| The
following section on the Vocational Education and Training Network (VETNET)
starts out from an analysis of participation in the annual European Conference
on Educational Research (ECER). As already indicated (figure
1), VETNET has no formal membership. The network is associated with
those persons who have contributed to the VETNET programme arranged by
its Board for ECER each year.
In
this analysis, the participants in all the ECER/ VETNET events between
1998 and 2003 are considered ( the data for 1998 to 2001 refer to the authors
in the proceedings, while the data for 2002 and 2003 include all contributors
to the programme). This calculation results in an aggregated number of
262 persons who have participated in one or more ECER/ VETNET events for
the last six years.
Since
the annual ECER/ VETNET programme provides a framework of contact, two
effects may be relevant: on the one hand, the involvement of new researchers
(as a process of revitalising) every year; on the other hand, the reappearance
of researchers (leading to intensified relations within the network). The
evidence given in the above figure points in both of these directions:
a large proportion of participants have turned up only once, while about
a quarter of researchers have participated at least twice. The latter group
of frequent participants may be regarded as the core group of the network,
at least for the purpose of this analysis. |
