Conference Agenda

There is a tradition in our Network where we invite scholars affiliated with or connected to the current location to form a panel to open the Network sessions. We are both delighted and excited to announce that esteemed colleagues Zelia Gregoriou, Marianna Papastephanou, and Michalinos Zembylas have accepted our invitation and will be speaking on the theme of war and education

The session is part of the network special call programme.

The session adresses transformations in the world of work from three angles: At first it takes a closer look into the institutionalization of New Work in organizations. From an organizational education perspective, the uncertainties of our time will be analyzed in the programmatics of new work. Taking a closer look at statements of multinational consulting companies like McKinsey, the paper analyzes the business world on a discursive level. It discusses the so called call for new forms of leadership and new ways of working as both a discursive trend and an expression of a need examined in organizational practice. The second paper shifts the perspective from a programmatics level to the practice theoretical analysis of organizational sales and service training in connected Retail. Connected retail refers to organizations that utilize digital technologies and information systems to connect their physical stores, online platforms, stakeholders, and customers into a digital service ecosystem. This ecosystem aims to create value and service in virtual and physical realms. The digital service ecosystems constantly evolve and alter the activities and roles of human employees and customers in the service chain. In a connected retail organization, the conditions that shape the service encounter in physical stores constantly change. Employees must keep updating their skills through organizational learning to stay valuable in such an organization. This means that the conditions comprising the organization's sales and service training, including organizational knowledge, routines, methods, norms, values, and roles, must also change along with the workplace. The third paper discusses employer branding as a school development strategy in times of Uncertainty and offers theoretical perspectives. Schools as socially desired organizations have always been focal points of social, political and economic developments and uncertainties due to the associated mission they have to fulfill. Social change and the omnipresent crises have a direct and indirect impact on organizations, including schools. Crises and uncertainties have the potential to erase or blur existing school structures. In extreme cases, the lack of structures for dealing with these impacts can even threaten the existence of both the organizations and the actors involved. Schools face the challenges of shortages of staff. How do they deal with the problem to find committed and motivated teachers? Schools as organizations need to ask how they can make themselves attractive as employers for potential teachers. The perspective of employer branding offers a possible answer to this challange.

Across presentations, this symposium explores implications of the onto-epistemological uncertainty paradigm inherent to new materialism, process research, postqualitative research, and activist methodologies. Turning to ontology in qualitative and participatory research emphasizes research as a worlding practice itself (Lather, 2016; Gullian, 2018). Creating knowledge then becomes about respons-able creation of also the practices of knowing (Barad, 2007) in research situations that researchers are part of. Methodology is no longer unquestioned as a pre-legitimized and pre-scriptive fit, procedure or sequencing - in fact, sometimes questioned all entirely (Jackson, 2017; St. Pierre, 2021). Inquiry includes then, instead, a creative and generative assembling of the research situation and its apparatus of observation to the point of emergence where new thinking and new doings become viable. For many and diverse groups of emergent and senior researchers, process philosophies and their processual ontologies have been inspirational for enacting research differently and in generative ways (Revsbæk & Simpson, 2022). Postqualitative research (St. Pierre, 2023; Jackson & Mazzei, 2018), advanced in educational research and pioneering in organizational studies, as well as new feminist materialism (Barad, 2007; Barad, 2014; Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017), has proliferated multiple innovative, arts-based approaches to research, creating research which move and make in/with the immanence and uncertainty of a world-in-becoming. Inspired by the processual and ontological turns and experimenting with the onto-epistemological uncertainties embraced in these approaches, the presenters of the symposium illustrate from empirical research situated in Germany, Belgium and Denmark how specific methodological ideas such as diffraction (Barad, 2007) and utopia as method (Levitas, 2013) are put to work in specific organizational education research engagements. The symposium will discuss the implications of embracing onto-epistemological uncertainties in the practicing of European organizational education research, offering exemplification and illustration of such practices, and discussing their potential and limitations.

This is a joint session of NW 04 and NW 08. Papers can be found at. 08 SES 03 JS (NW 08)..

