ECER's Space in Europe: In between Science, Research and Politics? A Research Report

Abstract

The sciences of education in Europe are situated in between national, European and international spaces, challenged by Europeanisation processes and European research policy. The author takes up the debates at European Conferences on Educational Research (ECERs) on the formation of a 'European educational research space' by academic actors versus the foundation of a 'European (Educational) Research Area' by European Union (EU) policy. This report provides results of the author's investigation of the 'Europeanness' of the European Educational Research Association (EERA) and ECER, thereby sketching an exemplary picture of the current state of the sciences of education in Europe, indicating tendencies over the last few years, while analysing the European dimension of EERA and ECER. The representation of educational scientists from a variety of (not only) European countries points to three problematic issues: the dominance of EU member states, especially of the United Kingdom; the tendency towards marginalisation of European non-member states; and a clearly biased 'European educational research space'.

EERA and its European Conferences on Educational Research: A Patchwork of Research on European Educational Research

“…Therefore the number of submitting authors is the same as the one of the submitted proposals. This expands the analysis already done by Martina Kenk (2003). It again shows a relatively high rate of submitting authors from the United Kingdom, and also, as to be expected, a relatively high amount of authors from the country where the respective conference took place.…”

Transnational Lives in European Educational Research

“…University rankings and research audits (Lindblad, 2008), European funding for projects and mobility (van der Hijden, 2009) and the rise of European-wide benchmarking and standardisation across education have all aided the creation of a complex policy space for European Union research. The growth and stability of the association and its conference cannot be separated from these changes which in innumerable ways changed the working of EERA and ECER (Kenk, 2003).…”