Some Highlights:  A report on the CIES 2006 Conference
By Victor Kobayashi, 2006  Conference co-chair, and President, CIES

 Conference was Successful and Well-attended

  My report is also for those CIES members who could not attend our Conference held this past year.  From the many           unsolicited accounts sent to me directly, the 50^th Anniversary  conference March 14-18, 2006, at the Hawaii Convention  Center in Honolulu was a huge success.  Its success of course is in large measure the result of many contributions by our  colleagues, especially those who made stimulating and enthusiastic  presentations  of their scholarly work  at the  Conference.  It was also financially stable, and provided a net revenue that will probably well  exceed $35,000  that will help  next year’s conference keep registration fees down, while providing us with a quality conference, that is affordable for  students, whose discounted fees are heavily subsidized by regular registrants.  This net revenue is misleading since a lot of  the expenses were by in-kind help, including the work of myself (time largely donated by the University) and that of a graduate assistant (Brian Rugen), who worked especially hard to find affordable housing for students during the conference, and who, with doctoral student Catherine Li, helped coordinate other student volunteers.  

 Volunteers Essential for Success

 Other UH volunteers, including co-chair, Dr. Gay Reed, gave their time to the conference.   David Merkel, a “non-traditional” older undergraduate student, and head of a non-profit group, PolyEd, devoted to service projects in Polynesia (current focus on Rapa Nui—or Easter Island), managed and organized the well-attended display booth that featured publishers  including University of Chicago Press (publishes the Comparative Education Review), University of Hawaii Press, UNESCO, Pacific Resources in Education, the University of Hawaii Curriculum Research and Development Group.   All also paid the registration fees necessary to support the conference. UH  Graduate students Catherine Li and Brian Rugen worked with student volunteers to provide on-site support. 

 Two honorary fellows, Dr. Robert Arnove (Indiana University) and Dr. Elizabeth Sherman Swing (emerita), attended the conference, and continue to be active contributing members of CIES.  They are the only CIES members whose registrations at CIES conferences are guaranteed by the CIES Bylaws and Constitution. 

 Conference Registration reached almost 800 

 The conference was attended by at least 790 persons.   Of these, about 765 were fully registered, and a significant portion, namely  325,  was comprised of  graduate students.   A majority of the  registrants were from the United States—539 and these included foreign students studying in US institutions.     Canada (48),  Japan (27), United Kingdom (21), and Hong Kong (16), Australia and Taiwan (11 each), led the list of nation of origin of the registrants.  France, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, had significant representation.

 Rethinking the Comparative

  There were many presentations, with some based on the theme ““Rethinking Comparative Education,” in which 50^th Anniversary Year provided an opportunity not only to look at our past, but also explored how  the field is changing due to such processes as accelerated globalization, ethnic conflicts, the rediscovery of indigenous wisdom, and the need for equity and excellence in educational achievement especially in national school systems with in  increasingly multi-cultural contexts.   It also renewed interests in what was once called, from time to time,  somewhat disparagingly,  “ameliorative” approaches to education, especially when the good intentions were shown in the research to have been supported by self-interests such as colonialism old and new, as well as some reports on the prevalence of corruption in educational institutions with increased emphasis on economic and political success.

 Large number of Presentations  

 The Hawaii conference also was subject to the new CIES Board policy that all CIES Conference presenters need to be members of CIES.  The result of this policy was a significant increase in new membership in CIES, important to sustain the activities of the organization.  The conference in turn also is expected to generate some net funds to at least provide start-up funds for the next conferences.

 The Conference organizers had to keep expanding time slots to take into account the large number of panel and individual paper proposals.  Some of the sessions were held in the evening, while there were also presentations made during the lunch hour.  Special arrangements were made with the Convention Center to enable food and beverages, including hot lunches, to be prepared by the Chef and sold to Conference attendees for several hours each day.  Luckily, enough sales permitted the Conference from not paying a fee to guarantee the additional costs involved in providing food and beverages.    

 The site: Hawaii Convention Center

 Most conference attendees were pleased with the venue, as the Convention Center is very attractive and located conveniently to the hotels that provided special discounted rates to CIES Conference attendees.  Audio-visual equipment was very expensive, but with the Convention Center’s permission,  Dr. Gay Reed, conference co-chair, several University of Hawaii units provided us with portable LCD projectors for most of the smaller rooms, besides those contracted with the Convention Center. Presenters need to be prepared today to do without such projectors in order to keep conference expenses down; it was noted that although many graduate students have become addicted to PowerPoint presentations, only a few required this technology, since older technology was also adequate.  All of the loaned projectors were returned on time in good condition to the University. 

