National Network for Educational Renewal Conference 2009

The National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER) Annual Conference will be held October 15-17, 2009 at the Hyatt Hotel in Bellevue, Wash. Register here.

The NNER is a network of 26 university-school partnerships with the shared goal of implementing the agenda for improving schooling in a democratic society.

Founded in 1985 by John Goodlad and his associates, the NNER has four major goals for schooling in a democracy. These include assuring high quality educational outcomes for all students including issues of equity, preparing the next generation of democratic citizens, using a nurturing pedagogy, and being stewards of the public schools. This agenda is to be realized by a close collaborative partnership between colleges of arts and sciences, colleges of education, the public schools they serve, and the surrounding communities of these public schools. The principal technique used is that of renewal, where the partners engage in ongoing inquiry as to their work (their goals and achievements) and make changes in their work based on this mutual inquiry.

This extraordinary work is based on the life-long research of John Goodlad and his colleagues as to the purpose of schooling in a democratic society, the daily work of schools, colleges of education, colleges of arts and sciences, the gap between the goals of schooling and the current outcomes, and the philosophy of inquiry and change as proposed by John Dewey.

The NNER meets at the annual conference to share success and ongoing concerns, gain insights to their work, renew the personal bonds among its various members, and offer their work to the wider public.

Ten years ago (1999) a major national conference was held in Seattle in connection with the NNER annual conference entitled “In Praise of Education” at which time John Goodlad assembled major leaders in the filed of education from throughout the United States to both celebrate public schooling and to call for a more active and aggressive approach to renewing American public schooling.

This year’s NNER conference, while not as large as the 1999 conference, is being used as a time to revisit the vision and mandate of the earlier conference. In that light, many of the key presenters at the 1999 conference (John Goodlad, Deborah Meier, Hank Levin, Carl Glickman, Nel Noddings, Pat Wasley, and James Comer) will be speaking a the conference. The conference will open with reflections on the past ten years of schooling in America by four of the five educational leaders highlighted in the book Five Who Dared (John Goodlad, Hank Levin, Deborah Meier, James Comer).