IAFOR > The Asian Conference on Education (ACE) > ACE2018

ACE2018

"Surviving and Thriving: Education in Times of Change"

October 13-15, 2018 | Toshi Center, Tokyo, Japan

ACE2018 Conference Programme CoverIn 2017, IAFOR education conferences in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America brought together delegates from around the world to consider the theme of “Educating for Change”. The theme was approached from a variety of different perspectives, taking full advantage of the international diversity of the attendees with their myriad experiences. A recurring note throughout the conferences was the reference to the future, be it immediate or longer term, as being uncertain. The natural resilience and optimism of educators was counterbalanced by apprehension; with hope also came fear.

In the current period of great global political and economic instability, rising inequality and social unrest, the role of education within society has never been more important, but never more vulnerable. This brings us to our conference theme for 2018, which references these inherent vulnerabilities in both educational systems and the individual students and teachers, as well as the necessary resilience needed to not only survive, but also thrive.

How do we as teachers, administrators and policymakers adopt and adapt to change outside our control? How do we nurture and encourage positive change, through the excitement of the imagination, innovation and creativity? How can technologies be better used to help us teach, and to help students learn? How do we sustain and manage change? How can we react positively to negative change? How can we, our institutions and our students survive and thrive in these times of change?

The Local Context: Asia and Japan

The situation of education in Asia reflects the challenges of diversity in Asia itself. There are varied education systems and structures, as well as the wide gap between countries struggling to meet the most basic educational and human security needs, rapidly developing nations vying to compete on the global stage while attending to pressures of a growing population, and advanced economies with shrinking populations among them. The region hosts the world’s top performers in PISA and TIMMs and some of the most rapidly rising stars in the global university rankings, as well as some of the most underfunded, and underperforming systems in the world. There are many and varied challenges throughout the region that reflect and inform those experienced in other nations throughout this world.

The Asian Conference on Education has chosen a befitting city, Tokyo, Japan, as the venue. It is the seat of one of the oldest and powerful bureaucracies, the MEXT, that oversees the education from grade school to university that once symbolised the most desirable model of rapid development and modernisation. Today, the challenges that face the Japanese education system are one and the same as the challenges that face the entire country: changing to survive. Education for the national purpose is no longer working, and yet the institutional inertia hampers efforts to free the system to become effective, dynamic and competitive in the long run. At the forefront of these challenges are the universities that are strong in STEM subjects but widely underperform in global ranking in other areas, but the roots of the problem are to be found in the primary and secondary and tertiary sectors that are still conformist.

Unlike countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, with young and growing populations, Japan’s population is now falling, which presents it with a number of problems, but also an opportunity to use its universities and acquired expertise to help play a more active role in regional educational development. For one, while Japan may be unsure how to embrace multiculturalism, universities in particular are pressed to open up their doors to more foreign students to survive financially but more importantly to remain internationally relevant academically. Universities are the microcosmos of Japanese society as they engage with the diversity of a globalising world. As the pinnacle of the Japanese education system the change in the universities is an urgent necessity to inspire primary and secondary sectors as well as other countries in the region. It is a task of historical proportions as the first modern country to emerge from Asia, but one that would impart many important lessons for those who have followed in Japan’s footpath.

Click to download as a PDF
Conference Proceedings (2018)

Back to Top

Programme

  • Sophisticated Machines and Innovative Education: Who (or What) Will Thrive?
    Sophisticated Machines and Innovative Education: Who (or What) Will Thrive?
    Keynote Presentation: Keith W. Miller
  • Moving Forward by Going Back: Not Changing but Innovating
    Moving Forward by Going Back: Not Changing but Innovating
    Keynote Presentation: Andy Curtis
  • High-Quality Classroom Assessment in Times of Change: From Purposes and Uses to Tasks and Environments
    High-Quality Classroom Assessment in Times of Change: From Purposes and Uses to Tasks and Environments
    Keynote Presentation: Liying Cheng
  • The Things that Do Not Change
    The Things that Do Not Change
    Keynote Presentation: Zachary M Walker
  • Leadership and Innovation
    Leadership and Innovation
    Featured Panel Presentation: Kay Irie, Peter McCagg, Ljiljana Markovic & Kristin Palmer
  • Teacher Competences Function as the Discourse of International Competitiveness within the Institutionalized Milieu in the Epoch of Globalization
    Teacher Competences Function as the Discourse of International Competitiveness within the Institutionalized Milieu in the Epoch of Globalization
    Keynote Presentation: Tien-Hui Chiang
  • Thriving in Publication: Ethical Guiding Principles for Academic Publication
    Thriving in Publication: Ethical Guiding Principles for Academic Publication
    Featured Panel Presentation: Yvonne Masters & Bernard Montoneri