 Since the University of Hawaii is considered a Hawaii State Agency, the Convention Center rental fees were discounted by 50%. Although the Center is managed by a private vendor, it is basically a state financed facility, hence this arrangement for state units.  The Convention Center has many commissioned artworks by artists of Hawaii throughout the building, adding to the aesthetics of the architectural spaces.

 We received numerous compliments on the conference from those who attended, from all quarters of the world, and we were especially thrilled that so many graduate students were so happy about the conference, and were able to make it to a conference held in one of the most isolated islands of the world, Hawaii, overseas in the middle of the Pacific.   This is not to overlook some of the glitches and criticisms we have also received, which were generally constructive and helpful for Dr. Steve Klees, who is chair of the next Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, to consider in his planning for February 2007. 

 A Celebration of the Indigenous—the host culture

 The conference opened with a traditional Hawaiian Chant, by Kamuela Chun, University of Hawaii, Hawaiian Studies, at the Hilo campus.  He comes from a respectable traditional lineage of indigenous Hawaiian chanters and kumu (teachers).     It was a reminder that Hawai’i’s host culture is that of the Polynesians. Hawaii’s first inhabitants, who first arrived from what is now French Polynesia, hundreds of years ago, by canoe.

 The conference was accented by unusual and special live and multi-media presentations, including “Morning Spirit Sounds” a thunderous and engaging percussion performance by the Taiko master, Kenny Endo, the first foreigner who received a name from the Iemoto (head) of a leading Taiko traditional school in Japan.   An American of Japanese descent, Endo usually performs with his entire ensemble of students and apprentices, but performed solo on an enormous drum on loan from the University of Hawaii Music Department.   These performances have been part of rituals still practiced world wide, that help enliven the human spirit that makes education possible.

 The Closing Banquet featured  Hawaiian multi-ethnic cuisine, along with a story-telling of Hawaiian history by Nalani Olds, of Hawaiian descent, and who combines dance and song in her riveting performance.  About 260 purchased tickets for this Banquet, which was an optional event with a total cost that was a little over $45 per person, with a cash bar. 

 Receptions

 Receptions have become costly to include in the conference registration fees, especially if the venue requires the conferences to use their exclusive vendor. The Convention Center had a Chef with an excellent reputation, and with kitchens located within the Center.  Several institutions, joined forces and co-hosted a large reception for all conference registrants in the Convention Center, with a cash bar.  They were Open Society Institute; Teachers College, Columbia University; Stanford University; Indiana University; Michigan State University; Loyola Chicago University; and University of Hawaii (Dept. of Educational Foundations). 

 The Chancellor and Deans of Education and of the School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies, co-sponsored a reception for the Boards of CIES and the WCCES at the UH campus’ John Young Museum of Art.  The University of Michigan Alumni, Hawaii, chapter hosted an evening reception for Michigan alumni and students, including former Presidents, Val Rust, Robert Lawson, Heidi Ross, at the Ala Moana Hotel.

 A first aid station is a requirement of the Convention Center for conferences larger than 500 registrants; we provided a station, with a nurse. Luckily only a few required the use of this station, and there were no ambulances and other serious emergency measures required. The University of Hawaii as host of the conference provided self-insurance, as insurance is another requirement of the Convention Center. 

 Multi-Media Presentations

 Another special was long time CIES member Maurice Martinez (North Carolina, Wilmington) presented his new documentary La Vida no Es Fácil  [Life is Not Easy] that deals with the education of migrant Mexican children in North Carolina, and presents documentary material that is activist in orientation.

 Joseph Tobin, Basha Prof., Arizona State University, and his associates presented new ethnographic research that explores changes  from his previous landmark study:  Continuity and Change in Preschools in Three cultures: China, Japan, and U.S. The presentation also included videotapes of actual school interactions among the children which Tobin compared with that of his (and co-authors’)  past studies published  about 15 years ago.  The new work underscores the fact that conditions of education in children have changed in a short period of time, and indicate how the historical contexts in which education take place are so important to consider.  This importance was originally  underscored by many of the early founders of the field of comparative and international education fifty years ago, but with changes due to the use of film and video in recording events that can be re-examined and re-interpreted over time, complemented by other documentary material.

 Editors of leading international education research journals, arranged by Professor Joseph Zajda,  met with CIES conference registrants.   The Comparative Education Review’s  Editorial Board met with its co-editors David Post (Pennsylvania State University) and Mark Ginsburg, who has recently joined the faculty of  Michigan State University.    The Board also approved during the Conference, the addition of Dr. Heidi Ross, Indiana University to the group of co-editors. 