This is a joint session of NW 30 and NW 34. Papers can be found in 34 SES 03 A JS

This session presents three papers, all related to digitalization from an organizational education perspective. The first paper discusses organizations as central actors in transition processes and passages of individuals How do organizations act as gatekeepers, counselers evaluators in such transition processes? Digitalization leads to reshaping the organization of transitions. Accordingly, the acquisition and possession of digital skills can be considered central to the safe management of digitalized transitions into work- The second paper discusses the implementation of Digital Technologies in Schools. It reflects on identifying causal conditions for successful school development using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Digital technologies are increasingly influencing work processes and organization. This means that (vocational) schools are also confronted with the need to integrate digital technologies into school lessons in order to prepare learners for a digitalized world of work. In this context, schools usually act under uncertainty, as teachers often lack the essential skills, will or tools for pedagogically meaningful and authentic digitally supported teaching. The integration of digital technologies into the classroom is associated with changes at the administrative, organizational and cultural level of the school. Rather, digitalization in the school context means a fundamental change. Digital technologies in education can be seen as an innovation, which entails a school innovation process when implemented in the classroom. This process takes place in the context of school development, which occurs in various dimensions, which can be seen as an indication of a successful innovation process. The successful implementation of digital technologies in the classroom therefore requires a holistic innovation process in which, in addition to pedagogical adaptations, extensive changes are required in the school organization, particularly at an organizational and structural level. The paper discusses barriers to innovation in the change process. . The apaper analyses constellations of innovation barriers and promotional activities as conditions leading to (un)successful school development when implementing digital technologies in schools. The third paper discusses the release of the language-based AI application ChatGPT and its implications for student-teacher-relationships and organizational learning. What are advantages and disadvantages of 'big language models in differentiated educational contexts? Like the general debate on the possible uses of AI technologies, the debate on AI at universities is also largely characterised by weighing up the opportunities and risks of such technologies in areas of application such as governance, administration, research and teaching. These issues relate to the support of decision-making processes as well as the promotion of innovation and the personalisation of learning processes. Particularly in the field of higher education, a far-reaching automation of didactic interaction patterns can be expected in the near future, with classic teaching formats being successively expanded or supplemented by the use of chatbots in the context of sophisticated learning scenarios. Concepts are also gaining in importance that use AI applications to provide as many students as possible with fast, individualised advice without having to accept a significant loss in quality compared to advice provided by humans. The paper discusses the results of an empirical study.

The session discusses brings in two papers on middle leaders. They are discussed in the context of school uncertainty and organizational learning. The second paper discusses middle leaders as experts. Using the theory of expertise, the study intends to dive deeper into middle leaders´ expertise and contribution to school effectiveness and reduced ambiguity.

This is a joint session of NW 30 and NW 34. Papers can be found in 34 SES 03 A JS

This is the keynote session for the newtork's special call 'Social Imaginaries of the Future: the making of certainty and uncertanity in education". The 40-45 minutes long keynote will be followed by an open floor discussion

Uncertainty is a core topic for the conditions of our time and especially in European inter- and transnational research settings, it is a given. With the complexity of Participatory Action Research designs (PAR), uncertainty necessitates a practice of organizing within process-oriented, participatory research. Depending on the rationality put in place, uncertainty may even have the quality of an epistemological position to value and to operate with as a researcher. Reflecting on these three dimensions and discursive positionings of uncertainty within PAR in transnational complex research settings which encompass conditions, practices, and epistemologies, the symposium discusses uncertainty as a core dimension within collaborative research projects. The exemplary case of the Horizon EU-funded project “Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogies and Democracy-as-becoming" (AECED) discusses these dimensions of uncertainty to consider. In its overarching Participatory Action Research strategy, the project’s six national partners have designed distinct phases and different levels of participation and opportunities to co-design, co-create, and co-analyse. The research design involves the highly diverse institutional settings of preschool, secondary school, Higher Education, and professional as well as organizational training. For a methodological foundation, a common methodological framework for transformational participatory action research was developed in an iterative process. The symposium intends to present and discuss the underlying methodological understanding with respect to all six projects involved. Each one works with collaborative and participatory action research methodologies that usually have their grounding in a shared issue with participants. Based on this, the research process is to be understood as an emergent and iterative process of theorizing and verification that includes a series of steps or processes of planning, acting, observing, reflecting, and re-planning. Put into practice, the projects all follow a series of phases, which include designing (planning), trialling (acting and observing), analysing (reflecting) and redesigning (re-planning) in which a pedagogical framework and four practice guides are developed, trialed and re-designed with participants and stakeholders. All of the projects intend to follow common principles, such as a) flexibility as the project evolves, b) willingness to co-construct and participate in collective problem-solving; c) awareness of how collaboration enables development of critical perspectives and self-directed learning, d) shared curiosity; e) willingness to engage in dialogue and reflection, f) transparency, g) openness to the knowledge and experience of all participants and stakeholders who have their own ideas about the topic of the project and h) collective leadership. In addition to that, the AECED project encourages the use of arts-based and embodied methods which brings to the fore the embodied dimension of research processes and the entanglement of researchers, participants, and organizational practices. The complex methodological design will therefore be discussed by the different contributions, firstly, to offer a space of reflection concerning conditions, practices, and epistemologies that engage with uncertainties. Secondly, the symposium will delineate strategies for Participatory Action Research that include uncertainties within processes of democratisation ‘in, of and between organisations’.

