Best Paper Award 2007

Award for research on religious and science education in Islamic countries

• Link to Nasser's paper "Religious Beliefs: A Hidden Variable in the Performance of Science Teachers in the Classroom" published by the European Educational Research Journal (EERJ).
• For more on Nasser's work: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5707-7373

Nasser Mansour, a research fellow who recently completed his PhD from the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Exeter has been awarded the European Educational Research Association (EERA) Best Paper Award for Postgraduate and Young Researchers.

This prestigious award is for his thesis ‘Religious beliefs: A hidden variable in the performance of science teachers in the classroom’.

The award includes fees to the European Conference on Educational Research, an official certificate and publication of the paper in the EERA’s official journal, the European Educational Research Journal. A travel budget is also offered by the EERA which the School of Education will match fund continuing to promote and support doctoral students.
The official award ceremony will take place in September at ECER 2008 in  Göteborg, Sweden.

Nasser is Egyptian and lectured in Science Education in Egypt prior to moving to England for post graduate study. His winning paper, which he presented at ECER 2007,  focused on the challenges for Islamic cultures to manage the relationship between providing a religious and science education that may be at odds with each other. Controversial issues like evolution, cloning and abortion can pose problems for teaching science. The paper also highlights the need to understand teachers’ personal religious beliefs and practices around some of these issues and the way their beliefs influence their performance in the classroom.

The EERA recognised the value of the research outlined in his paper, Professor Ingrid Gogolin, President of EERA said, ‘Our reviewers were especially impressed by the thoroughness of the language and the academic preciseness of the conclusions. The fact that it deals with the intersection between science and religion turns it into a very up to date and stimulating work.’

Nasser said of his achievement, ‘I'm really excited and honoured to receive the Best Paper Award, especially at the beginning of my professional career. This encourages me to do much research on this area of religion and science education. I had invaluable support from my thesis supervisors who were able to listen carefully and probe into areas of my research with patience and understanding. The research environment at the University was a great bonus and I feel that this award makes me more confident to present at international conferences.’