Newsletter Spring 2009 - Earli

Newsletter from EARLI SIG 13 Moral and Democratic Education – Issue # 3EARLI 2009 CONFERENCEIn order to give you a detailed and broadpicture, we wanted to publish as many extendedsummaries as possible. However,since the authors wrote the extended summariesexclusively for review purposes, wehave asked for special permissions to publishthese texts in the newsletter as well.This means that you will find most, but notall, extended summaries in this issue. Incase the first author has not provided suchan explicit permission, you will only haveaccess to the abstract in the newsletter.Jean-Luc Party has organized and willchair the invited symposium, entitled TheRelationship Between Teaching SubjectMatter and Values Education (Table 1).Four papers will be presented, and DimitrisPnevmatikos will be discussant. The contributionswithin the invited symposium focusthe relationship between teaching varioustypes of subject matter and aspects ofmoral and democratic education. Please goto page 27 to 37 for more information.Fritz Oser and Wiel Veugelers organisedone of the regular SIG 13 symposia. Thetitle of the symposium is Two Heads onOne Body: On the Difficult Relationshipbetween the Political and the Moral (Table1), and it will be chaired by Horst Biedermann.The relationship between moral judgementsand political thinking constitutesthe centre of attention in this symposium.In the abstract it is claimed that teacherscan realize moral education without politicalcontent. It is also argued that – sometimes– it is possible to have political educationwithout moral issues. The symposiumincludes four contributions, which will bediscussed by Klaus Beck. Further informationis given at page 40 to 51.The other regular SIG 13 symposium isentitled Moral Motivation in Real Situations– On the Way to a Concept in a Post-Kohlbergian Era? (Table 1). The symposiumis organised by Karin Heinrichs and GerhardMinnameier. Karin Heinrichs will also serveas chair, and Fritz Oser will be discussant.Moral motivation and moral behaviour appearto stand in centre of this symposium.The four contributions also relate to the traditionsof Kohlberg and Rest. You will findmore information at page 52 to 63.At the previous biannual EARLI conferencein Budapest (2007), SIG 13 organizedthree symposia – one invited symposiumand two regular symposia. At the businessmeeting in Budapest we agreed upon theambition to try to organize an additionalsymposium at the conference in Amsterdam(see the minutes from the business meetingthat was published in SIG 13 Newsletter issue1). We were obviously not successful infulfilling such ambitions. However, we tried,but the rest of the submitted symposiaproposals were rejected by the conference.According to the information to the SIG coordinatorsfrom the conference organizer,40% of the submitted SIG 13 symposia wereaccepted for presentation. This percentageprobably equals the two regular symposia,since the invited symposium never wassubject to the regular review process. Consequently,it appears as if 60%, or three proposedSIG 13 symposia, were rejected in thereview process (see also Ups and Downs inthe Review Process in this issue).There will of course also be a large portionof individual presentations at the conference.According to information given bythe conference organizer, 1,057 individualpresentations are accepted. A minor portionof these is related to SIG 13. In Table 2(see page 20) you will find title and presenteron all accepted SIG 13 linked individualpresentations. So far, we have identified 24individual contributions written by SIG 13members, or in other ways related to moraland democratic education. The intention isto present further information on these contributionsin the next special conference issueof the newsletter, which is planned to belaunched prior to the conference in August.The newsletter’s editor will soon contactthe presenters of accepted individual contributions.Anna M. Tapola19