2010 at the University of Giessen, Germany

The first meeting of the Network for Research on Out-of-School Time and Extracurricular Educational Research (NEO ER) took place at the University of Giessen, Germany, in November 2010. It was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research.

This kick-off conference entitled Extended Education: An International Perspective was the first meeting ofthe network members who are all experts in the field of extracurricular and out-of-school time educational research in their countries. For three days, they discussed public education programmes outside the regular classroom teaching, corresponding national research projects, and central findings with regard to the effectiveness of state run programmes in the various countries. The participants came from Germany (among others Ingrid Gogolin and Eckhard Klieme), South Korea (Sang Hoon Bae), Japan (Yoshiaki Yanagisawa), the United States (Joseph Mahoney and Denise Huang), Switzerland (Marianne Schüpbach), the Netherlands (Manuela du Bois-Reymond), Sweden (Björn Haglund), and Great Britain (Alan Dyson).

Necessity of international comparative research

Above all, the conference showed very clearly that there are many similar research problems and questions researchers have to deal with, irrespective of doing research on after-school programmes in the US, all-day schools in Germany or on school-age educare centres in Sweden. On the other hand, the discussion showed that there was nearly no international comparative research on this field of education. A surprising fact considering that in all participating countries the experts reported a rapid expansion of this educational sector, not only regarding state run programmes but as well regarding private providers. At the end of the conference, all participants were convinced that more international research cooperation and collaboration is needed.

Conference Volume

A conference volume containing most of the papers presented at the 1^st meeting in Giessen was published in 2013 by Jutta Ecarius, Eckhard Klieme, Ludwig Stecher, and Jessica Woods. The volume “Extended Education – an International Perspective” (publisher Barbara Budrich, Opladen, Farmington Hills, MI) is of the first publications dealing with extended education from an international perspective.

Ecarius, J., Klieme, E., Stecher, L., & Woods, J. (Eds.) (2013). Extended education: An Internation­al Perspective, Proceedings of the International Conference on Extracurricular and Out-of-School Time Education Research, Opladen: Barbara Budrich.