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EDiTE Virtual Seminar 2018

The EDiTE Virtual Seminar took place between 13-14 March and was organized by the Department of Educational Sciences at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. The event aimed to improve our ESRs’ research skills while empowering them towards a successful completion of their doctorate programme.

This virtual seminar was attended by nearly fifty people from different universities in seven European countries.

The event consisted of presentations relevant to the research process, with the presentation of topics such as: “how to write a doctoral thesis”, ethics, dissemination of scientific results and life after the Ph.D.

The presenters, Vernon Trafford,  Roman Švaříček, Michal Petr, Monika Sieberová,  Lucie Škarková, Kari Smith, Pat Thomson and Kristýna Vlčková provided the attendees insightful theoretical and practical ideas aimed to support the development of their thesis during the last year of the EDiTE Programme.

The Second Day of the EDiTE Virtual Seminar

On the 2nd of March 2017, the second and final day of the EDiTE Virtual Seminar took place. During the morning sessions, Dr Alpesh Maisuria from the University of East London gave a keynote speech with the theme “Education Policy in Neoliberalism”. Based on the keynote, researchers initiated discussions in local groups at their respective universities and gathered questions which Dr Maisuria replied. A reflective journaling activity followed, helping researchers to align the keynote with their research projects.

During the afternoon sessions, the researchers presented their group work progress on drafting an academic publication, a process initiated in the first day of the seminar. All groups had the chance to briefly present their ongoing work and received feedback from supervisors of each university. The researchers were encouraged to submit their work for publication in relevant academic journals. The final activity of the Virtual Seminar included a group work on designing a research matrix for each of the EDiTE partner universities. Researchers from each university used an online platform to map the predominant themes related to their research and according to the overall EDiTE theme “Transformative teacher learning for better student learning within an emerging Europe”.

Last but not least, the EDiTE community celebrated one year of researchers in action! The next occasion when researchers will meet is the 2nd EDiTE Summer School in Wroclaw, Poland (June 19-23).

The First Day of the EDiTE Virtual Seminar

On 09.02.2017, the first day of the EDiTE Virtual Seminar took place online. The UIBK team organised and moderated the Virtual Seminar and researchers from all partner universities participated in a creative, inspiring and packed with activities day. Virtual Seminars are part of the EDiTE’s research programme and they are organised annually. The concept theme of the 2017 Virtual Seminar was „European Comparative Studies in Teacher Education”.

During the morning sessions, Professor Pavel Zgaga from the University of Ljubljana gave an online keynote, entitled “European Teacher Education in the Grip of “Academic Tribes and Territories””. The keynote triggered vivid discussions in local university groups and several questions were raised with regard to the contemporary role of teacher education in higher education institutions. A reflective activity in the form of Freewrite according to Peter Elbow followed.

The afternoon activities started with an online cultural quiz, followed by the analysis of the EDiTE Theme Survey results by the EDiTE researchers and an analysis of the Research at a Glance documents by Professor Michael Schratz. It was commonly agreed that the documents so far produced by the researchers will be reviewed and further elaborated by the supervisors and researchers in view of updating EDiTE’s research programme. Afterwards, a group work activity was initiated where researchers had to use online means of communication to discuss their prepared abstract for a common academic publication in transnational groups, allowing a comparative research perspective to emerge. The Virtual Seminar closed with a short presentation of each group’s intended work and the EDiTE community members renewed their virtual appointment for the 2nd of March. In the meantime, transnational working groups will further develop their common idea for a common academic paper.