FinEd Newsletter 3/2016
21.09.2016
This is a FinEd Newsletter. Newsletters are sent to all members of the FinEd Network via contact persons in each university and published on the FinEd website.
Greetings from the FinEd Annual seminar in May
The FinEd Network organised its annual seminar on May 25-26, 2016 in Conference Hotel Sofia, Helsinki. The seminar concentrated on the theme of scientific communication and publishing in national and international journals. Keynotes of the seminar were professor Diane Reay (the University of Cambridge) and editor Kaisa Leino from the Finnish Journal of Education (Kasvatus). In addition to the keynotes, the programme of the seminar included workshops where the doctoral candidates worked on their article drafts or analysed already published articles. Please download the PP slides of Diane Reay’s lecture “Academic Publishing – Learning from the UK Experience” and Kaisa Leino’s presentation “Some Notions about National Publishing”.
Altogether 49 doctoral candidates participated in the seminar: 44 doctoral candidates from all of the FinEd member universities (Universities of Eastern Finland, Jyväskylä, Lapland, Oulu, Tampere, Turku and Åbo Akademi). In addition, five doctoral candidates from the University of Helsinki participated at their own cost. Earlier in the spring there were a large number of doctoral candidates in the reserve list for the conference but due to several cancellations we could finally welcome all those, too. The FinEd paid the travel and accommodation costs of the doctoral candidates of the FinEd member universities. Also 11 supervisors participated in the seminar.
After the seminar, the coordinator collected feedback from all the participants. 24 doctoral candidates (49 % of the participants) and four supervisors (44 %) shared their experiences and views both numerically and verbally. As the summary of the feedback shows, the participants were in general highly satisfied with the seminar. The feedback also included interesting ideas about the contents of the future FinEd seminars which will be taken into account when planning new seminars.
Joint conference of the FinEd and the Faculty of Education, UTU on November 16th in Turku – register by October 10th!
The FinEd Network organises together with the Faculty of Education, UTU, a Conference for the Doctoral Candidates on November 16th, 2016. The title of the conference is “Rethinking Research Methodology ”. The conference is organised a day before the national FERA conference for your convenience. The language of the conference is English.
The conference begins with poster sessios of the doctoral candidates of the Faculty of Education, UTU. The FinEd members are welcome to listen and discuss in the parallel sessions. As keynote of the conference, Professor Niina Nummela (Turku School of Economics) will give a lecture entitled "Put in the sugar, and then add the eggs... or is it the other way around? Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods".
The afternoon of the conference consists of ten parallel workshop sessions, concentrating on methodological and other highly interesting themes. At the end of the conference a buffet dinner is served. The conference is free of charge but the FinEd will not cover the travel or accommodation costs of the doctoral candidates.
Read more about the programme of the conference, posters, workshops etc. in the Conference Call at the FinEd webpage. For other doctoral candidates that those of UTU, the registration for the Conference is open until October 10th. NB. There is limited space in each workshop. The workshops are available on a first-come-first-served basis so early registration is recommended!
FinEd mentor pool now open!
The FinEd mentor pool is now open at the FinEd web site! Currently, the list of mentors is only in Finnish but the English version will be added to the English site during October, 2016. Before it, please see the list in Finnish.
Via mentor pool, the doctoral candidates of FinEd may contact the experts of their own research area and for example ask for comments on their article drafts and other texts. The FinEd mentors are in principle committed to taking part in the annual seminars and possible pre-seminars of the network, as well as to act as mentors to the doctoral candidates. When contacting a mentor, it is the responsibility of the mentor to respond to the contact according to their own schedule and other workload, there is no absolute obligation or compulsion to mentoring.
The FinEd network offers a unique channel for networking for the supervisors and mentors. Also post doc researchers are welcome as mentors in FinEd. If you are interested in joining the network as mentor for the doctoral candidates or are otherwise interested in the activities of the network, please contact the coordinator.
Upcoming conferences
- Unequalising World – Equalising School? FERA Conference on Education 17 – 18 November 2016 in Turku. The deadline for abstracts on September 23rd, so please hurry up!
- 45th Congress of the Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA) which will be held on 23-25 March 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The theme of the conference is: Learning and education – material conditions and consequences. Deadline for abstracts on November 1st, 2016.
- The Nordic Comparative and International Education Society (NOCIES) Organises a pre-conference to 45th Congress of the (NERA) on March 22, 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Proposals for abstracts must be submitted by November 1, 2016 to conference2017@nocies.org.
- EARLI 2017. Education in the crossroads of economy and politics – Role of research in the advancement of public good. August 29th - September 2nd 2017 in Tampere, Finland. Abstract submission deadline on Thursday October 27th 2016.
- 21th Pre-Conference of the JUnior REsearchers of EARLI (European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction): Education in the light of multiple perspectives: Towards intertwining personalised and collaborative learning. The conference will be hosted by the University of Tampere, Finland, August 27-28, 2017, right before the main EARLI conference. Deadline for proposal submission is October 27th, 2016.
Other
Closing of the Aurora database
According to the news in the early summer, the national Aurora funding database will be closed due to a considerable decline of the financing, most importantly by the ending of funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture. According to the Aurora website, the contents of the database should only have been available until to the end of August and no new information have been added after June. However, the database seems still to be available at http://www.aurora-tietokanta.fi/ so if you haven’t yet picked up the relevant information for you and your research, please do it asap!
The national Aurora database has included funding organisations for sciences, arts and culture for both project funding and personal grants. The database included Finnish and foreign funding opportunities, available for Finns or those residing in Finland. The database have listed some 800 funding organisations. The Aurora database has been open to everyone, free of charge. The system was maintained by the Council of Finnish Foundations association (SRNK) and the database contents were produced by the University of Turku.
Publication of the FinEd course tray will be delayed
In the annual seminar of the FinEd in May, preliminary plans of the common education tray of the FinEd network were presented. The coordinator has been in contact with the member units of the network but unfortunately the course tray has not become comprehensive and detailed enough for publication for this autumn season. However, the work with the course tray will continue.
The next FinEd Newsletter will be published during the late autumn. If you have something that you wish to be communicated to the FinEd members, please contact the coordinator.