  World Council of Comparative Education

 The WCCES Board also met during the CIES Hawaii Conference, and were invited to a luncheon hosted by the CIES Conference on behalf of the Board of Directors, a day before the CIES Hawaii officially opened.  President of WCCES is Mark Bray and its Secretary General is Christine Fox, University of Wollongong, Australia. Formed in 1970, WCCES members are representatives of many comparative and international education organizations throughout the world. WCCES hosts the next world congress in Sarajevo, Bosnia in 2007, to which all CIES members are invited to attend.  For more information on the World Council and also its Congress, visit http://www.hku.hk/cerc/wcces/contacts/contacts.htm

 The CIES official representative was Donald Holsinger, and is succeeded by the new CIES president Kobayashi.  He is succeeded in 2008, by Henry Levin, the new Vice President of CIES, and who becomes President in 2008 when the conference meets in New York City.  Many prominent CIES members serve in committees in WCCECS.   

 Professor Askarbek Kussainov, President, Kazakhstan Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, Almaty attended CIES for the first time, as a new member of WCCES, as he is also  Chief of the Council of Comparative Education in Kazakhstan.

Prof. Kussainov (right) presented Conference chair Kobayashi with the national costume of Kazakhstan and a  book on his country.

  World Premiere of CIES History Video featured at Conference

 The conference also opened with a video, Comparatively Speaking:  An Oral History of the First 50 years of the Comparative and International Society,  that featured presidents of CIES making statements that reflected the changing interests of the field of comparative education.  The video was also made available in DVD form to all registrants, and was produced at TC Columbia by Professor Gita Steiner-Khamsi and her doctoral student, Eric M. Johnson. 

Dr. Gita Stenier-Khamsi and Eric Johnson, PhD student

 Special Plenary Sessions

 A specially invited plenary session followed with Nicholas Burnett and Aaron Benavot, of UNESCO, Paris, on “Monitoring Education for All [EFA] & Other International Educational Targets: Implications for Comparative Education." Several concurrent sessions followed throughout the conference that discussed some of the implications of EFA, as well as on cross-national comparisons of achievement test scores. 

 The UNESCO Institute of Statistics  in Montreal also offered a well-attended workshop (about 50 participants) on interpreting UNESCO statistical data, by Yanhong Zhang, who explored also how the statistics could be misused.

 Dr. Wadad Kadi, Avalon Professor, University of Chicago, presented the 26^th Annual Claude A. Eggertsen Lecture, “The Madrasa in the Maghreb from the Sixth/Twelfth until the Ninth/Fifteenth Century,”  in which she explored in detail how the Islamic schools extended outward from the mosques, and began to grow, and how complex ethical issues arose (that still are with us today), in education:  how to handle and allocate money and resources, and how to prevent abuse and corruption, given  the need for resources to maintain the schools which not only promoted scholarship but also spiritual and ethical values that originally  attracted students to the schools.  Professor  Kadi is editing the special issue of the Comparative Education Review, devoted to Islamic education.  Two special panels on the Madrasa were also in the program, including one with some of the contributors to the special issue, and also one with Dr. Mobin Shorish (University of Illinois), who grew up in Afghanistan, and is a long time member of CIES, having worked in the area of the economics of education at the University of Chicago and at the University of Michigan.

 University of Hawaii Pacific Island Studies Professor Vilsoni Hereniko, talked about his life-long interests in education, since his childhood in the relatively isolated Polynesian island of Rotuma, presently part of the Fiji nation that is predominantly Melanesian.  The talk, entitled ““Indigenous Pacific Islanders in Contemporary Film”, was the 4^th Annual George Kneller lecture, and he highlighted how film was a way of telling the life of youth growing up in a culture affected not only by its indigenous traditions, but by introduced western and colonial ideas and practices, and how the disjunctions were resolved in individual minds.  Dr. Hereniko  also presented a screening of his recent film, The Land has Eyes, with and after-film discussion that included his wife-producter, Jeannette Paulson-Hereniko. 

 A highlight of the Conference was the annual Presidential Address,  "Rethinking the Comparative and International,” delivered by Martin Carnoy.  It played on the theme that was carried out in many of the concurrent sessions and was very rich in ideas, and will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Comparative Education Review this year.

 The annual CIES Awards were announced at the Conference by Chairman of the Awards Committee, Chris Bjork (Vassar College) and the chairs of the various subcommittees indicated below:

 1.  Gail P. Kelly Dissertation Award (for Best Dissertation)

 Susan Shepler, Constructions of Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone.

