

To get a more precise picture of the campus, you'll have to refer to the jpg campus map image or the printer-friendly pdf campus map kindly provided by the organisers.

If anyone wants to annotate the google map - for instance to show the precise locations of the buildings/rooms, or of good eating places - please do so and then copy the new link and post it in a reply to this post, or in a new post.

By annotating precise locations and sharing the google-map link, you could also make it easier to arrange places to meet up for meals ( or possibly even drinks? :o)

We have posted several dozen photos photos from ECER 2005 on our new area in the Flickr photo-sharing service.

We have also placed the slides from James Wickham's keynote address in flickr as an online slidehsow.

Flickr is a free photo-sharing service of the "Web2.0" variety - ie lots of "RSS news feeds and an API which allows other sites and programs to interact with it (see my del.icio.us tag for examples and definitions). The 'API' gubbins means that there are loads of wonderful 3rd-party tools for managing, uploading, organising and viewing the photos on your flickr account.

We've posted photos there which were taken at the ECER 2005 conference in Dublin ( 42 photos so far ). If you have a Flickr account, please add the tag "ECER_2005" to any conference photos you upload to it. If you do not have a Flickr account, and want to upload some photos, you can post them directly into the weblogs here - but we also highly recommend getting your own flickr account, so you can share your photos just by uploading them to your own account and tagging them with our tags.

The keynote lecture of James Wickham raised the question on the European dimension on the current policies on developing working life (on the one hand) and education and training (on the other hand). The European dimention was discussed in a broader global context and in the light of diverse European models.  As a background Wickham presented a general analysis of the European Social Model (in the light of different societal formations outside Europe) and with a focus on social cohesion vs. anomie and social inclusion vs. exclusion. The general picture provided a basis for discussing different national models (or different clusters of national models). This then lead to further analyes on training models, training regimes and learning entrprises. These explorations were followed by a discussion on social cohesion at the workplace and on the role of training in this context. Finally, the keynote lecture was concluded by the contrast between "the American mirage" and "the European dream".

Obviously, the aim of the keynote was to provoke further thoughts on the "European" characteristics of vocational education and training (VET) - both from the perspective of national and EU-level policies. In addition, the colloquium provided the participants a possibility to discuss its own contribution to European knowledge development on its own field. To me, the discussio did not quite reach the European dimension that was present in the opening input.

The debate was opened by the invited discussants, Gerald Heidegger (Germany) and Massimo Tomassini (Italy).  Heidegger  referred to the notion "European dream" and started to explore how the dream is to some extent reality in the German dual system. Tomassini referred to the relations between "learning enterprises" and the innovative quality of training and started to explore how a more integrative approach on VET and HRD could promote European innovations in this context.

No doubt, both approaches were valid and responded to the opening input from a certain perspective. Yet, it strikes me that somehow both speakers left into marginal the current policy-developments at the EU level. In particular i is worthwhile to note the framework processes after the Lisbon summit ("Education and Training 2010, the Bologna Process, the Copenhagen process) and their implications on the field of education and training. 

In this respect I brought into discussion the issue "common currence" as a leadng idea for policy development. My point was not to advocate the idea of "common currency" but to raise the question how to respond to the underlying policy concerns that push the European education and training policies to more cohesive frameworks.

Of course, it was not possible to enter an in-depth discussion on this particular issue. Yet, I find it insufficient to marginalise the pressure towards harmonisation and to limit the European dimension to "mutual learning between different VET cultures". No question, the idea of mutual learning and mutual enrichment have been very highly appreciated in the European VET research community. Yet, I think it is necessary to consider the following critical points:

1. Mutual learning between diverse VET cultures is not a strong point for European educational policise if the field of VET altogether is considered as a relatively weak part of the innovation systems (?).

2. Mutual learning between diverse VET cultures is not a strong theme for joining in in European innovation policies if the strategic innovations that are changing our views on lifelong and lifewide learning are being developed elsewhere than in the current VET contexts (?).

Surely, I have formulated these points with question marks and as challenges - not a final statements. However, in the light of the above it is possible to formulate a provocative question by modifying the heading of the keynote lecture:

"How European is the interpretation of the VETNET community on the future development of European VET cultures?"

I think this is enough as further thoughts on the opening colloquium. To me this question is closely related to the issue of developing a joint research agenda for the VETNET community - as has been proposed in the opening colloquium and in several other meetings.

To be contnued ...

Graham Attwell has shown that a conference weblog can provide real-time news coverage on the events in the conference. It strikes me how quickly he has been able to summarise some main threads in the conference (see his blog entries of the 13th September). For me it has always taken a longer time to work my way to a comprehensive mission report (see my archives on ECER and VETNET in the years 1996-2003). Consequently, by the time I have managed to produce a reflection document to support possible follow-up there has been hardly any energy left for any real follow-up measures.

However,  in this respect the new tools and facilities provide also new opportunities. So far there has always been the hurdle to write the first documents that could trigger into move inspiring spin-off activities. Now, all you need is to test your ideas with a blog entry. They either reach the "take off" point - thanks to the active people who respond - or remain on the ground. This doesn't cause anyone any greater damage - at least the ideas have been tested.