Back to Top

Speakers

  • Liying Cheng
    Liying Cheng
    Queen’s University, Canada
  • Tien-Hui Chiang
    Tien-Hui Chiang
    Zhengzhou University, China
  • Andy Curtis
    Andy Curtis
    Anaheim University, USA
  • Kay Irie
    Kay Irie
    Gakushuin University, Japan
  • Ljiljana Markovic
    Ljiljana Markovic
    University of Belgrade, Serbia
  • Yvonne Masters
    Yvonne Masters
    University of New England, Australia
  • Peter McCagg
    Peter McCagg
    Akita International University, Japan
  • Keith W. Miller
    Keith W. Miller
    University of Missouri – St. Louis, United States
  • Bernard Montoneri
    Bernard Montoneri
    National Chengchi University, Taiwan
  • Kristin Palmer
    Kristin Palmer
    University of Virginia, USA
  • Zachary Walker
    Zachary Walker
    Institute of Education, University College London, UK

Back to Top

Organising Committee

The Conference Programme Committee is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Conference Programme Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Conference Programme Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and overseeing the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.

  • Tien-Hui Chiang
    Tien-Hui Chiang
    Zhengzhou University, China
  • Steve Cornwell
    Steve Cornwell
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) & Osaka Jogakuin University, Japan
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Paul Lai
    Paul Lai
    Nagoya University, Japan
  • Tzu-Bin Lin
    Tzu-Bin Lin
    National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
  • Yvonne Masters
    Yvonne Masters
    University of New England, Australia
  • José McClanahan
    José McClanahan
    Creighton University, USA
  • Ted O’Neill
    Ted O’Neill
    Gakushuin University, Japan
  • Justin Sanders
    Justin Sanders
    Osaka University, Japan
  • Zachary Walker
    Zachary Walker
    Institute of Education, University College London, UK

Back to Top

Review Committee

  • Professor Cynthia Abella, University of the East, Philippines
  • Dr Hema Kumar B, Pondicherry Engineering College, India
  • Dr Jose Jr. Barlis, Maritime Academy of Asia and the Pacific, Philippines
  • Professor Avelino Caraan, Jr., Jose Rizal University, Philippines
  • Dr Miao-Li Changlai, China University of Technology, Taiwan
  • Professor Pin-Ju Chen, St. Mary's Junior College of Medicine, Nursing and Management, Taiwan
  • Dr Chingya Chiu, Chang Jung Christian University, Taiwan
  • Dr Sylvia Chong, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore
  • Dr Hsiu-Fen Hsieh, Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan
  • Dr Cheng Hsu, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taiwan
  • Dr Josephine Sau Har Jim, Visionary Plus Education Services, Hong Kong
  • Dr Lana Khong, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Dr Afifi Lateh, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand
  • Dr Ruey-Fa Lin, FengChia University, Taiwan
  • Dr Jasvir Kaur Nachatar Singh, La Trobe University, Australia
  • Dr Non Naprathansuk, Maejo University, Thailand
  • Dr Sonal Mobar Roy, National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, India
  • Dr Vilma Sangian, Tapia Elementary School, Philippines
  • Dr Sherrilyn Quintos, Bataan Peninsula State University Main Campus, Philippines
  • Dr William Ko-Wai Tang, The Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Dr Piyaporn Techaraungrong, Chandrakasem Rajabhat University, Thailand
  • Dr Hebe Wong, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Dr Chia Pei Wu, I-Shou University, Taiwan
  • Dr Yoshihiko Yamamoto, Shizuoka University, Japan

IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by conference Organising Committee members under the guidance of the Academic Governing Board. Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the ACE2019 Review Committee, please visit our application page.

