Call for submissions for 2015 CIES conference

Call for proposals

The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) seeks submissions for its 59th Annual Conference, taking place from March 8-13, 2015 at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.  The 2015 CIES Planning Committee welcomes quality paper, panel, poster and workshop proposals relating to the conference theme. Proposals not directly related to this conference theme but addressing issues of relevance to comparative and international education may also be submitted for consideration.

Ubuntu! Imagining a Humanist Education Globally is the theme of the 59th CIES conference.  The substance of collective ethos captured in Ubuntu is shared across the African continent and beyond.  The specific term was popularized by various authors including the novelist, scholar, and journalist Jordan Kush Ngubane in the 1950s and more recently by public figures such as Nelson Mandela articulating a society and world of inclusiveness and equality.

This conference theme explores an imagined future where education is a moral enterprise that develops and shapes minds to embrace humanism that is separable from socio-economic equality, which defines the world as a complex whole, an interconnected and interdependent ecosystem of diverse humans, nature and the planet.  This vision of humanist education is in harmony with Ubuntu, which inspires a multiplicity of worldviews, indigenous epistemologies and ideological schools of thought in a world that is inclusive while fostering autonomy and humanity.  It is conceived to guide academics, policymakers and practitioners and learners in different locations.

While education has been an instrument for reproducing certain inequalities as it may not encourage and enable people to struggle for social transformation, even carefully designed colonial education that was intended to subordinate colonized peoples in different parts of the world produced critical thinkers and activists who questioned and helped to topple formal colonial domination.  More broadly, we should be able to imagine education that is designed to promote values of mutually beneficial cooperation whereby even competition would mean striving toward achieving the greater good to enhance our shared humanity.

To imagine an education fostering a future that reflects Ubuntu is to engage in a process of deconstruction of the prevailing modernist epistemologies that tend to separate the heart and mind.  The re-imagined vision of education will be the regenerative space for positive social change.  The 2015 conference offers an opportunity to reflect on and contribute to the exciting possibilities of an Ubuntu-inspired education, embodying a philosophical, pedagogical and curricula framework that is emancipatory, cultured, transformative, localized and empowering for all humanity and the globe.

As a professional society on education in its comparative and international dimensions CIES invites all participants including educators in general with a special call to researchers, policymakers, practitioners, representatives of international organizations, local and global non-governmental organizations and members of civil society to share their insights and experiences and offer forward-looking collective deliberations.

We also urge participants to contribute to tackling theoretical, empirical, and practical questions in the critical examination of existing systems of learning and testing at the local and global levels, the limits as well as the possibilities of established quantitative and qualitative methods with careful consideration of indigenous epistemologies. Let Washington, D.C. in 2015 become the site where we reflect and rededicate ourselves to the search for new directions in education by engaging Ubuntu-inspired education for humanity across the world.

Submission Guidelines

The purpose of the CIES Conference is to encourage dialogue and discussion, promote and disseminate high quality research in the comparative education field and provide an opportunity to share and analyze “best” practices and models in applied educational settings. To achieve this goal, we encourage proposals that are theoretically oriented, based on evidence, and discuss old or new inquiries and initiatives in comparative and international education.

Submission Categories

Proposals can be submitted in the following categories:

  • Individual papers
  • Individual posters
  • Group poster sessions
  • Group panel sessions
  • Workshops

All proposals should contribute to the advancement of theory, practice, methodology or fieldwork in comparative and international education.

For more information about each proposal format, visit www.cies2015.org  and click on the 2015 conference link.

Submission Deadlines

The submission system opens on June 30, 2014, and closes on December 1, 2014 at 11:59pm US Pacific Time. No late submissions will be accepted.

The early bird deadline is October 6, 2014. The final deadline for all submitted proposals is December 1, 2014.  Proposals should be electronically submitted through the CIES online submission system (http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/cies/cies15/), and comply with the requirements detailed in the guidelines below. Proposals that do not comply with these requirements will not be considered for inclusion in the program.

Decisions regarding proposals submitted will be communicated by email.

 
 

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