Mediterranean Society of Comparative Education (ME.S.C.C.) Conference

4-6 February 2006
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt
Theme: COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION, DECENTRALIZATION AND EDUCATION TO DEMOCRACY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA/COUNTRIES
Call for Papers
Deadline: 30 November 2005
Details in doc or pdf format.
Enquiry for Egyptians: Dr. Fatin Adly
E-mail: adlyfatena@hotmail.com; Tel: 0202 2195547; Fax: 0202 2195547
Enquiry from abroad (non-Egyptians): Prof. Giovanni Pampanini
E-mail: gpampa@nti.it; Tel & Fax: 0039.095.373415


50th Anniversary Celebration Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES)

14-18 March 2006
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Theme: Rethinking the Comparative
Call for papers: Submit panel and/or paper proposals that include abstracts of papers; deadline is September 15, 2005, with acceptance notices sent to you by Nov. 15, 2005. Second deadline is Dec. 31, 2005. Early birds have first priority in scheduling. Email conference proposals to: CIESHawaii@gmail.com
Website: http://www.outreach.hawaii.edu/cies/


International Conference on "Education and Training: The Search for Quality"

18-20 April
Ho Chi Minh City, Honoi, Vietnam
Co-sponsored by Association Francophone d’Éducation Comparée (AFEC)
Website: http://www.educationhcm.com


4th International Conference on Comparative Education and Teacher Training
Organized by the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES)

1-4 May 2006
Sofia, Bulgaria
Papers are invited for the 4th International Conference. The Workshops are:

Comparative Education as a Teacher Training Discipline: history, problems, and approaches

Teacher Training: curricula, innovations, and new strategies

Education Policy: developments, insights, and trends For all registration enquiries, email: Prof. Dr. Nikolay Popov, Dr.Habil.
Chairman of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society
Sofia University
Faculty of Primary and Preschool Education
Blvd Shipchenski prohod 69 A
1574 Sofia, Bulgaria
tel: (+359 2) 97 06 240; fax: (+359 2) 72 23 21
e-mail: npopov@fnpp.uni-sofia.bg
Website: http://edcollege.ucf.edu/esdepart/cett


30th International Conference of the French-speaking Association of Comparative Education (AFEC)

22-24 June 2006
in partnership with:

the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle

the Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM

the research teams of the University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle:
- PROFEOR (Professionalisation - Formation - Orientation)
- THEODILE (Thries-Didactiques de la lecture-riture)
- GRACC (Groupe de Recherche sur les Actions et les Croyances Collectives) to Villeneuve d'Ascq (France), Maison de la Recherche (University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle) on the subject: "School as a Place of Tensions and Mediations: What Impact on School Practices? International Analysis and Comparisons"
CALL FOR PAPERS - Deadline: January 10, 2006


XXII Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE) Conference 2006

Organized by the Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE) Society
3-6 July 2006
Granada, Spain
Theme: Changing knowledge and education: communities, information societies and mobilities
Papers are invited for the Conference. The Workshops are:

Social risks and exclusions

Information societies and economies

Policy knowledge and international educational assessment

open worlds and open education

Old Empires and new empires

International and regional developments and local constraints Expressions of interests in giving a paper can be offered immediately to the Granada Local Committee:
Apartado de correos S78E-18006 GRANADA - SPAIN
email to: cese@ugr.es
Further information: Dr. Jose Luis Ortega: ortegam@ugr.es
Publicity materials in English, in Spanish
Website: http://www.cese2006.org/ingles/cese.htm


X Congreso Nacional de la Sociedad Española de Educación Comparada

6-8 September 2006
Palacio de Miramar
Donostia-San Sebastián, España
Theme: El Derecho a la Educación en un Mundo Globalizado
Enquiry: seec@sc.ehu.es
Luis Mª Naya Garmendia luisma.naya@ehu.es
Paulí Dávila Balsera pauli.davila@ehu.es
Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
Facultad de Filosofía y Ciencias de la Educación
Avda. de Tolosa, 70
Apto. 1249
20080 Donostia-San Sebastián
Deadlines:
Pre-conference registration: until 28th February 2006
Early-bird registration by 15th June 2006
Papers until 1st May 2006
Confirmation of accepted papers: 31st May 2006
Details in http://www.sc.ehu.es/sfwseec/con2006.htm


The Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) Conference 2006

Organized by APERA, HKIEd and HKERA
28-30 November 2006
Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong
Theme:
Educational Research, Policy, and Practice in an Era of Globalization:
The Asia Pacific Perspectives and Beyond
Interested educators, scholars and researchers are invited to make submissions by completing the Proposal Submission Form posted at the conference website, for paper/poster/symposium/workshop presentations. All Submissions should be sent to the Conference Secretariat by 30 June 2006.
Website: http://www.ied.edu.hk/apera2006/


French-speaking Association of Comparative Education (AFEC)

CALL FOR PAPERS
School as a Place of Tensions and Mediations:
What Impact on School Practices?
International Analysis and Comparisons
--------
From 22 till 24 June 2006 - Villeneuve d'Ascq (France)

PRESENTATION
The French-speaking Association of Comparative Education (AFEC) will co-organise its 30th International Conference of comparative education from 22 till 24 June 2006, in partnership with:

the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle

the Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM

the research teams of the University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle: - PROFEOR (Professionalisation - Formation - Orientation)
- THEODILE (Théories-Didactiques de la lecture-écriture)
- GRACC (Groupe de Recherche sur les Actions et les Croyances Collectives)

to Villeneuve d'Ascq (France), Maison de la Recherche (University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle) on the subject:
"School as a Place of Tensions and Mediations: What Impact on School Practices? International Analysis and Comparisons"

CALL FOR PAPERS
During the last few decades, most educational systems have been troubled by the same fundamental problems: moving from elite education to mass education, confronted with a diversification of children from different backgrounds at school, with the teaching contexts, with the rise in demand for social participation; as a result, educational systems, aiming at qualitative democratisation of the school system, have met those evolutions with endogenous adaptations.
We are thus witnessing in different national contexts a rise in the relations of inter-dependency between educational participants, which mainly manifests itself with the promotion of local space, the development of networks, with a multiplicity of contracts, with organisational innovations, with new participants emerging in the public space. However, these transformations also come from exogenous pressures which, under the effect of integration in supra-national political groups, and of the diffusion of common trans-national, organisational, and referential principles in educational issues, generate a certain convergence of structural frames in the regulation of the school system.
Transformations, enlargements, inter-dependency, but also uncertainty: School - in the broad sense of the term - has become uncertain as regards its mission of cultural transmission, following the acceleration and diversification of places and authorities of knowledge, further to the increasingly uncertain recognition of the school system itself, and the growing variability of educational contexts and teachers' work conditions. School is now subjected to tensions linked with the changing conceptions of education, and it has become a means among others of general and professional education. The loss of its monopoly falls within the context of lifelong education being internationalised, and of which school becomes an element. This change is all the more a source of tensions since it questions one of the results of schooling, that is, leaving the educational system, with no qualifications, which in turn questions.

