World Congress Theme
Around the world, education research across contexts of learning addresses strikingly similar issues and aims to be relevant to policy and practice. Whatever the topic—access and equity, language diversities, STEM learning, teaching effectiveness, policy impacts, or workforce preparation, to name but a few—common questions and concerns drive inquiry. Over the past decade, scholars and students alike have been increasingly drawn to connecting their work to research in other countries, cultures, and contexts.
There is also growing interest in building cumulative knowledge and critiquing the strengths of findings and inferences through the lens of multiple perspectives enriched by studies in the global North and South. Yet, despite these transformations, single-site or within-country studies continue to dominate even when research is situated within a broader literature or when comparisons are drawn.
The 2018 WERA World Congress invites papers, symposia, and posters from submitters drawn to the opportunity to advance knowledge and foster a reimagining of education research with a worldwide perspective at its core. This WERA Congress in particular seeks to attract significant international, transnational, and comparative scholarship and to encourage presentations that critically examine methodologies, measures, and modes of inquiry to support such work. Submissions that explore and explain commonalities and differences across countries and regions are sought. Also welcomed are submissions that address worldwide opportunities or constraints in advancing education research and fostering innovations in communication, collaboration, and networking.
The scope of the Congress is wide in its reach to include studies under this overarching theme across the life span, from early learning to workforce and adult education, and that take place in formal and informal contexts of education and learning. The emphasis of the Congress is on papers, posters, and symposia with a lens that is worldwide in perspective. Otherwise there is no restriction on the education research topics appropriate for consideration, although priority will be given to submissions that focus.