National Association of Research in Science Teaching, NARST, conference in Vancouver 2004 |
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NARST conference, April 1st -4th, 2004 |
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| Per-Olof Wickman, professor in Science Education at the Institute of Education in Stockholm had had a paper accepted at this conference. Three graduate students, Britt Jakobsson, Iann Lundegård and me had the opportunity to accompany him. | |
The NARST yearly conference
has a long and dignified tradition. If ypu want to be established in
Science Education in USA you ought to have presented a paper at this
conference. This might have been the reason why our professor wanted
to to do his lecture there.
Anyway it was lucky for his
students, who had the opportunity to accompany him. to watch how the
conference worked.We arrived in Vancouver in the afternoon and we had one extra day to arrive, adjust to the jetlag and to see the city, before the conference started. During this day we walked through the very beautiful city - we saw it from its best side and were fascinated by how beautiful scyscrapers can be! The conference was on from thursday to saturday. Of cource our expectations were enormous. The first day we were actually rather disappointed. As the day was passing we thought we were listening to the same lecture over and over again. In USA the pendulum has swiched from qualitative methods of research back to quantitative. The grantgiving authorities demand that you do evidence-based research. This led to that the papers we listened to this day seemed to be moulded in the same template. Pretest and post-test investigations were being done and some statistics were calculated, it wasn't very stimulating.  We were rather unhappy having dinner the first evening. Luckily it became much better the following morning. That day we started by listening to a seminar about narratives. The people talking about this subject were friends of me from last year in Winnipeg. Day two of the conference was much more rewarding than the first day. Our professor was giving his lecture this day and his students listened eagerly and tried to be a moral support. It became a good seminar with an interested audiencec. We were proud over our professor. Saturday afternoon soon arrived and it was time for us to leave the conference. We were going to go by car to San Diego were the big AERA conference was being held between April 12th - 16th.  We had eight days and nights to
drive through three states, Washington state, Oregon and California.
The fantastic tour through the westcoast of USA was a
real adventure. The first state, Washington, was soon passed. Professor
Wickman and I had already visited Seattle at an AERA conference in 2001
and we found it more interesting to spend time in Oregon and California.
After change of cars at Tacoma Airport we went to the coast of Oregon
where we followed Highway 101 and saw fantastic sceneries and many
exciting animals. We saw seals and sea lions, eventually, in California,
we also saw sea elephants and whales, and birds, squirrels and other
landliving animals. We walked along the beaches and I took a lot of
photos, of course of the animals, but also of the flowers.
After Oregon, with sand dunes and
beautiful sceneries we went to Redwood in California and saw giant trees.
We went on to Napa Valley, where we tasted wine and saw a geysir. After
that it was time to go to San Fransisco's Fisherman's Wharf and the Monterey
of Steinbeck from where we went whale watching.After that we should drive the famous coastal Highway 1 between San Fransisco and Los Angeles and of course enjoy the views. It turned out that we had to be grateful for all the beautiful views we had seen in Oregon. The weather was lousy, it was foggy and we didn't see a thing. All the motels we were passing were occupied so it was rather dramatic when darkness fell and we wondered if we should have somewhere to sleep. Finally we had the last room at a place where we could have dinner at Whale Watcher's Cafe, which felt very suitable. I have collected photos from Vancouver in a picture show you can see if you click in the link below. Theres is also a picture show about our tour along the coast, Added are some links to places awe visited along the coast. |
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Vancouver 2004 (pdf) The westcoast of USA 2004 (pdf) Panorama pictures from Ecola State Park Lots of photos from Bandon, Oregon Lodging in Redwood Fetzer vineyards, Hopland Robert Mondavi Winery Gorda springs, Highway 1 Sea elephants at Piedras Blancas Listen to banjo 1 Listen to banjo 2 |
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