From 21 to 24 October 2021, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign successfully hosted the annual Global Education Symposium online. After early organization and coordination, nine students for Master Degree or PhD in the Department of Education, including 4 overseas students (The International MA/PhD Program in Education Policy and School Reform), participated in the symposium. Also, several other graduate students sat in on the symposium for a good opportunity to learn and explore. The information for the students' papers is as follows.
Author | Title of Report |
YU Jinshen & DAI Yifan | Future Education from the Perspective of Ecological Justice ——Interpretation of UNESCO’s 2050 Education Declaration: Learning to Integrate into the World Report |
LI Huihui | Educating Women Outside the Family: The Formation of the “Regulations for Women’s School” from the Qing Government in 1907 |
WANG Juan | The Influence of Social Emotional Learning Curriculum to Pre-school Teachers’ Practice |
SHAO Jingyue | What is behind the Class Cadres : The Formation of Power Distinction from the Perspective of Bourdieu's Social Practice |
David Kyei-Nuamah | The Power of Norms and Knowledge: A Study on the Association of African Universities’ Professional Governance towards African Universities in the Perspective of Discursive Institutionalism |
Dilshani Kariyawasam | Teacher Motivation in Online Education: A Study of Sri Lankan Public School System |
Ekaterina Mishustina | The New Double Reduction Policy: Will It Be More Successful This Time? |
Caroline Ibrahim Msaki | Impact of Global Citizenship Education: A Study of Tanzanian Secondary Education System |
After the symposium, a few students shared their experiences and reflections, as well as their suggestions on organizing and participating in such symposiums under the new situation.
Student: LI Huihui
Thank you very much for the hard work of the organizers and giving me an opportunity to share some of my ideas with researchers around the world. This is the first time that I have discussed a topic on the history of Chinese education at an international conference. How to put a century-old Chinese historical event into a global and contemporary context and present and interpret it in a reasonable and meaningful way is the biggest challenge for me. To this end, I tried to open my eyes and connect the establishment of public girls' schools in the late Qing Dynasty with the feminist movement around the world in the 19th century, and even connect this historical event with my expectations for women's education today and in the future. Through these efforts and attempts, I think I have learned a very useful lesson, that is, when studying the history of Chinese education, we should not be too isolated, but should try our best to connect the past and the present, and to explore local practice under the global context, so as to increase the depth and significance of the research.
Student: SHAO Jingyue
I am very grateful to have this opportunity to share my research on class cadres in primary schools with researchers around the world and learn from them. Through the symposium, I further reflected on my own research. For example, when conducting qualitative research, a researcher should consider his own identity and other characteristics and reflect on his own position, because all of these will have an impact on research result. In addition, as a researcher, I should pay attention to part of the research samples that are easily neglected. Also, I can't simply settle for what seems to be the same as my hypothesis. Instead, I should endeavor to explore the possible reasons behind this in the following explorations.
Student：Dilshani Kariyawasam
I feel this is one of the best opportunities I received to conduct and present my research. I understood the expectations of an international-level symposium. I was also able to learn from other researchers and contribute to the process of knowledge sharing at a global level. It was also a great opportunity to expand my network. Taking part in such global symposiums and conferences is one of the best benefits one can obtain by studying at East China Normal University.
Student：Ekaterina Mishustina
This October 2021 I had a chance to take part in the Global Education Symposium, hosted by Illinois College of Education. It covered a range of subtopics like resilience in schools, preparing students for a changing environment, citizenship in a global era, historical depth and context, and best practices in global education. It was a great experience to e-meet many of the education researchers across the globe, listen to their diverse presentations and learn some specifics of education from their backgrounds, as well as have a chance to work through abstract to presentation myself in a fast pace.
Student：David Kyei-Nuamah
In this conference, I had the opportunity to scrutinize other people’s work and invited to pose technical questions to help shape and contribute to the fellow’s works. In this way, participants are supposed to be apt in having grounded and general knowledge about each presenter’s topic to be able to contribute significantly. What I sought to do was that, I grasp the central idea, find lacuna’s and seek clarification of the presented ideas. It also gave me the opportunity read wide on the topics when the final outline was published, in order to fit in the conference discussions. In all, I was educated and exposed to cluster of research methods and how ideas are presented with different philosophies through diverse perspectives.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, organizer of this Global Education Symposium, is a leading public research University in the United States. Since 2018, under the guidance and support of the Faculty of Education, our department has established an exchange and cooperation relationship with the School of Education of the university. Both sides have sent teachers and students to participate in the International Academic Week, an activity organized in turn. In the future, the two sides will continue and deepen exchanges and cooperation.
