European Conference for Educational Research - Edinburgh 2000
This year's European Conference was in the beautiful city of Edinburgh.
It's just a pity that it was dull, dark and wet.  The conference exists to
develop links across Europe and is not just an opportunity for damp break.
The association is divided into a series of networks - 22 to date - and each
one has to have co-ordinating representatives from three different
countries.  These networks communicate during the year, and all abstracts
and presentations are selected, organised into sessions by the co-ordinators
of the network ensuring that none of the papers oppose each other in the
timetable. Those wishing to present at the conference must choose an
appropriate network to submit their abstracts. As well as being
administratively useful, it does create, for those who wish it, a feeling of
belonging to a particular part of the conference.
This was the first year of an Ethnography Network (19) presence at ECER. Bob
Jeffrey, Geoff Troman, [England] Dennis Beach, [Sweden] Letizia Caronia,
Francesca Gobbo [Italy] and Angela Xavier de Brito [France] are the
co-ordinators.

We held five paper sessions, and one round table. We initially accepted 17
abstracts, diverted one and substituted a late paper in a place of one
person who was unable to attend. All contributors turned up which cannot be
said to be the case for all the other networks where  'non shows' is one of
the difficulties ECER has to face every year. Four of our sessions were
attended by at least 22 people with the highest being 29 and the lowest 10.
Our average for the six sessions, including the round table, was 21.
We divided our papers into four categories: multi-cultural and
anthropological issues; self and agency in educational structures and
organisations; management cultures and methodology for which we had two
sessions. The breadth of these categories, we would argue, shows the
strength of including a network that is methodologically based for it is
able to provide a home for a variety of research interests. The advantage to
the subject of ethnography is that we are able to maintain a continuing
discourse about how to develop methodology in the light of the wide-ranging
areas selected for research.
Nevertheless, the methodological perspective of ethnography also has two
specific common elements: a focus on people's perspectives and cultural and
institutional inquiry. Specific subject matters presented in our network
included: ethnic minority groups perspectives on schools and learning
experiences, cross cultural subject teaching paradigms, family ritual;
pupils perspectives on learning careers, identities and school stages
transfers; new forms of praxis and reconstructed methodologies; successful
institutional team cultures; and research ethics. Our round table focused on
how to gain research funding for ethnographic projects and we had some
valuable input from experienced research project directors from a variety of
countries.

An additional advantage of a methodological network is the possibility of
relevance to and the possibility of close co-operation between projects in
different countries. Two of our papers involved cross national projects and
many others had direct relevance for across national boundaries but we hope
that our work may spawn some more international proposals. Other networks
may have had higher cross national co-operation - see reports from other
networks below.

Later on in the year we will invite submissions for next year's conference
and at the same time refine and clarify our ethnographic criteria to ensure
a good quality of submissions.
We have a network co-ordinators team of six, with representatives from
England, Sweden, Italy and France.  As with other networks we engaged in
many email discussions concerning the acceptance of abstracts for this
year's conference and the organisation of the sessions.  The minutes of our
round table will be written up and passed around our e-mail network.

We are grateful to EERA for the opportunity to expand and ethnography
network and are gratified at the supportive comments were received
concerning its inauguration. ECER's uniqueness is its network organisation
and its commitment to multiple choice. There were key note speakers but we
did not feel obliged to attend for there were other sessions going on at the
same time, for example the President's round-table, in which he collected
records about research possibilities in Community countries. EERA is an
expanding organisation and the ECER conference is a valuable place from
which to consider our own nation's research work.
As next year's conference is in France, our Brazilian/French representative
Angela Xavier de Brito will be the network convenor for next year and will
liaise with the executive Office. Her Email address is
[log in to unmask]
We are considering some joint sessions with the Social Justice and the
Philosophy Networks so begin planning a paper now. The Philosophy joint
session will be on the theme of ethics in research - more later.