 Comments by the jurors:

“This dissertation examines the impact of Western conceptions of childhood in shaping the identity of child soldier in Sierra Leone.  Rooted in the critical ethnography tradition, Shepler problematizes the distinction between child soldier linked with rebel versus government forces as well as girl versus boy soldiers.  It is a very interesting blend of historiography and ethnography applied to the uses of schooling as an effort to reintegrate child soldiers, an effort integrated throughout this dissertation.”

“This is by far the most original and creative among a number of very good and very diverse dissertations.”

 The Kelly Award committee consisted of five members:

·       Francisco Ramirez, Stanford University (Chair)

·       Leslie Bartlett, Teachers College, Columbia University

·       Abigail Harris, Fordham University

·       Helen Boyle, Education Development Center, Inc.

·       Luis Benveniste, The World Bank

2. George Bereday Award (for Best Article in the Vol. 49, 2005 Comparative Education Review)

 “Peer-tutoring in a Multi-ethnic Classroom in the Netherlands: A Multi-perspective Analysis of Diversity,” by Mariette De Haan and Ed Elbers

 Comments by the Jurors:

“The article is complex, but readable; it addresses a key theoretical problem in the field (structuration/or the structure and agency debate); and it presents ethnographic data in a way that makes the importance or significance of the study quite visceral.”

“This article is one of a rare kind: it truly accomplishes to integrate micro and macro perspectives in explaining an educational phenomenon. It does so by drawing from multiple bodies of theory and by interweaving various theoretical strands (social reproduction, cultural diversity/difference, and local construction) with highly sophisticated empirical research methods.

Typically articles, in CER and elsewhere, tend to deal with the micro-macro interrelationship by describing the societal/ institutional context in broad strokes and then analyzing a specific micro-phenomenon in detail using appropriate analytical concepts that “work” for the micro-context. The macro-institutional structures are treated as a kind of umbrella, or interpretive foil, without being traced back into the micro-data, i.e. without being reconstructed in the experiences and interactions of local actors.

This article does it differently: The authors first discuss theories relevant to the social phenomenon to be explained: the occurrence of more or less hierarchical patterns of student interaction or learning (here peer tutoring) depending on the social status of the participating students in the classroom. They begin with the directly observable behavior of students by using a sophisticated mixed-method approach for their empirical work that helps them analyze fine-grained actions (dialog), typify them, and measure their occurrence statistically.”

In my view, the article is a gem. It is theoretically complex by interrogating three distinct theoretical strands, empirically highly sophisticated and solid, but masterfully complex in its interpretation of the data.”

“The sophisticated theoretical discussion and clarity of the arguments as they pertain to this particular case are outstanding.  I admire the way in which the conceptual framework of the article is simple and elegant, despite the multiple layers of issues it addresses.  The topic of diversity is, of course, timely and the theoretical models applied here are both appropriate and engaging. “

“I found  “de Haan” to be quite sophisticated, methodologically strong and theoretically compelling.”

“This paper is thorough, uses qualitative and quantitative research, and looks deeply with cross context comparisons into the complex life within schools. It is worthy of the award.”

3. Joyce Cain Award for Distinguished Research on African Descendants

• Vavrus, Frances ( 2005). Adjusting inequality: Education and structural adjustment policies in Tanzania, Harvard Educational Review 75(2): 174-201.

 The Cain Award committee consisted of three members:

·       Edith Mukudi Omwami, UCLA (Chair)

·       Thomas Clayton, University of Kentucky

·       Tatiana Melguizo, University of Southern California

 Comments on the Winning Article

 “This article does a fine job of articulating the complexities, at the local level, of structural adjustment in Tanzania.  I like the sensitive way the author approaches the subject:  Structural Adjustment has delivered benefits, but also brought disadvantages, to people in her town of interest.  The research design is appropriate, and rigorous.” 
 

“One can not treat macro-level policy intervention without consideration for the micro- level impact. While SAPs expanded people’s choices and awareness of the expanded world view, they also contributed to magnified age and gender based inequality and limited access to education and health.”

4. CIES Honorary Fellows Award

 The CIES Board in following the deliberations of the Awards Committee decided that two honorary fellows to be selected, one for each of two years, the fellows to be invited and honored  at the next CIES Conference in 2007 at Baltimore are:

 Joseph P.  Farrell

William M. Rideout, Jr.

The  committee consisted of  several Honorary Fellows:

 Robert Arnove (Chair)
Noel McGinn
Norma Tarrow
Elizabeth Sherman Swing
Matthew Zachariah

 The late Roland Paulston, University of Pittsburgh,  was a member of the committee; he  passed away a few months earlier, on  January 24, 2006, and was honored at the 2006 Conference by a session dedicated to his memory by his colleagues and former  students. 

