Venue: University of the West of Scotland (Ayr Campus)

Dates: Wednesday 23rd November – Friday 25th November

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

Social Justice and Inclusion: How might education reach out to all? How might education respond to the challenge of competition, distribution, and access to educational services supporting our communities? Is the gender divide in education increasing? How might education foster awareness that our lives depend on the natural environments and that ecology can only be achieved through equity? How might 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 workspaces 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 reconceptualised? 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 might policy at global, national, and local levels shape education and lifelong learning? How might educational actors (regardless of sector) respond to, and inform policy directions? How might new partnerships enhance or inhibit educational initiatives and the mobilization of research?

Curriculum: How might curriculum engage with a constantly changing and evolving world? To what extent might the curriculum support interdisciplinary learning and reflection on key themes of human development? What insights might be gleaned from different theoretical perspective on curriculum? How might educational practitioners engage with the process of curriculum reform?

Assessment and Evaluation: In what ways might national testing/assessment evidence be used to improve educational attainment in the short term? What issues might arise from national and international testing/assessment regimes?

Digital Learning: How might the infusion of new technologies impact learning experiences in/out of formal educational settings? What new spaces are emerging to enable more sustainable forms of pedagogy and learning? How might the open education movement support or inhibit inclusion/exclusion locally and globally?

Innovative Research Methods: What challenges face educational researchers and how might new research methods innovate in response? What new questions need to be asked and examined? How might different theoretical perspectives and paradigms create openings for new questions, new forms of research, and offer critical insights? How might more innovative research methods contribute to supporting learning and change in challenging times and spaces?