Apply to Join the Review Committee

Back to Top

Conference Videos

Surviving and Thriving in Times of Change: A View from Serbia

Professor Ljiljana Markovic, Dean of the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade was interviewed by prominent Serbian journalist, Svetlana Grubor, of Pinkova TV. The interview followed Professor Markovic’s appearance on a panel on leadership and innovation in education at the 10th Asian Conference on Education (ACE2018). Professor Markovic has been one of the most prominent exponents of internationalisation at the University of Belgrade; an essential part of the nation’s redevelopment after the troubles in the former Yugoslavia at the turn of the century.

The Asian Undergraduate Research Symposium 2018 (AURS2018)

Short video from The Asian Undergraduate Research Symposium 2018 (AURS2018). Held alongside the 10th Asian Conference on Education (ACE2018) in Tokyo, AURS2018 provided undergraduate students with a motivating and thought-provoking opportunity to present their research, and network with other undergraduates and academics from around the world.

Back to Top

Sophisticated Machines and Innovative Education: Who (or What) Will Thrive?
Keynote Presentation: Keith W. Miller

Over 10 years ago, educational researchers in California placed a robot made in Japan in a classroom of toddlers, aged 18 to 24 months. After 5 months, the authors stated that the toddlers “treated the robot as a peer rather than as a toy.” [1, pg. 17954]

Five years ago, researchers in Japan and Israel programmed robots to teach six graders about the physics of levers. According to surveys, the students were pleased with the lesson, and most scored well on a quiz about levers. [2]

Today, people are seriously considering the idea of robot teachers becoming a mainstream educational innovation. Some people are excited about that prospect, but others are worried. [3]

In this talk, we will explore the issue the increasing role of sophisticated machines (robots, webbots, and other devices) in education. What are the costs and benefits? Who loses and who gains as more machines enter the classroom? And how are technical advances in robotics likely to affect this trend?

References:

[1] Tanaka, F., Cicourel, A., & Movellan, J. R. (2007). Socialization between toddlers and robots at an early childhood education center. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(46), 17954-17958.

[2] Hashimoto, T., Kobayashi, H., Polishuk, A., & Verner, I. (2013, March). Elementary science lesson delivered by robot. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction (pp. 133-134). IEEE Press.

[3] Sharkey, A. J. (2016). Should we welcome robot teachers?. Ethics and Information Technology, 18(4), 283-297.

Read presenter biographies.

Moving Forward by Going Back: Not Changing but Innovating
Keynote Presentation: Andy Curtis

According to the well-known American educator John Dewey (1859-1952): “if we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow”. There are (very) few educators in the world today who would (strongly) disagree with that statement, and yet we still struggle and resist change. Why? One set of important reasons is the differences between ‘Change’ and ‘Innovation’. We will, therefore, begin this talk by looking at some of those important distinctions.

We will then look at why people – all of us – resist change, as a normal and natural, ancient and hardwired response, especially when changes are imposed upon us. Research has shown that teachers can be impressively effective at ‘faking forced change’, by which I mean teachers pretending to change, while not really doing so, except at the superficial level, when they have not been involved in the decision-making change process.

In the present global political and socioeconomic climate, Dewey’s 1916 book, Democracy and Education: An introduction to the philosophy of education, is still remarkably relevant, more than a century after it was first published. Re-visiting Dewey’s work on education, and the centuries-old work of other educators in other countries, is an example of ‘Moving Forward by Going Back’. The talk will also include proposals for re-introducing concepts and subjects such as Critical Thinking back into education, as the daily international news is ripe with examples of people who appear to have lost that ability (if they ever had it) which must be a central core of education in times of change.

Read presenter biographies.

High-Quality Classroom Assessment in Times of Change: From Purposes and Uses to Tasks and Environments
Keynote Presentation: Liying Cheng

In the present educational climate, teachers are continually faced with complex assessment issues. There is a great deal of discussion now in education about alignment as a guiding principle for high quality assessment; that is, the degree of agreement amongst standards, curriculum, learning outcomes, assessment tasks (including tests) and instruction. Alignment, along with validity, reliability, fairness, consequences, and practicality, are viewed as central aspects of assessment practice which supports learning. Assessment serves as the key process to check on learning and provide essential information to teachers. Assessment is an on-going, iterative, and cyclical process of supporting students throughout teaching.

