BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY

INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE EDUCATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE

International and Comparative Education Research Institute ( ICERI, formerly Research Institute of Foreign Education ) was established in 1965.It is one of the comparative education research institutions with the longest history, the largest size and the greatest influence in China. It is one of the twelve key research institutes of humanities, social sciences or education supported by the State Ministry of Education. It gets national priority support to engage in comparative education studies.

The original stream of ICERI was Research Institute of Foreign Issues which was founded on the base of the formal Research Office of Foreign Education of the Education Department of Beijing Normal University and other offices in the light of the resolution from the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China, with the following branches under it: Research Office of Foreign Education, Research Office of the Soviet Union Literature, Research Office of the Soviet Union Philosophy, Research Office of the U.S.A. Economy and Translation Office of Foreign Education. In 1979, ICEIR was founded on the base of Research Office of Foreign Education when the departments and institutions were regulated in Beijing Normal University. In need of the adaptation of the developing circumstances in the world, it was renamed International and Comparative Education Research Institute in October of 1995.

In 1981, ICERI was defined among the first batch of institutions authorized to grant Master degrees in the field of comparative education in China by the Degrees Office under the State Council. In 1984, it was also defined among the second batch of institutions authorized to grant Doctor degrees in the same field. In 1986, together with the Education Department and the Education Administration College of Beijing Normal University, ICERI set the unit for the Doctor of Education Economy and Administration Degrees to engage in the research of education administrations. In 1988, ICERI was defined as one of the units for the subjects of state colleges and universities by the State Education Committee (the present State Ministry of Education ).The first director of ICERI was Pro. Xie Fangchun, and the 2nd, the 3rd,and the 4th were in turn Pro. Gu Mingyuan, Pro. Bi Shuzhi and Wang Yingjie. The 5th director, the present, is Pro. Qu Hengchang.

The fundamental purposes of ICERI are to carry out international and comparative education studies with Marxism as a guiding theory and the real situation of China and the whole world in mind, to explore the common rules and the international trends of educational development, and to serve the needs of the education reforms and the socialist modernization in China.

ICERI now enrolls the largest number of various graduate students both domestic and overseas in the field of international and comparative education, and provides facilities and helps to visiting scholars. ICERE has been developed into a educational scientific base , with the international and comparative education research as its key subject in its wide research fields, which has a faculty with good skills, whose numbers speak one or two or three of foreign languages, and which is made up of the following divisions:

Division of Higher Education
     Division of Primary and Secondary Education
     Division of Educational Theories
     Division of Educational Economics
     Division of Adult Education and Vocational and Technical Education
     Center of Educational Information
     Editorial Division of Comparative Education Review
     Library

ICERI is abundant in talents, materials and funds for research with its most rational echelon formation of professional scholars and its own characteristic traditions. Prof. Gu Mingyuan, its leading professor , a well known educator in the world, is vice-president of the National Association of Education, president of the National Comparative Education Society, council chairman of the World Association of Comparative Education Societies. The faculty led by Prof. Gu Mingyuan, Prof. Wang Yingjie, one of the excellent young representatives in national comparative education field and other senior members has formed its internal culture: spirit of initiative and innovation, unity and cooperation, diligence and rigor, and integration of theory with practice.

ICERI has actively developed the international culture exchange and cooperation. Up to now, it has established exchange programs with higher education or research institutions in the UK, the US, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Russia and Ukraine etc.. It has also developed academic exchanging relations of personals and information with international and government organizations, such as UNESO, UNICEF etc.. It sends its faculty members and doctoral students abroad and meanwhile invites foreign scholars for joint research projects or academic conferences.

ICERI owns its excellent facilities for scientific research. Its library has a collection of over ten thousand volumes of books in Chinese, over eight thousand volumes of books in foreign languages and more than three hundred varieties of periodicals in Chinese or foreign languages, subscribed throughout the world and backed up by the university main library. ICERI has one computer operation room and other equipment available for teaching and research. ICERI has considerably promoted scholarly research. In accordance with the need of constructions of socialist modernization and education reforms in China, it is plunged into wide studies and deep analysis of the issues respectively of international education, esp. postwar foreign educational polices and laws , educational theories, educational systems and structures, educational reforms and trends of its development in the world on which it has produced more than one hundred books and more than one thousand research papers. It has systematically studied the schools of educational thoughts, primary and secondary education, compulsory education, higher education, vocational and technical education, adult education, teacher education, graduate education and educational administration in developed and developing countries, on the base of which it produced the first series of books on comparative education. It has offer the State Ministry of Education and other government agencies many research reports counting altogether several million Chinese characters on educational reforms, normal education, educational inspection and guidance, educational evaluations, academic degrees and graduate education, providing good service of advice for national education policies. It encourages comparative education studies relevant to Chinese situation and carried out case studies on basic education in Chinese rural areas. A book with the title of Introduction To Comparative Education written by Prof. Gu Mingyuan and Dr. Xue Liyin has put forward the discipline construction of comparative education in China to a new stage. The Encyclopedia of education ( twelve volumes ) and Collection and Review of Educational Works in China ( nine volumes ) both chief-edited by Prof. Gu Mingyuan are the largest educational reference books published in China since 1949. ICERI edits the bimonthly journal of Comparative Education Review ( formerly Educational Trends in Other Countries, under the commission of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China, with its first issue coming out in 1965, as the earliest one on comparative education in China. ),which now serves as the journal of the National Comparative Education Society and is striking home and abroad. ICERI has won many prizes for its achievements, among which is the first prize, awarded by the State Ministry of Education, for the excellent achievements in the research of humanities and social science, with published Research of the Postwar Education in the S.U. chief-edited by Gu Mingyuan.

ICERI has made great progress, but it still has a long way to go. We are to put more emphasis on comparative educative education studies about developing countries, esp. those neighboring countries, while we continue to further study developed countries. On the best service for education policies we are to further study theoretical and practical issues that appear in the educational reforms and development in China. We are to acquire new perspectives and approaches to study global educational issues concerned by people throughout the world. We are to collect educational information more systematically and promote studies on the field of international and comparative education itself and make unremitting efforts to form the Chinese characteristic construction of the system of disciplines of international and comparative education. We are to strengthen the construction of the institution authorized to grant Doctor Degrees and improve the quality of graduate education and have a stronger faculty engaging in research and teaching.

In a word, ICERI aims to establish itself as an first-class institution in the world, of professional talents in comparative education and one of the world centers of international and comparative education studies, and of exchanged information of education home and abroad, and of consultative service for international and national education.