School missions and the present transformations.
School is thus situated at the core of a series of tensions, understood as a group of sometimes contradictory forces - between local, national and trans-national levels, between permanencies inherited from the past and modern requirements, between injunctions from modernisation and change, and ordinary practice in schools. Beyond the dramatic meaning of the notion of tension and the very apparent epiphenomena it implies, aren't these evolutions obscuring quite dynamic realities?
Establishing School as a place of tensions, being interested in the forces more or less well-balanced that exist within it, and in the pressures and instigations which affect it - all this means a new perception of school statics and dynamics, which have exhausted generations of reformers. Nowadays, the enlargement of references and the multiplication of tensions impel the evolution of school to be no longer thought of at a mere national level; but to explore the phenomena of mediation and of mixing the forms of regulations of School as well as the forms of work that those evolutions generate, highlighting, according to a comparative perspective, the observable variations among school uses and practices, referring to different scales of comparison.
How programmatic convergence of educational systems is readable in national contexts, which are contrasted by definition, constitutes in itself an element which encourages comparison, as comparing implies at the same time a delimitation of common problems and local and specific forms of dealing with these problems. The congruence of those two phenomena - international convergence and intra-national diversification - constitutes a first pole of tensions. This symposium wishes to examine their connections as well as their effects on educational practices.
The registering of programmatic convergence in school policies, says indeed nothing about the mediating processes printed by this or that cultural community. But what comparatists are interested in, is not so much the updating of common tendencies as regards school policies, as the light shed on variations in their formulation and appropriation. This leads to question the link between tension, mediation and regulation. Is mediation the process which brings about regulation? What exactly prevents contradiction from becoming a rupture, a negation, but which maintains the connection between contraries in a new, and temporary, balance? Is school the place where these processes are achieved? And who are the actors of the mediating processes?
Because of this perspective, it is all the more important to pay attention to school practices, that is directly teachers' and pupils' practices, and indirectly, the practices of other in the educational system (whether they be internal, like the administrators, or from the periphery, like the users.) These practices constitute the concrete effective reality of the processes. The word "practices" then implies the pedagogical practice but also all that belongs to the organisation and functioning that can be observed in schools.
The symposium's ambition is to show that, by making the concepts of tension and mediation our own, and by applying them to the study of this specific field of forces that is School, and to its observable practices, the multi-disciplinary process which characterises comparative education, can propose tools for analysis and models of dynamic and dialectical interpretation - linked with processes and interactions -, which enable to overcome such static and formal oppositions as:
• opposition between the "macro" level (educational policies) and the "micro" level (individual and collective practices of educational actors);
• opposition between an explanation by "external" causes and by "internal" causes;
• North-South opposition, with the mere criterion of differences between the levels of economic development.

THEMES AND WORKSHOPS

First theme- Tensions and mediations in school policies: adaptation processes, convergence and mixing

• In a context of tension between exogenous pressures and endogenous movements, and with a background of convergence phenomena of public policies and school policies, what forms of mediations can translate a crossed examination of both practices and speeches on and in different national contexts?
• How are trans-national forces of influence articulated around the definition of school policies (models circulating at an international level, multi-national agreements, international organisations, etc.) and around the local realisations of such policies (international appropriation and mediations, social debates internal to every national frame, forms of specific ways of taking decisions)?
• How is school adapting itself to the users' pressure?
• How is it integrating society's demands and the economic world's questions? For instance, how is it being brought to recognise and validate experience's achievements and thus, to certify rather than transmit knowledge or teach? 4 What consequences and implications appear in the decision processes in school systems?

Second theme- Tensions and mediations in managing an educational action

• How are new spaces of regulation of educational action structured and organised?
• How do these spaces modify and bring about change to the conceptions of social and cultural frames of educational action?
• What is the degree of autonomy and initiative of the actors in these evolutions?
• What tools are put to work and what forms of regulation are practised in different contexts?
• What are the effects on a level of school practices and of the relations of inter-dependency between the different educational actors?

Third theme- Tensions ans mediations between school and its public: challenges of building social connections

• How are new frameworks of belonging created theoretically as well as being recognised socially, within or outside school? How does the school establishment, faced with the demand for multiple cultural and ethnic recognition, take into account and adapt to these new implications?
• What is understood today by the concept of citizenship in the school field?
• How can the promotion of a concrete citisenship and the definition of a post-national citizenship be revealed and co-exist?

Fourth theme- Tensions and mediations in the (re)defintion of teaching knowledge

• How does the increasing variability of teaching contexts, associated with the diversification of places of production of knowledge and with the expectations of school regarding the participation in a concrete project of capitalisation of skills and transversality of knowledge, lead educational actors to question the conditions under which the production and diffusion of knowledge are organised?
• What designs are then drawn in terms of cultural transmission, ends and moral values for school?
• What links do these evolutions draw in terms of relations between contents, methods and teaching languages?
• How are these evolutions set out in school practices?
• How do they contribute to the reconstruction of disciplines, subjects, as well as the teaching methods and practices?
• Does it have any consequence on the organisation of school curriculums on an international scale?

