Nera network 7

~ Value Issues and Social Relations in Education

About

Network 7: Value Issues and Social Relations in Education
The NERA Network for Value Issues and Social Relations in Education (network 7) is a network for educational researchers with research interest in empirical studies of value issues and social relations in school, preschool, and other educational settings, such as moral practices and influences, bullying, values education, teacher ethics, classroom management, and group processes. Thus, the network covering a wide variety of content concerns, among which are:

  • values education – an umbrella concept including concepts such as moral education, character education, citizenship education, civic education, and democratic education
  • professional ethics, teacher ethics
  • everyday moral life of school, preschool, and other educational settings
  • social relations, group processes, social climate, friendships, social norms, peer pressure, power, and social status in school, preschool, and other educational settings
  • classroom management, preschool, school or classroom rules, disruptive behaviour, resistance, anti-school culture, and disciplinary practices
  • social and moral development, ethical learning, and children and youth’s ethics and moral agency
  • school violence, anti-social behaviour, aggression, and aggression prevention and interventions practices
  • social rejection, peer harassment, bullying, and anti-bullying practices
  • democracy in school, preschool or education, deliberative conversations, pupil participation, and children’s rights
  • peer conflicts, conflict management, and peace education
  • prosocial behaviour and development

The network is open to a wide range of empirical qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches, including (but not limited to) ethnography, case study, survey research, interviewing, structured observation, experimental and quasi-experimental design, action research, grounded theory, discourse analysis, life history, conversation analysis, phenomenology, mixed methods, and comparative research. The main focus is on empirical rather than philosophical investigations, even if ethical or other normative theories of course can function as significant perspectives or theoretical tools in the empirical research. The network is open to a broad range of perspectives and theories that emanates from (but not limited to) education, sociology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and political science.

The aim of the Network is to provide a forum for and to promote communication and collaboration among educational researcher with research interest in empirical studies of values issues and social relations in school or other educational settings, and to enhance, stimulate, strengthen, and develop the practice of Nordic research in this domain. The network seeks to develop and enhance knowledge regarding value issues and social relations in preschool, school, and other educational settings by exploring, analysing and discussing empirical findings, investigating and evaluating effects or outcomes from educational interventions, programs or methods, critically analysing processes, influences, interactions, cultures, or practices in classroom, schoolyard, and other educational settings, testing, using, or developing theories, discussing empirical methods and new developments in methodologies, and so on.