General
DPR History
About the DPR conference
The DPR conference is an annual event now in its 10th year. The conference is a site for the radical critique of discourse, power and resistance within and beyond the discipline of education, looking at concerns which are currently troubling learners, teachers and researchers engaged at all stages from pre-school to postgraduate. The conference looks more widely at the impact on education of powerful interests in and behind the policy-making apparatus as they exert their influence to reshape the goals and ethos of learning, teaching and research. DPR transgresses inter-disciplinary boundaries, attracting scholars from across the humanities and social sciences. A continuing concern of the conference is the contested issue of research methodology and the related issues of the problem of knowledge.
The conference has an international reputation, drawing delegates from a wide range of the developed and developing nations and attracting world-class keynote speakers. DPR has a substantial list of successful publications. The DPR journal, Power and Education, was launched in 2009.
The first conference was held in 2002 in the University of Plymouth and was hosted there for its first four years by the Faculty of Education. In 2006 the conference moved to Manchester Metropolitan University where it was hosted for the next four years by the Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI). The conference moved to the University of Greenwich in 2009 and was hosted there in 2010 by the School of Education and Training. For 2011 the conference returns to Plymouth where it is sponsored by the School of Secondary and Further Education.