News & Views

The SCiP Alliance was represented at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER).  ECER's aim is to create an inclusive platform for initiating, reporting, discussing and promoting high quality educational research, that not only acknowledges its own context but also recognises wider, transnational contexts with their social, cultural and political similarities and differences.

Michael Hall, SCiP Alliance Research Development Officer, gave a paper entitled “Rethinking inclusion in higher education: the case of children from military service families”.  The paper, co-authored with principal investigator Dr Judith McCullouch, argued that the case of Service children showed the limits of group-based conceptions of inclusion that rely on discourses of academic and economic disadvantage.  It called for closer attention to the complexity and distinctiveness of the lived experiences of Service children in the formation of policy and practice in fostering inclusion in higher education.  It also highlighted SCiP’s successes in securing recognition of Service children by the Office for Students.

The conference, which this year was themed around questions of inclusion and exclusion in education, was attended by over 2,500 delegates from around the world.  Papers were delivered in a range of small group sessions themed around various aspects of educational research.  This year’s conference took place in Bolzano in the South Tyrol region of northern Italy.