Walking the Talk: Co-constructing the politics of meaning, diversity and learning

11th - 13th September 2024, Bari

In the current landscape of educational research, there is a growing awareness of and interest in discussing the positionality of all actors involved. Through their actions and words, students, teachers, researchers, tutors, etc., all express values and worldviews, collectively shaping the narratives on education across formal and informal learning contexts. At a broader level, this co-constructive process also involves actors such as policymakers, funding agencies, scientific associations, and EdTech companies. In that sense, the social interactions relevant to educational research are not only processes evolving during learning but also involve discourse and action communicating about learning - verbally and nonverbally, explicitly and implicitly across different places and situations.

Thus, not only do educationally relevant phenomena give rise to a polyphonic co-construction of meaning - such co-construction, in turn, also shapes how we perceive and act and thus transforms these phenomena. Our participation as educational researchers in this co-construction has deep implications for educational theory and practice. In this context, a particularly relevant - perhaps confronting - question for reflection is: who gets to participate in co-constructing the politics of meaning and learning? Who are ‘we’ and who are the ‘others’? For even if we agree on valuing diversity, the meaning of ‘diversity’ itself is not fixed, seeing that various kinds of diversity can be at stake in educational research and practice. Depending on how the meaning of diversity is co-constructed, different actors can be included and excluded as agents (e.g., do we mean only human diversity or also more-than-human diversity?).

At this conference, we take the time and space to engage with research as a reflexive praxis. Notably, we aim to expand our understanding of learning and social interaction, diversity in education, and educational theory to foster dialogue not only on what we do but also on how we do it and what that communicates. Such dialogue entails exploring how both our empirical findings and our ways of doing research shape and are shaped by educational discourse and practice. We invite participants to present theoretical, empirical and practical contributions on topics within the scope of SIGs 10, 21 and 25 and to address the implications of their research for educational practices and/or the worldviews and values shaping their research projects.

All aspects of our work as researchers can be enacted in various ways, which contribute differently to co-constructing the politics of meaning, diversity and learning. This raises a variety of questions, for example:

• In what way(s) do we conceptualise educational practices and their transformation?
• In what way(s) do we enter into dialogue and interact with practitioners and educational institutions?
• In what way(s) do we define units of analysis and handle empirical materials to select relevant objects of investigation?
• In what way(s) do we interpret the implications of our findings?

These issues are challenging to address all at once in the course of our work as researchers, yet they are always at play. A conscientious and critical approach to research entails reflecting on the theoretical framing and practical implications of our investigations, as well as considering the political processes that contribute to educational research and practice so we might act and respond to them in an informed manner. Doing so together is not only our ethical responsibility as researchers but also empowers us to take our place in the world more consciously.

As a prompt, we have collected a number of questions from among the interests of the three SIGs. These questions are intended to spark ideas and may or may not be directly addressed.

Question collection

• What theories and aspects of social interaction and diversity are represented in our research (approaches), and what are we overlooking?

• How can/do our ways of teaching (e.g., students, each other) as educational researchers reflect the insights from our research (empirical and theoretical)?

• What interactions do we establish with our research participants, practitioners and stakeholders (or vice versa), and what does that say about our own politics of meaning? How can we use this perspective to create spaces of social justice through actions of diversity, inclusion and equity?

• In a time of ecological crisis, how do relationships with more-than-human actors participate in the politics of meaning and learning, and how do we foreground or background such diversity through the choices we make in our research and its dissemination?

• What is the role of AI in educational dialogue, especially in view of diversity, equity and inclusion? (How) can AI be made responsible and accountable within democratic practices of education?

• How do educational interactions respond to a negotiation of individual and collective goals, and how can this be done in a way that acknowledges and addresses issues of differential power within these interactions?

Submission policy

To provide as many researchers as possible with the opportunity to present their work at the conference, we have to limit the number of active contributions for each participant. We encourage you to submit one proposal as a presenting author. The submission system will not allow more than two total submissions (i.e., in the second submission, you may have a non-presenting co-author role). In addition, you may act as an organizer of a symposium, once as the chair of a symposium, and once as a discussant. We warmly welcome you to serve as a chair for a conference session (not including symposia) by signing up for this role in the submission system.

How to submit your paper: Please log in to the members page at EARLI. Once you access your member area, choose DASHBOARD, scroll to the 'My submission' section, and click the 'New submission' green button. The page will display a list of SIG and EARLI events for which you can submit a paper. Please scroll to SIG 10, 21 & 25 Conference 2024 and choose one of the two formats. We encourage you to consult our submission policy before submitting your paper.

NOTE: All submissions should be anonymous to ensure a fair review process. Please do not include your name or affiliation in your
abstract or any uploaded files, both in the file name and the actual file.

An EARLI account is needed to submit a proposal or register for the conference. The account needs to be created before submitting. This can be created free of charge at the MEMBERSHIP section of the EARLI page. Please update your personal and professional details as this information will be used for further communications and to generate the conference programme. Please ensure not to create multiple accounts, as this could lead to interaction problems later on. For co-authors who will not participate in the conference, an account is not required as this information can be inserted manually while submitting.

Registration

More information about the registration process will follow. Registration will open on May 3rd 2024.

Registration fees