Call for Papers (submission deadline extended to July 23, 2017)

We invite you to submit posters, papers, and symposia for the WERA-IRN conference Extended Education from an International Comparative Point of View to be held at University of Bamberg, Germany, November 30 – December 2, 2017. WERA is an association of major national, regional, and specialty education research associations, among other things dedicated to developing networks. The purpose of International Research Networks (IRNs) is to advance education research worldwide on specific scholarly topics. The WERA-IRN EXTENDED EDUCATION is a collaborative group of scholars working on this research topic.
From childhood to adolescence, young people enroll in various public or private forms of educational arrangements outside regular school time. They participate in school- or community-based programs, forms of private tutoring, or after-school activities like art courses, or they attend extracurricular activities at all-day schools.

In learning societies today there has been an increase in out-of-school and extracurricular learning in childhood and in adolescence compared to the past. The last 10 to 20 years have seen numerous efforts to expand institutional learning and care opportunities to supplement (traditional) schooling in almost every modern country in Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Australia.

In all of these continents and countries, these activities and programs focus on the social, emotional, and/or academic development of children and young people and are educationally structured to make it easier for the participants to learn specific contents.

Extended education programs have many common institutional features as well as a number of parallel education-related pedagogical problems, regardless of whether they are extracurricular activities at German all-day schools, summer camps in the United States, or activities at Swedish leisure-time centers, for example. Thus, international research focuses on similar problems and similar features of these educational settings. In the following, we outline two of these features:

(1) As with classroom teaching, activities in the area of extended education are (as a rule) educational settings that are designed by adults that are (often) supervised by schools or community institutions and focus on definable – albeit broad and certainly diverging – learning goals in both the cognitive and  psychosocial areas (support orientation of programs and activities). These activities and programs differ from classroom teaching in that: (a) they are not necessarily taught by regular classroom teachers in most countries, (b) there is generally no performance assessment with grades, (c) in some cases they are organized in mixed-aged groups, (d) participation is usually voluntary (optional character), (e) they are usually only subject to a low level of curricular requirements, and (f) they often offer children and youths more freedom of choice and opportunities to participate than school does. Thus, among other things, extended education activities open up new and different possibilities for learning and development within but also outside curriculum-mandated school topic areas and subjects.

(2) Additional collaboration between schools and out-of-school partners, which are often part of out-of-school activities, helps strengthen the lifeworld-orientation and takes interests and aptitudes of students better into account.

In recent years, the term EXTENDED EDUCATION has become established internationally for this field of education. The aim of this first WERA-IRN EXTENDED EDUCATION conference is to bring together different research perspectives, to synthesize the state of research worldwide in this new field of EXTENDED EDUCATION, and to initiate an international research direction on a comparative point of view.

In general, this conference on Extended Education from an International Comparative Point of View seeks to feature research that includes more than one country or is comparative, cross-cultural, international, or transnational in conceptualization, scope, or design.

Paper submissions need to meet these criteria; symposia submissions can include papers from single sites or countries as long as the presentations in combination are from different countries and the aims of the symposium are anchored in worldwide or global issues.

Presentation formats

Poster

This format provides presenters the opportunity to present and discuss their completed or ongoing research. We plan for poster sessions of substantial length and with high attendance, making this an interactive presentation format.

Please submit a paper summary of a maximum 500 words (in addition to the paper title, and information on the authors). Also, a 250-word abstract suitable for publication must be included. Please describe the theoretical framework, the research questions, the research methodology, and the results (the expected results).

Paper

For regular paper presentations, 20 minutes will be scheduled (15 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for discussion).

Please submit a paper summary of a maximum 500 words (in addition to the paper title, and information on the authors). Also, a 250-word abstract suitable for publication must be included. Please describe the theoretical framework, the research questions, the research methodology, and the results (the expected results).

Doctoral students’ paper and early career paper

Presenters choosing this format will present their paper just as a regular paper presentation (15 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for discussion) and can additionally receive feedback from one of the senior researchers attending the conference in a special session. The additional feedback will be provided in a round-table session with the expert after the presentation.

Please submit a paper summary of a maximum 500 words (in addition to the paper title, and information on the authors). Also, a 250-word abstract suitable for publication must be included. Please describe the theoretical framework, the research questions, the research methodology and the results (the expected results).

Symposia

A limited number of 90-minute slots will be made available for symposia consisting of four related papers and a discussant.

Please submit a symposium abstract of a maximum 500 words and a 500-word summary of each presentation/paper in the symposium. Also, a 250-word abstract suitable for publication must be included for each presentation/paper. Please, describe the theoretical framework, the research questions, the research methodology and the results (the expected results).

Symposium proposals are submitted by an organizer who may or may not be a chair, presenter, or discussant. A symposium can include a maximum of five participants in addition to the chair. Participants include all presenters and any discussants.

Posters, papers and symposia must be submitted through the online portal on the conference website at https://www.uni-bamberg.de/grundschulpaed/extended-education-2017/.

All submissions will be peer reviewed according to the following criteria: scientific relevance, theoretical embedding, question(s), method, and results.

Call for Papers(72.8 KB, 3 Seiten)