A proposal for two linked symposium sessions submitted to the European Educational Research Association (ECER) 2014 conference on: The Past, the Present and Future of Educational Research in Europe has been accepted. The successful proposal on Elite and private education - European perspectives was led by Dr. Joan Forbes, Reader in Education at the University of Aberdeen, with Dr. Claire Maxwell, Institute of Education, University of London, and Professor Agnès van Zanten, Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris.
The symposia at ECER 2014 will bring together a set of papers from colleagues currently exploring broader questions surrounding private and elite education in different European countries. The papers have been chosen to examine elite education in a range of European polities and applying different theoretical orientations.
The first symposium on Elite education: historical and contemporary perspectives within different European countries takes an individual country focus – examining the elite education systems in Scotland, Germany, France and England. Symposium two on Elite education - taking a comparative perspective – implications for education systems across Europe will consider how we can undertake comparative analyses of elite education systems across Europe as well as pan-European developments around the education of elites. Colleagues from a wide number of countries and institutions across Europe and from Australia will participate in the symposia as paper presenters, chairs and discussants.
The ECER symposia proposal is the most recent initiative from the Scottish Independent Schools Project (SISP). The project was part of the Scottish Funding Council supported Applied Educational Research Scheme (AERS), Schools and Social Capital Network. AERS Fellowships awards were supported by the University of Aberdeen. Funding for the SISP project also came for the Godfrey Thomson Trust, University of Edinburgh.
Designed to investigate educational and social advantage and disadvantage and applying innovative research methodologies, the successful proposal to ECER 2014 on Elite and private education – European perspectives contributes to the School of Education research themes on Social and Educational Inclusion and to the related School of Education THEORY SPACE agenda ( The Theory Space).