Scottish Educational Research Association Conference 2019 (Edinburgh)

Creative Visions for Educational Futures

Building on last year’s theme – critical understanding of education systems: what matters internationally, the SERA Conference 2019 focuses on creative visions for educational futures.  This theme is particularly relevant given the recognition that the education system needs to be adaptable and creative in its responses to the increasingly dynamic, complex and fluctuating nature of society and the world.

The conference theme welcomes original and critical contributions from scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines and educational settings that explore a rich and diverse view of education and learning as a means for supporting a multiplicity of life-projects, engaging knowledge, relationships and the imagination.

The SERA Annual conference is an important event for the educational research community in Scotland. The three-day conference, to be held in Edinburgh, invites researchers and practitioners working in Scottish and international research contexts to share their insights under the theme of creative visions.

Contributions discussing new research possibilities, new forms of contexts for learning, and new types of collaboration among academics and practitioners are welcomed.

Details about the 2019 SERA Conference submission and registrations protocols are provided below.

SERA 2019 CONFERENCE STRANDS

Key organizing strands for this year’s SERA conference will include:

• Social Justice and Inclusion: How is education reaching out to all? How is education responding to the challenge of competition, distribution and access to educational services supporting our communities? Is the gender divide in education increasing? How is education fostering awareness that our lives depend on the natural environments and that ecology can only be achieved through equity? How do we learn to live peacefully with one another within the limits of the Earth supporting us?
• Professional and Vocational Learning (including teacher education and higher education): What new challenges in work spaces and practices are impacting on professional and vocational learning? How is knowledge generated and shared in occupational and professional contexts and across professional boundaries? How might professional education and development be reconceptualized? How are inter-professional work practices shaping new demands for pedagogical response? What new possibilities could be explored around leadership “education”?
• Policy and Education: How does policy at global, national and local levels shape education and lifelong learning? How do educational actors (regardless of sector) respond to, and inform, policy directions? How do new partnerships enhance or inhibit educational initiatives and the mobilization of research?
• Curriculum: How does curriculum engage with a constantly changing and evolving world? To what extent can the curriculum support interdisciplinary learning and reflection on key themes of human development? What insights can be gleaned from different theoretical perspective on curriculum? How educational practitioners engage with the process of curriculum reform?
• Assessment and Evaluation: In what way can the National Assessment evidence be used to improve educational attainment in the short term? What issue might arise from the new National Numeracy and Literacy Assessments planned for P1, P4 and P7 pupils?
• Digital Learning: How is the infusion of new technologies impacting learning experiences in/out of formal educational settings? What new spaces are emerging to enable more sustainable forms of pedagogy and learning? How does the open education movement support or inhibit inclusion/exclusion locally and globally?
• Innovative Research Methods: What challenges are facing educational researchers and how are new research methods being innovated in response? What new questions need to be asked and examined? How are different theoretical perspectives and paradigms creating openings for new questions, new forms of research, and offering critical insights? How can more innovative research methods contribute to supporting learning and change in challenging times and spaces?

The conference will accept individual papers, short papers, symposiums, poster presentations, as well as suggestions for roundtables discussions and workshops.