 The Gender Symposium

 A full day Gender Symposium, organized by Dr. Shirley Miske, chair of the CIES Standing Committee on Gender, was held during the Conference, and featured many prominent speakers, including Mme Dang Huynh Mai, Vice Minister, Ministry of Ed & Training, Viet Nam, who has a special interest in early childhood education.  

 Special Interest Group Panels 2006

 The Conference also saw the first panels sponsored by the newly formed Special Interest Groups of CIES: Language Issues in Education; Citizenship and Democratic Education;  Peace and Education;  Cultural Studies; and Africa.  All panels are open to all registrants of the Conference. 

Any group of 15 or more CIES members may form a SIG by petitioning to the CIES Board, which is then considered and approved by the Board. 

 The SIG’s promote new research in special areas, and help mentor such researchers through its projects, including presentations of scholarly work at the annual conference.  SIGs elect their own  officers and, in the newly amended CIES Bylaws that creates SIG’s, each SIG needs to have a minimum of 15 CIES members who form the SIG by paying additional dues of $10.  Each SIG is allocated at least one business meeting time slot and at least one substantive session at the annual Conference. With a minimum of 30 members, a SIG may have at the most two sessions during the annual conference.  All sessions are open to all conference registrants.  The chair of the SIG presents an annual report to the CIES Board at its annual meeting.

  The SIG for Africa, chaired by Joan Oviawe, Ph.D. Student at Washington State University, presented both a session that featured important Ministry officials from several African nations, and also co-hosted a private reception with the International Review of Education, during the Conference.   The Special Interest Group on Globalization also held its meeting, chaired by Dr., Esther Gottlieb, of Ohio State University.   

 New Scholars Workshop 2006

 A feature of the CIES Conference was the annual New Scholars Workshop, sponsored by the CIES New Scholars Standing Committee, which was  organized by Victor Kobayashi, substituting for  Ernesto Trevino, the student CIES Board member on his last term, who was on leave from Harvard.  This year, the workshop was split into two groups, each with ten new scholars, which gave each student more time for discussion on their dissertation proposals.  He was assisted in the organization and planning by Sandra Staklis, Stanford;  Robert Arnove, Indiana; Gay Reed, Hawaii; Peter Tamas, U Mass Amherst;  Christine Min Wotipka, U Minnesota.  

 Sandra Staklis, Stanford,  conducted the all-day workshop on Thursday March 17, with the assistance of Peter Tamas, graduate student, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Clifton Tanabe, Assistant Professor, University of Hawaii.   Faculty resource persons included Margaret Sutton (Indiana);  James Williams (George Washington); Martin Carnoy and  Francisco Ramirez (Stanford), Ruth Hayhoe (OISE, Toronto).    Graduate students at the dissertation proposal stage,  selected for the workshop,  were: Elizabeth Boner (UC Berkeley); Soo-Yong Byun, Kamukana, Naomi Ziegler  (U Minnesota); Baoyan Cheng (Harvard); Margaret Clements, Christopher Frey, Dawn Michele Whitehead and Aki Yonehara (Indiana);  Eric Johnson (TC Columbia); Illana Lancaster and Yan Liu  (U Maryland); Susan Skipper (George Washington U);  Tourouzou Some (SUNY Buffalo); Frank Adamson, Namita Gupta, Brooke Weddle Ricalde (Stanford); Andrey Uroda (U Hong Kong); Byeong-keun You (Arizona State), and Hui Zhao (U Missouri-Columbia). 

 The Conference came to a successful ending late Saturday afternoon, March 18, 2006,  with a closing plenary address, “Rethinking Academic Achievement in a Flat, Global World:  What Have We Learned from Theory & Research?” that won a  standing ovation for the featured speaker, James A Banks, Russell F. Stark University Professor & Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle, and former President of the American Educational Research Association.

 The last day of the annual conference can be very slow, since many registrants leave for the airport earlier,  but a special effort was made to provide inspiration for those who stayed to the conclusion, and presented papers.      The Saturday sessions were open to the general public, sponsored by the Dean of Education, University of Hawaii, and closed with a special 50th Anniversary CIES Birthday cake reception in which the huge global cake was almost entirely consumed by a full house of CIES registrants and guests. 

 We expect to see you all at the 51^st Annual CIES Conference, February 2007, in Baltimore, Maryland, hosted by several institutions in the Maryland/Washington DC area.  We also encourage all registrants to stay at the official conference hotel, so that the full  conference expenses can be met. 

Photo of Birthday Cake by Wakako Ishikawa, graduate student, OISE, U Toronto.