Conference Agenda

Educational research associations occupy a critical position in shaping the conditions, capacities, and future trajectories of the discipline - locally, nationally, and internationally. This role has become increasingly significant as education research is conducted within a context marked by political volatility and extremism, financial constraint, geopolitical instability, and intensifying scrutiny of universities and academic contributions. In such circumstances, national associations are faced with a diversifying range of challenges, required not only to represent their communities, but to exercise trusted strategic leadership and navigate uncertainty in setting organisational priorities, sustaining ecosystems, and enabling collective capacity. Within their own national contexts, and through EERA cross-nationally, associations take on a role of community building across differences in theoretical, methodological and cultural differences, learn from them and mutually help one other.

This session will examine the strategic role of educational research associations through an analysis of the challenges faced in a range of national contexts and look for similarities and differences. The recent major projects conducted by the British Educational Research Association (BERA) through its major State of the Discipline initiative and subsequent strategic planning cycle will serve as a lens to examine these issues. This work looked at the key topics and questions examined by educational researchers, the quality and recognition of educational research, education researchers’ work, experiences and identities, equality and diversity and most recently the funding and support for educational research supported by national frameworks. BERA will present some of the key findings from this work and a range of other national research associations will be asked to reflect on the issues from their own perspectives as well as broader studies of the research landscape.

This context sits alongside increased polarisation and instability such as the rise of nationalism and populism has challenged aspects of educational research concerned with equity and inclusion. In the UK context, the sector as a whole faces significant financial pressure, including reductions to teaching and research budgets, constraints on student numbers, and a long-term real-terms decline in funding for educational research. As BERA’s own analyses have demonstrated, these pressures are compounded by growing precarity in academic employment, widening inequalities, and the expansion of research activity beyond universities to a more fragmented set of actors and providers.

The challenges faced by national and international associations in this environment are complex and challenging. Against this backdrop, the range of associations will reflect on how their strategic activities including membership, events programmes, offers of professional development opportunities, publications portfolio and research funding initiatives can be mutually reinforcing elements of an association-led approach to disciplinary resilience. In this context, the paper argues that BERA’s strategic planning exemplifies how a national educational research association can act as a stabilising and enabling force: prioritising strategically, investing in collective infrastructure, and creating spaces for researchers to come together amid institutional and societal fragmentation and uncertainty.

The participants have been drawn from a variety of different types of associations – in terms of size, geography and length of establishment to bring a range of perspectives and approaches. In conclusion each association will be asked to think how their own experiences might inform others and what possibilities there might be for cross-national and international co-operation. These concerns resonate closely with the ECER 2026 theme, “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research, and this session will focus upon the key role of national associations in supporting and promoting the discipline and how this can be maintained in the evolving landscape.