Undoubtedly, most of the information that students have about their learning, about themselves, and about their futures comes from classroom assessment. Similarly, most of what parents and teachers know about their children's learning comes from classroom assessment. It is through the day-to-day classroom assessment tasks and the environment teachers and students co-create that important decisions (purposes and uses) are understood, communicated, and reported. The ways teachers communicate their expectations to students, and the ways they provide feedback on how well these expectations are being met, help students form the concepts of what is important to learn and how good they are at learning it. Current debates about quality of classroom assessment continue to use validity and reliability arguments developed for large-scale testing. This plenary highlights the context dependence of classroom assessment in relation to large-scale testing, and discusses the intricate relationship between assessment and instruction through assessment tasks and environment in supporting student learning.

Read presenter biographies.

The Things that Do Not Change
Keynote Presentation: Zachary M Walker

During times of turbulence in education, it is important to consider the truths we know and understand about teaching and learning. However, it is also important to acknowledge that many of these truths are not being practiced in classrooms and schools today although the research clearly shows their effectiveness. In this talk we will consider how to be nimble in teaching and learning while also utilising and implementing practices that are evidence-based and proven to work.

Read presenter biographies.

Leadership and Innovation
Featured Panel Presentation: Kay Irie, Peter McCagg, Ljiljana Markovic & Kristin Palmer

Good leadership can make the difference between merely surviving and fully thriving in any setting. Educators in Japan and around the world have been facing numerous changes over the past two decades, but for many this is the time to crumple or break out. Long running trends are leading to both crises and opportunities; innovative leadership will separate the educational institutions and programs that thrive from those that eke out survival or, perhaps, even fall.

This panel brings together leaders in creating new, innovative programs in higher education; who either find creative ways to work within constraints or who move beyond those constraints to create something new. Peter McCagg and Kay Irie are leaders in two Japanese universities, Akita International and Gakushuin, Kristin Palmer is leading new developments for the University of Virginia in the United States, and Ljiljana Markovic is Dean of the Faculty of Philology and has helped forge many international partnerships with various universities.

It may be argued that education can be too cautious and slow to change, thus leaving it vulnerable to economic and demographic changes. Sometimes a lack of resources, fiscal and social capital, means that even a will to change cannot be put into action. This means that we need to look to educators who are currently facing challenges that we are all likely to face as the demographic pyramid, advances in ICT, and political trends common in the host country for this conference become common throughout developed economies. Likewise, in Japan we should learn from efforts in and across developing countries in making good use of ICT as another way forward.

No matter the challenge or opportunity, institutions must nurture developing leaders within and be open to them from without. How exactly can we do this?

The panel audience will be invited to ask questions and pose challenges that are relevant internationally.

Read presenter biographies.

Teacher Competences Function as the Discourse of International Competitiveness within the Institutionalized Milieu in the Epoch of Globalization
Keynote Presentation: Tien-Hui Chiang

As the discourse of international competitiveness has facilitated government becoming the global agent, proactively promoting the advantages of teacher competences, teachers are required to be constructive contributors to national development. This great change highlights the new thought that teacher professional development no longer belongs to the sphere of personal matters but to the domain of collective accountabilities. This new paradigm tends to form an institutionalized milieu, in which teachers implement and the government designs. However, such an institutionalized array turns the coercive force of performativity into the voluntarism of neo-professionalism through the process of “reformulating education”. This relationship indicates that the concept of isomorphism is regulated by the global discourse that constantly redefines the state’s role in teacher professional development.

Read presenter biographies.