Fifth theme- Tensions and mediations in teaching

• How do school's mutations restructure the pedagogical space and teaching as a job?
• What are their effects on school's form, that is on the organisation of place, space, and time at school?
• How well are teachers prepared to these different educational and social implications? How do teachers contribute to these transformations with their acts? What moral contract between teachers and society is accompanying the transformations?
• How do teachers react to these evolutions, in their assertions of recognition as a social group, and in their ordinary individual and collective teaching practices?

A transversal perspective
Eventually, on a transversal perspective, in what respect do all these evolutions open new implications of knowledge for the comparatist and, more broadly, for social sciences?
*********
Therefore, in a context of School mutation and educational internationalisation, these processes of integration and redefinition of moral values and of social and cultural knowledge at work in more and more interdependent school worlds, are to be questioned by this symposium, from the confrontation of researches made in different cultural contexts and in a comparative perspective, by researchers coming from diverse disciplinary fields (Educational Sciences, Political Sciences, Sociology, History, Anthropology, Law, etc.)

PAPERS
You are invited to submit abstracts online on any topic of the conference (Theme 1 to 5):

• Papers are to be submitted online for January 10, 2006
• For submission online, please follow this link:
• http://www.lille.iufm.fr/afec2006/article.php3?id_article=2
• All abstracts will be studied by the scientific committee and assessed by at least two of its members.propositions.

Please note the following

1- The content of the submission

• The paper must establish the set of problems clearly, describe the methodology that is being followed, situate the conditions of the comparison, and present results contributing to the progress of thinking in the symposium.
• The paper must be proportional to the average time of a talk in a workshop (15-20 minutes).
• The title of papers must be short, but clear enough to describe the nature of the research (maximum: 250 characters).
• The summary of the paper must not be superior to 350 words (2,500 characters, spaces included).

2- Criteria for accepting individual papers

• Papers must be in keeping with the field of study defined by the conference's title and take its objectives into account. In addition, the following characteristics are expected from the papers:
• Meeting the requirements of scientific precision, i.e. to the criteria of coherent analysis, of exact demonstrations, and of first-rate sources. Thus, papers which would be limited to a profession of faith, to a plea or an indictment, however legitimate, would have no room in this symposium. Removing certainties, "laying aside" devotions, these are effectively the first conditions of any scientific dialogue, especially if it aims at being international, as is the case with this symposium.
• Asserting a comparative dimension:
  - either in space: comparisons within a country, between two or several countries, within one or between two or several big geo-political, linguistic, cultural and religious groups
  - in time: comparing periods of time, situations or historical developments.

3- Precisions

• The paper must establish the set of problems clearly, describe the methodology that is being followed, situate the conditions of the comparison, and present results contributing to the progress of thinking in the symposium.
• purely monographic descriptions are to be avoided, except if they help illustrate an explicit comparative set of issues or if they remain within the context of a common workshop (symposium), but on condition that establishing the comparison should not be left to the listener but clearly belong to the issues considered by the team. On the contrary, a comparative study which would be limited to an empirical inventory of resemblances and apparent similarities, without analysing the contents, without trying to distinguish or uncover, what is really similar and what is really different, without clarifying and questioning the criteria which are used, or the theoretical and methodological assumptions upon which it is based, would bear but a minor scientific interest for this symposium
• as for the multidisciplinary aspect, it concerns the whole symposium, not only each paper. However, associate papers, presenting a cross-disciplinary approach to a same topic, would be particularly interesting.

4- Abstracts content
Whilst the submissions correspond to the general frame described above, the following are left open:

• the disciplinary approach (all social sciences are concerned);
• the method for treating the subject (theoretical analysis, synthesis, document commentary, enquiry report and empirical research report);
• the topic itself

