NERA 2022 Day 1

 After getting through the queues of the registration (why don't people start arriving at 8:30 for the registration, so that the queues are gone by the time I drop by at 9:45 :-) ) I was ready for the opening ceremony of NERA 2022.

861 people have registered for the conference this year, which is a new record, apparently. I hope there will be a similar number in Oslo next year. Although the scenery around Oslo is not as impressive as the scenery around Reykjavik, we do have some major new additions to the must-sees, such as the new Munch museum and the new National Museum of Arts (opening some weeks from now).

 

As mentioned in my Day 0 blog entry, NERA is not one of my favorite conferences, both because of the themes (not very much on mathematics education, for instance) and because of its format (around 700 talks divided into lots of "networks") which seems to encourage jumping from room to room, with less chance of building groups with ongoing discussions. But still, the individual presentations may still be of great interest and make me aware of researchers and perspectives that I will wish to keep in touch with.

 

The opening ceremony included the usual mix of greetings and cultural performances, avoiding both the ridiculous and the longwinded, boring stuff that any conference-participant must surely have endured at times. (Bill Clinton's welcome speech at ICME in Tokyo (!) in 2000 is one example I remember, but there are so many more...) Here, reasonably short speeches were combined with jazz, which is always welcome...

 

As always, my notes from conferences tries to catch key points of the talks I hear. Of course, there will be misunderstandings and confusions on my part, as well as lots of omissions. If any of what I write is of interest, the obvious next step is to check the original writings of the presenter in question.

 

The first keynote address at the conference was "Education, togetherness and robust community in precarious times", given by sociologist Unn-Doris K. Bæck. ("Precarious times" is the keyword of the conference, as always a sufficiently unclear theme is needed for everyone to fit in. Although I'm not, of course, claiming that our times are not precarious - as any time.) Bæck has been especially interested in what she called "spacial" dimensions - how geographical contexts lead to inequality, as well as gender, ethnicity, socio-economic factors and so on. She started with the question how social integration can be maintained, and stressed the importance of the concept "community" (or "fellesskap", "gemenskap"), and the fact that the education system can of course contribute to community. The building of a national school system was a part of creating a strong nation state, and the multiculturalism of Northern Norway was unhelpful in that respect. The Norwegianisation process, with boarding schools, banning of languages and so on, tried to homogenize the population. Later, education was seen as "the great equalizer". Today, education in Norway is still supposed to create a "shared frame of reference" and to prepare people for taking part in the community. 

 

On the other hand, schools of course also contributes to exclusion. It is well-known that there are regional differences at all levels in Norway. (In the talks, she did not mention if these analyses were using socio-economic background as a control variable.) She went on to discuss an interview study in which students discussed their reflections on educational plans and on their experiences, presented in Bæck (2019). Among other factors, many students in rural settings had to move to go to upper secondary school, having to get to know new people while being away from their previous support network. As they also commuted home, reducing the opportunities to have part-time work and to take part in social events at both their home and at the school contexts. 

 

(Of course, we do see relevant intersectionality issues here. It may be the children from lowest social-economic backgrounds that have most need of part-time jobs and who have to quit school to make ends meet. Queer people may of course benefit from new surroundings, but also risk being isolated and bullied in the new place. Bæck did not go into this in her talk.)

 

Bæck noted that there are mechanisms (such as decentralizetion reforms or "neo-liberal" educational policies) that changed the contexts and thereby the outcomes/experiences of students. One interesting paradox is that decentralisation of power (ending earmarks for small schools) made local authorities make decisions to close local schools. (Personally, I find this reasonable.) She also mentioned how national tests and exams of course may interfere with teaching based on local context. She called on all researchers to speak out about the any dangers they might see in their research.

 

After lunch (and a move from Hilton hotel to the campus), there were presentations in so-called "Network sessions". I chose two symposiums in Network 19 ("Teacher's work and teacher education").The first symposium was "Examining the knowledge base of teacher education: An international comparison in relation to epistemic in/justice and teacher agency". There were three presentations: 

 

"Dominant knowledge and silenced ‘noise’ in teacher education in a Danish context?" (Dion Rüsselbaek Hansen): He argued for engaging with attitudes, knowledge and political issues in teacher education instead of "putting them to one side". He used examples from Denmark, for instance that politicians take inspiration from Michelin restaurants in how schools should work. It is easy to critizise such rhetoric, since students are not food materials and do not behave as such. Hansen also referred to Biesta in this regard. Also, international tests are still used a lot in the political discussions. 

 

(I do agree with Hansen that it is important to take on difficult issues in teacher education. It is so easy to avoid the issues and to keep focus on what we know will be important for good education. For instance, my institution's teacher education programme has been critizised for not discussing assessment and tests enough - there has perhaps been a tendency to ignore this and instead work a lot on investigative mathematics teaching, for instance.)

 

He also stressed all the contradictions and challenges for teachers, for instance working on special education without seeing any children as "special", to provide security even though education is basically risky, and so on.

 

"An ‘Ethic of Innocence’: The Fragile Contours of Teacher Education in Canada" (Anne M Phelan): She took as a starting point the finding of unmarked graves of children in schools for indigenous children in Canada. Such schools (which had its parallells in a lot of countries). She problemitized teacher education's "love of knowledge". Knowledge is seen as good. How might teacher educators work against coloniality, for instance. Renzi's "the ethic of innocence" is a deliberate "not-knowing", not claiming that this is good. Using the word "innocence" instead of "ignorance" on purpose. She gave the example of "Lars and the Real Girl", in which Lars owns a doll that he treats as a real girl, and where townspeople treat the doll as a human being, helping Lars in the long run. She referred to several Canadian researchers who have worked in ways that can be related to "ethic of innocence". One example concerned "forgetting", another is to use pupils' biography to trouble the connection between background and identity.

 

(To me, this is interesting but also deeply problematic. As teachers, we do have a responsibility to make informed choices of what is the best action to take. We can pretend not to know, but can we really be "innocent" in a concrete way without endangering the children? And while we can "forget" important information about our children, do we (in an ethical sense) have the option of actually forgetting (even if we could)? But perhaps I misunderstand - I can agree that it is important to acknowledge that there are many things we cannot know and that these things may be more important than what we do know. In that case, I think the term "choice not to know" is misleading.)

 

"Immunitas and Teacher Knowledge" (Dion Rüsselbaek Hansen reading Matthew Clarke and Ruth Unsworth's paper): The paper discussed governance of education, with increasing stress on standards for teacher competences. After terrorist attacks, schools have also been seen as part of counter-terrorism work, by promoting democratic values and so on, sometimes called "fundamental British values". For some reason, the researchers behind this paper chose the word "immunitas" to discuss such things. At the same time, the description of "best practice" is seen by the authors as "immunization" of the teachers against teachers' lack of knowledge. (In some cases, I feel that researchers are choosing to read things in the worst way possible. Also, there is nothing new in giving teachers ideas of what seems to be the best practice - in Norway, for instance, already curricula a hundred years ago had quite detailed guidelines on how to teach the different subjects. So the so-called "standardization" is not something new, and history suggests that it will not work - teachers do tend to read regulations as suggestions, as is probably also a good idea.) 

 

The discussant had some important questions, asking whether some of these suggestions present new straightjackets for teachers, or if they are really giving more freedom and openness for teachers.

 

The next symposium was arranged by Birgitte Lund Nielsen and myself, chaired by myself. I therefore had no time to make such notes during that symposium. It was wonderful, however. (This note is, I admit, written before the symposium.)