Friday, 26 August, 11:00 am -12:00 pm
Location: OB-Theatre B
Presenters:
Christian Lundahl, Örebro University, Sweden
Francesca Gobbo, University of Turin, Italy
Chairs:
Eric Mangez, Université Catholigue de Louvain, Belgium
Maarten Simons, University of Leuven, Belgium
Educational research and educational researchers need public places and spaces of unrestricted communication. The EERJ Moot aims to create a space where an intergenerational discussion and debate among researchers can take place, oriented towards the future. The theme of this year's Moot reflects the digital life of educational researchers.
In recent decades digital technologies have been having a big impact on the organization of both education and educational research. However, little attention has been paid to how digital technologies affect the ways researchers communicate with the world around them, partly reshaping what it is to be an (educational) researcher, and what it means for a researcher to have and live a digital life. This is not only true for individual researchers, but also for research groups and research centres and the way they organize their activities and conceive their work. Their existence is being reconstructed into a virtual or online existence. This development raises several questions. Has it really become essential to have a website or write a blog? How should one present oneself – and what should be exposed - in this digital world? How important is it to become member of online academic communities, and what is the role of social media such as Twitter for academic life and work? How is blogging changing academic publishing? More general questions could also be asked: what does it mean to become and behave as a networked academic? Are new, collective modes of existence thus created, and what kinds of opportunities/ risks do they involve for academic life? Or is it all just a kind of deliberate self-marketing that privileges connections, links and fast, easily digestible knowledge over content and substance? In any case, the demands for creating and sustaining this digital presence are surrounded by new expectations, opportunities but clearly also challenges. The Moot aims to offer a forum for discussing these issues, and assessing both the opportunities and the possible risks and challenges associated with them. It starts from the assumption that current digital developments deeply affect what it is to be (and to become) an educational researcher, and hence what research in education is and should be about today. Some short contributions will open up the debate.
