Welcome Message

Mona Holmqvist Olander150x225The World Association of Lesson Studies (WALS) will host its 9th Annual International Conference at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden from September 6-9, 2013. This is the first time the conference will be held outside Asia. It is a great honour to invite delegates from Asia as well as other parts of the world to Europe. Our aim is to bring together teachers and researchers from all over the world to share their knowledge and experience of practice-based research on Lesson and Learning Study in the classroom.

WALS was founded at the Hong Kong Institute of Education by Lo Mun Ling, who at the time was working closely with Professor Emeritus Ference Marton, a visiting professor at Hong Kong University. Thanks to the fact that Ference Marton has been working at the University of Gothenburg since the 1970s, Gothenburg has become the centre for Lesson and Learning Study research. From the very beginning, the University of Gothenburg has collaborated closely with researchers in Asia.

The concept "Lesson and Learning Study" has become increasingly familiar in Europe in recent years. The 2013 conference gives teachers and researchers an excellent opportunity to discuss common issues relating to teaching and learning across cultural boundaries. Teachers and researchers in the Lesson and Learning Study field have acquired considerable experience since Lesson and Learning Study was initiated many decades ago. They have also broadened their interest to include other kinds of lesson and learning studies that have been conducted in various European countries such as Sweden, Great Britain and Germany, to mention but a few.

We cordially invite researchers and practitioners working in the school environment and from different parts of the world to join us for the WALS 2013 conference. As this is the first time the conference will be conducted in Europe, we very much hope that participants from Asia will attend and present their work. We also welcome researchers from other parts of the world who are willing to share their interpretation of Lesson and Learning Study and how the field is understood in their own particular cultural context.

We are proud to announce that Professor Xiangming Chen, Professor John Elliott, Professor Ingrid Pramling-Samuelsson, Professor Ference Marton and Professor Ulla Runesson have been invited as keynote speakers.

We hope you will also find our plenary sessions interesting as they are collaboratively organised by researchers, teacher educators and school leaders drawn from the Lesson and Learning Study field. The sessions will focus on topics of relevance for learning at school but also cover such areas as special education, pre-school, large-scale educational development as well as Lesson and Learning study as model for national school development. There will also be opportunities to visit Swedish schools during the final day of the conference.

It is our sincere hope that you will join us at the WALS 2013 conference. We bid you a warm welcome to Gothenburg and to Sweden.

Associate Professor Mona Holmqvist Olander, Chairperson
WALS 2013 Organizing Committee
University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Last Updated on Sunday, 20 January 2013 20:48