ISCAR/AARE Australasian symposium, Melbourne, Australia, 2nd and 3rd December 2016

AARE/ISCAR symposium 2^nd and 3^rd December 2016

Venue: ACU University, Melbourne

Free participation was enabled by sponsorship from AARE Melbourne conference.

The AARE/ ISCAR/IRECE Symposium bought experienced researchers, research students and early career researchers together for targeted presentations and workshops to develop our presentations and symposium proposals for ISCAR 2017 Congress in Canada, journal articles and book chapters and to build research alliances between Sociocultural and Activity Researchers.

25 participants from 6 countries worked in themed working groups and in some cases started to develop their own manuscripts for presentation at conferences and publication. Feedback from experienced and ECR supported this development.

Keynotes were geared to supporting theoretical and practical aspects of presenting and publishing your work: how and where to publish for Sociocultural and Activity Researchers, and early career researchers in particular, including a themed book series with Springer Publishers and reaching International Cultural and Activity Research audiences. Prof Marilyn Fleer examined play and child development as a collective problem in how ipad’s created new cultural contexts. She introduced us to documenting investigative play, new imaginations and metacognitive language associated with ipad technologies. Prof Alex Kostogriz, Head of Education at ACU, provided a preliminary survey talk ‘researching the everyday’ in teacher education. He put a challenge to the prosaic of everyday language in professional teacher learning in relation to literacy and tensions between the ‘everyday’ and the expectations of an increasingly commodified and dehumanised schooling system.

Workshops supporting writing and journal projects were well received. Professor Peter Renshaw and Associate Professor Nikolay Veresov presented a lively and informative publishing workshop. This was valued by experienced as well as emerging researchers to show the importance of planning and thinking ahead.

Ongoing support for each themed element of the collaboration is being supported by an online interactive website space created using SLACK and funds from AARE.

Outcomes include

1. Five submissions of abstracts to ISCAR 2017 Congress – 4 for main congress, and 1 for PhD Day pre-congress day.
2. One book proposal for Springer Publisher is developed.
3. PhD group is created for those PhD students who are interested in sociocultural/cultural-historical theoretical framework. At the symposium, the PhD students realised that many of them had supervisors at their various institutions that did not have expertise in cultural historical activity theory. Many of these students expressed immense gratitude for the opportunity the symposium provided to meet other scholars using CHAT and the reported feeling that they had found their ‘home’. These students have arranged to keep in touch to read each other’s’ draft chapters.
4. One book proposal on the symposium in a process of preparation
5. One special issue of journal is in preparation. A proposal for a special issue to AER was planned at the symposium. Call for expression of interest will be circulated to the AARE SIG membership. Internal peer review of submissions will be conducted via the Slack platform. The special issue will be an outcome of the symposium on the 5 year anniversary of the first special issue in AER by SIG membership. (John/Jenny/Gwen). March
6. One themed special issue possible intercultural and transnational education – end of 2017. Gwen

We are most grateful for the support of AARE in providing some funding for this event, ACU for providing the Venue and the presenters who shared their projects and ideas.

Gwen Gilmore

Nikolai Veresov