Conference Theme
The conference theme -Professional Challenges for School Effectiveness and Improvement in the Era of Accountability - will provide the opportunity to address questions of accountability, autonomy, deprofessionalisation and reprofessionalisation in relation to school effectiveness and school improvement in changing and diverse contexts. External testing, quality indicators and other initiatives which are now found in countries all over the world have changed issues of accountability, autonomy and professionalism. The interrelatedness of these three issues provides our starting point to evoke the sharing of different experiences and promote a rich international discourse.
Participants are invited to present proposals on accountability, autonomy and professionalism and how the relationship among these issues has been considered in research, policy and practice to develop effectiveness and improvement in education.
Proposals are invited around the following themes:
- Accountability and autonomy - is there a link?
We invite authors to submit papers that deal with the issues of accountability and autonomy, especially the relationship between them, at all level of school system, national, regional, local, as well as related to kindergartens, compulsory education, secondary education and post-graduate studies.
Accountability and autonomy are currently at the heart of political and professional debates yet there is little empirical evidence about their interrelatedness. - Global and national responses in the context of accountability and diversity
We invite authors to address the contextual issues of accountability in increasingly diverse societies and their responses at the global and/or national as well as local level. We encourage researchers, practitioners and policy makers to provoke research and experience -based discussions about different paths that have been implemented or currently discussed in different countries. - Professional responses to demands for public accountability
We invite authors to present research findings and experience related to professional responses to demands for public autonomy. In decentralised and deregulated educational environments the demand for accountability has been central to discussions of professional communities. What are forms, levels and content that has been designed as response to the accountability issues?
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Effective practices in educational leadership, learning, teaching
We invite authors to lay out effective practices as 'examples of good practice' in educational leadership, learning and teaching. Benchmarking has been world-wide accepted as one way of measuring effective performance and presentation of good, effective practices may be one of the ways to do it.