From 3 to 6 September 2019, the University of Hamburg (Germany) hosted the annual scientific conference of the European Educational Research Association under the slogan "Education in the Age of Risk - the Role of Educational Research for the Future". The conference gathered more than 3000 participants.
On September 3, the conference was opened by Joe O'Hara, President of the European Educational Research Association. The state Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research Christian Luft and the President of the University of Hamburg Dieter Lenzen also welcomed the participants. During the opening ceremony, the book "Doing Educational Research - Overcoming Challenges In Practice" was presented. The book was published by SAGE and is the first major English-language manual for postgraduates and doctoral students. It introduces readers to the research traditions in education that exist in Europe and what they mean in practice.
During all days, each of the 33 sections met on a tight schedule, and some sections had up to 4 parallel sessions. Thanks to well-thought-out technical support and appropriate software, each participant had the opportunity to choose their own trajectory and satisfy their interests as much as possible.
The conference program included 3 reports from Ukraine that were successfully selected based on the results of an independent review. They are the following: "Two Faces of Ukrainian Teachers: How Far Are They from Being Satisfied with Their Work?» in section 10. Teacher Education Research (authors Oksana Zabolotna and Svitlana Shchudlo); "Language and Identity at Ukrainian Schools: Constructing Evidence-Based Policies under Political Pressure" in section 23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education (authors Oksana Zabolotna, Svitlana Shchudlo and Tetiana Medina); "The Self-efficacy of Ukrainian Teachers According to the Results of the Study by the TALIS Methodology" in section 09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement (authors Tetiana Lisova and Yuriy Kovalchuk).
All reports were successfully presented by the members of the Ukrainian Educational Research Association Oksana Zabolotna and Tetiana Lisova. Their participation in this large-scale event was made possible with the support of the European Union Erasmus+ Jean Monnet project "European Quality of Educational Research for Empowering Educators in Ukraine" (No. 587032-EPP-1-2017-1-RU-EPPJMO-SUPPA).
Tetiana Lisova reported on IRT research on the properties of the self-efficacy construct of Ukrainian teachers based on data obtained from the all-Ukrainian monitoring survey of teachers and school principals (using the TALIS methodology); comparison of various approaches to building composite indices (IRT and factorial); justification of the possibility of comparing the data of the Ukrainian 2017 survey with international 2013 data; recommendations for improving the level of self-efficacy of Ukrainian teachers. It is worth noting that all the results presented in section 09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement, obtained using modern methods of data modeling, which significantly increases the objectivity of conclusions, that is so lacking in Ukrainian pedagogical science.
Oksana Zabolotna presented two reports, one of them in the innovative iTalk format.
The workshops attended by our participants were extremely useful. Here we learned about the methods of studying the validity of international projects TIMSS and PIRLS, which are conducted by the IEA, about the methodology and main results of the ICCS civil education research. The latest information with updates, changes, and news was available around the clock via the conference website (https://eera-ecer.de/ecer-2019-hamburg/), social networks Twitter, Instagram, Facebook (https://twitter.com/ecer2019?lang=en; https://www.instagram.com/ecer2019/?hl=de; https://www.facebook.com/EERA-European-Educational-Research-Association…) and mobile app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.pcss.ecer2019).
At the end of the conference, a two-day Council meeting of the European Educational Research Association was held, where our Ukrainian Association was represented by the Vice-President Oksana Zabolotna.
