Thursday 22 October 2009

Presentations from the Finland 'European Conductive Education' conference


In May Susie posted a blog about a ‘European’ Conductive Education conference in Helsinki, Finland happening in October this year.

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/05/revealing-soul-and-magic-will-simply.html

This took place on 19 October at Ruskeasuo School in Helsinki from 9am-4pm with an hour break for lunch. I cannot find information on who organised the conference and assume it was Ruskeasuo School which I believe has been 'applying the principles of Conductive Education' for some time now.

There were parallel presentations in two halls, six in each and two plenary speakers. Franz Schaffhauser, director of the Peto Institute, started the morning programme with Ideas and Methods in Conductive Education and Logotherapy and Melanie Brown the afternoon sessions with Conductive Education an unchanging philosophy and changing methodology.

Nineteen people presented, six of whom were conductors. Three from the National Institute in Birmigham, England, one from the Norsk Forum for Konduktiv Pedagogikk, Norway and two from Joriel School, Stockholm, Sweden.

All presentations (except Franz Schaffhauser’s) are available in their Powerpoint formats at

http://www.ruskis.fi/innovation_in_conductive_education-educational_equality_presentations.html

It seems to be the trend at the moment to talk to Powerpoint and consequently the presentation is not written down for publication in proceedings or to give interested parties. As a result there is no written record for those who could not make the conference to read, or to archive in libraries for future reference. Perhaps this conference will be different. There is no mention either of a report on the conference to follow, but again perhaps that will come later.

Susie made the point in her blog that finance can play a big part in whether conductors can attend such gatherings or not.

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/05/when-it-comes-to-crunch.html

It would be interesting to know how many managed to get to this one.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gill,
Many thanks for this. Useful to see the current discourse of CE conferences.
You raised the issue of having a trend of not dissseminating conference proceedings. I am afraid it is not a generic trend. In academia anybody who is sponsored to present a paper at a conference is expected to turn it into an article or published paper.
Hard to see how dissemination can take place otherwise. PowerPoint slides offer some insights into the thoughts of the presenter, but I doubt how much use is for those who actually have not been at the presentation.
This just leads us back to the question which we discussed many times on 'Conductive World'. The issue of writing and publishing.
The RACE journal was an ideal and 'safe' environment to do this and it is a shame there was not enough interest to keep it going.
Tunde

Gillian Maguire said...

Thanks for this, Tunde. I agree with your comments and hope that Conductive Education presentations will eventually become available in the way you mention.