I
have had a great opportunity to participate in two conferences in Chicago in
period between April 13 and April 20 of 2015.
The
first, AAACS 2015 (American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum
Studies) conference took place in Loyola University of Chicago. It was very
nice and good organized one about curriculum studies. Many researchers from the
different parts of the world came to participate and present their papers. It
was very interesting to see the diversity of the themes of the researches.
People were so passionate about their research. It was obvious because they
have prepared very good presentations. University educators, PhD students, and
Graduate students were involved in this conference. During four days I was
attending on panel discussions, individual presentations and etc. The listeners
were able to ask questions so the presenters were open for any suggestions and
comments. Many people started to be interested in Kazakhstani education,
because they realized that it is free for school children and government
allocates money for university students to win a grand. However, the most
countries do not provide such opportunity for their students. Every evening
networking hour was organized by Graduate students association in order to
connect employees and potential job-seekers.
The
second large conference AERA 2015 (American Education Research Association) was
organized in Chicago between April 16 and April 20. More than 4000 people
attended on this conference. Young scholars came from the Canada, Spain,
Finland, different states of the US and etc. AERA conference was divided into
sections in four hotels. Panel discussions, table discussions, presentations of
the different educational associations were presented during section works. It was
interesting to see various ways of presenting: for example, the most interesting
was roundtable discussions, when researchers presented their papers and started
to discuss and analyze them together. Sometime people could get very useful
feedback and comments about the research.
These
conferences are the basement for the further researches and good start for
young scholars who are looking for a job or just experiencing themselves.
Thanks for sharing your experience with us! It is great to hear that people are open for any discussions and try to find the solutions of the problems. I personally believe that exchange of ideas and sharing of experiences help to understand better current situation in education over the world. It would be great to implement such conferences in Kazakhstan. As I know most conferences are more likely to be lectures without table discussions and exchange of opinions on the topic. Certainly, participants can ask some questions, but I do not think that it is enough. When you have opportunity to discuss some issues in small groups it is more efficient than in big groups. We need these kinds of conferences to demonstrate that people are also interested and appreciate what young researchers think about particular issue. The big issue of Kazakhstani education is that we have educators, but not researchers. We should think how we could inspire young people to conduct research and to researcher. Therefore, such conferences which Dalmira visited must be implemented in Kazakhstan.
ReplyDeleteDalmira, thanking you too for informing us (those did not yet go to such conferences). It looks super interesting and fascinating! We need to embrace such opportunities while we can. :)
ReplyDelete• How lucky you are, Dalmira! Thanks for up-dating with the latest information about daily routine of Chicago and your adventures. I have never been to English-speaking country (yet) and never felt that atmosphere you felt. I guess you enjoyed your travelling, gained colossal expertise in taking part in international conferences and forged relationships with them. Moreover I hope that you retrieved some important moments to your future research. And who knows maybe you will return to Chicago again!
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