I attended the NAAEE research symposium this week (9th to 10th October). \u00a0It's years since I've been and I was happy to be there by virtue of the internet. \u00a0It cost me $100 which is a bargain compared to conventional attendance when I'm not paying for flights, other transport, \u00a0hotels, food, coffee, and beer. \u00a0But just think of all that money not being tipped into the international and local economies many times over.<\/p>\n
Of course, it wasn't the same as being there. \u00a0The coffee was likely better for one thing, and when things got tedious, I opted out while keeping the computer running. \u00a0And I could hide my body language when a session got under my skin. \u00a0Being there and not being there; as ever, Schr\u00f6dinger's cat lives and dies. \u00a0I missed some people though. \u00a0That's perhaps the main reason why face-to-face events such as these will only fade very slowly, if they fade at all.<\/p>\n
The event had a lot of young researchers there which is glorious; mind you, almost everybody's younger than me these days. \u00a0I do recall when it was the other way round, but too much talk like that risks self-indulgent nostalgia for the good old days. \u00a0In terms of research, they might be old days, but they were not as good as now; too much methodological certainty for one thing. \u00a0Too many old men of a certain ethnicity ruling the roost. \u00a0The whole programme suggested that women outnumbered men by a long way in the meeting which is how I recall it from the last time I went; this time, though there seems to be more evidence of their being in promoted posts. \u00a0I'm hope I'm right about that.<\/p>\n
Inevitably the experience was mixed: from the stimulating to the self-indulgent. \u00a0Some inputs seemed to have little connection to research. \u00a0The nadir was surely the bloke who was looking forward to the overthrow of global capitalism \u2013 but not presumably not before his pension was paid. \u00a0He had little to say about how to get from where we are (BOO!) to where he wanted us to be \u2013 somewhere, it seems with all Cuba's centrally planned positives without any of the repression. \u00a0Good luck with that, then. \u00a0What any of this brain dump had to do with research left me bewildered. \u00a0The moderators loved it though.<\/p>\n
The standout highlight for me was the joint presentation by Martha Munroe and Marcia McKenzie who spoke about\u00a0Mobilizing Climate Change Education Research to Inform Policy and Practice. <\/em>\u00a0It was so good to hear two researchers on the top of their game, and what they\u00a0talked about could hardly be more important and it was good to be reminded of what research is telling us.<\/p>\n I missed the discussion that followed (I\u2019d already broken my no-computers after 8 rule) but look forward to catching up when the recordings are made available. \u00a0So, was it worth $100? \u00a0Well, in truth I paid the $100 in part to support NAAEE, so it was always going to be well spent. \u00a0And the technology, I hear you ask; how well did it work? \u00a0Well, for me, it was perfect, so well done NAAEE. \u00a0Now I've got the conference itself to look forward to. \u00a0More, anon, on that.<\/p>\n I attended the NAAEE research symposium this week (9th to 10th October). \u00a0It's years since I've been and I was happy to be there by virtue of the internet. \u00a0It cost me $100 which is a bargain compared to conventional...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}