From July 22 to 26, 2024, IICE Professors LIU Baochun, TENG Jun, XIAO Shu, WANG Lu, BAO Dongming, and Senior Editor ZENG Xiaojie attended the 18th World Comparative Education Conference at Cornell University in the United States. The theme of the conference was “Fostering Inclusive Ecologies of Knowledge: Education for Equitable and Sustainable Futures”. Over 300 scholars participated in person, with nearly 1,000 scholars attending online.

IICE, in collaboration with the Chengdu High-tech Zone, organized a special seminar on the six years of international understanding education experiments. Three reports were presented, focusing on the theme "University-Government-School Collaborative Cooperation to Promote the Implementation of International Understanding Education in Chinese Schools". IICE Professor LIU Baochun gave a comprehensive presentation on "China's Landscape of International Understanding Education: Policies and Practices", providing an overview of the evolution of government policies related to international understanding education since the reform and opening-up period, and sharing the practical paths taken by different regions of China in promoting international understanding education. Huang Taiming from the Chengdu High-tech Zone Education Development Center, Zeng Xia, principal of Chengdu Housens Primary School, and Liu Ji, a senior high school English teacher from Chengdu Shishi Tianfu New Area, each shared their perspectives as government representatives, school principals, and frontline teachers on how our institution collaborates with local governments and schools to effectively bring international understanding education into schools, curricula, and classrooms. IICE Professors TENG Jun and XIAO Su presented on “What Knowledge Can Southern Countries Contribute? Reflections on the Experiment of International Understanding Education in Chengdu High-tech Zone”, discussing how China, as a representative of developing countries, contributes to enriching global knowledge in the field of international understanding education, based on six years of experimental data and student monitoring in Chengdu High-tech Zone.

Professor LI Jun, past president of the Comparative Education Society of North America and Professor at Western University in Canada, highly praised IICE’s collaboration with Chengdu High-tech Zone and its related research outcomes. He specifically acknowledged China's contribution to the knowledge base in this field and provided suggestions for further improvement. Professor XU Meide from the University of Toronto also participated in the discussion, reflecting warmly on her nearly half-century of interaction with China. She recognized the unique value of China's contributions to the global educational knowledge system and recommended that the project make better use of local international resources to further advance the development of international understanding education.

In addition, IICE Professor WANG Lu shared her research on "Comparative Study of Overseas Campus Operations in the Context of Higher Education Internationalization", Professor BAO Dongming presented on "Top-level Design of the Curriculum Structure System in Chinese Schools", and Professor ZENG Xiaojie discussed "Green Universities: Sustainable Development Strategies for Chinese Higher Education Institutions", all of which sparked lively discussions among the participants.