Posters 468; 469

This is a joint session of NW 14 and NW 16. Full information can be found in 14 SES 06 B JS

This is a joint session of NW 14 and NW 16. Full information can be found in 14 SES 06 B JS

The session is part of the network special call programme.

Organizational Education is interested in organizational learning in, by, and between organizations (Göhlich et al., 2018). It did not only emerge under conditions of uncertainty (Bennett et al., 2014) but relates in many different ways to this core term. With reference to Dewey's work (1929; 1969), uncertainty becomes a core term for organizational education, as educational organizing does not try to limit and exclude uncertainty but relates to it even in positive ways. As the special call of organizational Education puts it, uncertainty-affinity may lead to conceptualizing alternative strategies of organizing. Creative approaches to uncertainty involve searching for and posing problems rather than jumping to the comfort of immediate solutions. Looking into historical positions, the special call of organizational Education connects to the works of Mary Parker Follett (1923; 1924). She suggested such an uncertainty-open practice, which in the particular call was discussed as a non-affirmative practice opposing "traditional, transmissive" and "reductive-progressive" (English, 2023) forms of organizational learning. In this approach to uncertainty, listening and relationality might be seen as qualities of a nonaffirmative Organizational Education (Moos, 2023). Applying such a practice of listening, reflecting, asking, and searching for the 10th anniversary of organizational Education, especially listening into history, relating to the roots, and asking for the relevance of terms, the searching for European connections and methodological implications seems to be the right way to connect past, present and future of an academic association and its research networks, in this case, the research network organizational education. Honoring the 10th anniversary of organizational Education at the European level, a "Looking Back and Diving Deep" research workshop intends to relate to the historical roots of European organization education research (Göhlich et al., 2018). The Network 32, by this, intends to reflect on its historical roots and the methodological implications of a European and historically grounded organizational education. As an initializing agent of organizational Education thought, Michael Göhlich was a core academic who established organizational Education in the German educational research setting. In 2014, after a pre-phase of establishing organizational education symposia in ECER, a European research network on organizational Education was accepted within ECER, and Michael Göhlich took the position of convenor at the European level. The 10th anniversary, therefore, is an excellent opportunity for a "look back and dive deep" into the European traditions of organizational education thinking and the emergence and institutionalization of our trans-subdiscipline of organizational Education and ground this collective reflection on the works of Michael Göhlich. As Michael Göhlich writes in the German Handbook of Organizational Education (Göhlich, 2018, 18), any academic subdiscipline does not emerge overnight but is rooted in history. Any new term, any new academic discourse, and any new academic subdiscipline have early and preliminary phases in the academic history - as a concept, as a discourse, and as an academic subdiscipline. It will always stand "on the shoulders" of concepts, focuses, and arguments, which were already expressed earlier in pedagogy and Education (Göhlich, 2018, 18). Moreover, Göhlich (2018, 18) continues elaborating in his contribution to the history of organizational Education on the starting point – when to start telling the story of historicization? It even mentions that it would have been possible to begin the search at much earlier starting points, for, in antiquity, the Middle Ages or the Enlightenment. This "prehistory" of organizational Education in the narrower sense is of interest to understand better the emergence of the term' organizational education', which not only develops as in the uniform continuum but (also) can be discussed in phases, stages, steps, and variations.

The session is part of the network special call programme.

The session consists of three papers adressing teachers coping strategies in provisional schools. The second paper adresses the relevance of qualification level for young french people entering the world of work. The third presentation discusses the role of workplace training in secondary education as a centripetal and / centripetal force.

This is a joint Session of NW 09 and NW 34. Papers can be found in 09 SES 07 A JS (NW 09)