5- Proposition of Micro-Symposiums

• The micro-symposiums will be composed of 3 to 5 papers of 20 minutes on a common theme.
• Each micro-symposium will be submitted as a whole by their organisers, and will be composed of 3 to 5 participants coming from different institutions and a moderator, who may be carrying the project.
• Young researchers and doctorate students are truly encouraged to participate to micro-symposiums. Constituting international micro-symposiums and a diversified participation, from the point of view of methodologies and concepts as much as disciplinary conceptions, are hoped for.
• A micro-symposium will be organised so as to create a dialogue around the different issues, linked with the themes defined by the scientific committee.
• The moderator will have to introduce the papers and organise the discussions. The micro-symposium's organiser will submit the following elements in his project:
  - An introduction to and a description of the micro-symposium.
  - A programme for the micro-symposium, giving the order of the papers. The organiser will be careful to keep a period of discussion of at least 30 minutes at the end of the papers or between each of them.
  - Each abstract within the micro-symposium itself will follow the same recommendations of style and size as individual papers. The scientific committee may keep only some of the papers proposed within the micro-symposium.
  - All abstracts will be studied by the scientific committee and assessed by at least two of its members.

SYMPOSIUM LANGUAGE
The symposium language is French.
But the AFEC is interested in promoting linguistic pluralism in international scientific meetings, starting with its own symposia, and thus about finding a certain balance between the priority given to French and opening up to other languages:

• the short introductive text for submissions and the summary to give once papers have been accepted must be written in French;
• lectures and debates in plenary sessions will be given in French, as such, participants should be able to follow them, as the organisation of simultaneous translation may not be possible.
• In workshops, if authors wish, talks may be presented in a language other than French, but only if a side-solution is adopted; for example: - a French translation of the complete paper would be given to participants;
  - an oral translation would be made by a colleague;
  - either French or bilingual collateral should be used (slides or overhead transparencies ...)

CALENDAR IN THE COLLOQUIUM
All abstracts will be studied by the scientific committee and assessed by at least two of its members
A notification of acceptance or refusal will be sent to all those who will have submitted an abstract as follows dates:

• 10 January 2006 : abstracts due online
• 10 February 2006 : authors notified regarding abstract acceptance
• 25 February 2006 : distribution of the draft plan
• 20 March 2006 : deadline for regular registration rate
• 20 May 2006 : papers to be sent
• 22-24 June 2006 : Colloquium

Important point: an accepted abstract will be presented only if the author has registered in due form to the symposium. The registration procedure is independent from submission

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Coordination

• Henri FOLLIET, General Secretary of the AFEC
• Régis MALET, University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle

Members

• Robin ALEXANDER, University of Cambridge
• François AUDIGIER, Université of Geneva
• Raymond BOURDONCLE, University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle
• Dominique-Guy BRASSART, Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM
• Amadou CAMARA, University of Dakar
• Rui CANARIO, University of Lisbon
• Alain CARRY, President of the l'AFEC, CNRS-University of Paris-Sorbonne
• Rémi CASANOVA, University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle
• Jean-François CONDETTE, Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM
• Jean-Louis DEROUET, INRP
• Emilia FERREIRO, University of Mexico
• Martine FIALIP-BARATTE, Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM
• Henri FOLLIET, General Secretary of the AFEC
• Laurent GANKAMA, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Brazzaville
• Juan Carlos GONZÁLEZ FARACO, University of Huelva
• Michèle GUIGUE, University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle
• V. Dogan GUNAY University of Dokuz Eylul, Izmir
• Dorothée KOM, Centre national d'éducation of Yaoundé
• Maria KREZA, Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM
• Marie-Christine LE FLOCH, University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle
• Claude LESSARD, University of Montréal
• Guy LEGRAND, Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM
• Régis MALET, University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle
• Philippe PERRENOUD, University of Geneva
• Marylin OSBORN, University of Bristol
• Jenny OZGA, University of Edinbourg
• Afsata PARÉ-KABORÉ, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Ouagadougou
• Marie-Christine PRESSE, University of Lille 1
• Monique RAKOTOANOSY, University of Antananarivo
• Yves REUTER, University of Lille 3-Charles de Gaulle
• Jürgen SCHRIEWER, University Humboldt, Berlin
• Juan Carlos TEDESCO, Instituto Internacional de Planificación Educativa, Buenos Aires
• Nicole TUTIAUX-GUILLON, Nord-Pas-de-Calais IUFM