Thriving in Publication: Ethical Guiding Principles for Academic Publication
Featured Panel Presentation: Yvonne Masters & Bernard Montoneri

Publication is one of the core tasks in the professional lives of academics, whether it as editors, authors, or readers. In the current atmosphere of impact factors and high stakes funding, publication is imperative for our survival as teachers and researchers. It is both an intellectual concern, and also hands-on practical work. Surviving “in times of change” clearly applies to publishing over last decade, since the ACE conference series first began. However, how does one not only survive, but thrive, amidst the uncertainties and ever mounting pressures? If ethics are the “moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity,” (Oxford Dictionaries) then a re-examination of the ethics of publishing, particularly in an era of open-access and a plethora of social networking sites for researchers to share their work, should help to lead us towards better relationships amongst all concerned: researchers, writers, editors, publishers, librarians, tenure and hiring committees, the humble reader, and even the students in our charge.

The panel will address the ethical implications of a range of issues in publication including:

This will be a wide-ranging and deep dive into the questions facing the world of academic publishing.

Read presenter biographies.

Liying Cheng
Queen’s University, Canada

Biography

Liying Cheng (程李颖), PhD is Professor and Director of the Assessment and Evaluation Group (AEG) at the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. Her primary research interests are the impact of large-scale testing on instruction, the relationships between assessment and instruction, and the academic and professional acculturation of international and new immigrant students, workers, and professionals to Canada.

She conducts the majority of her research within the context of teaching and learning English as a second/foreign language (including immersion and bilingual contexts). Since 2000, she has obtained research funding totalling 1.6 million Canadian dollars. In addition, she has conducted more than 200 conference presentations and has more than 130 publications in top-tier journals including Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Assessment in Education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, and Teaching and Teacher Education. Her recent books are Assessment in the Language Classroom: Teachers Supporting Student Learning (co-authored with J. Fox, Palgrave McMillan, 2017); Language Classroom Assessment (single-authored, TESOL English Language Teacher Development Series, 2013); English Language Assessment and the Chinese Learner (co-edited with A. Curtis, Taylor & Francis, 2010); Changing Language Teaching through Language Testing (single-authored, Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Washback in Language Testing: Research Contexts and Methods (co-edited with Y. Watanabe with A, Curtis, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004).

Keynote Presentation (2018) | High-Quality Classroom Assessment in Times of Change: From Purposes and Uses to Tasks and Environments
Tien-Hui Chiang
Zhengzhou University, China

Biography

Distinguished Professor Tien-Hui Chiang is the Vice President of RC04 (Sociology of Education) of International Sociological Association, UNESCO, a member of the Constitutional Standing Committee of the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies UNESCO and the International Distinguished Professor of University of Crete, Greece. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar, visiting at UW-Madison, Wisconsin, USA, Guest Professor at Beijing Normal University and is the Ex-President of the Taiwan Association for Sociology of Education. His specialty covers sociology of education, globalization and education policy, sociology of curriculum, teaching profession and comparative education. He has written over 100 essays. He was the co-editor of Cross Education Dialogue, Crisis in Education and Interculturalism. He was also a contributor to Elite, Privileges and Excellence edited by Professor S. Ball. His outstanding academic achievements have awarded Professor Chiang many prizes, such as the Distinguished Scholar of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. He is the editor of International Journal of Educational Research and Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and a section editor of the Springer Encyclopedia: Educational Philosophy and Theories and the Springer Encyclopedia: Teacher Education.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Teacher Competences Function as the Discourse of International Competitiveness within the Institutionalized Milieu in the Epoch of Globalization
Andy Curtis
Anaheim University, USA

Biography

From 2007 to 2011, Dr Andy Curtis was the Director of the English Language Teaching Unit at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a professor in the Faculty of Education there. Prior to 2007, he was the Executive Director of the School of English at Queen’s University, Canada, and a professor at the School for International Training, USA. He is currently working with the Graduate School of Education at Anaheim University. From 2015 to 2016, he served as the 50th President of the TESOL International Association. In 2016, he received one of the Association’s 50-at-50 Awards, when he was voted one of the Fifty Most Influential Figures in the Field, over the last 50 years.

Dr Curtis has published more than 100 articles, book chapters and books, including Learning About Language Assessment: Dilemmas, Decisions, and Directions (2015, National Geographic/Cengage Learning), co-authored with Kathi Bailey. He is also the editor of a new nine-book series ELT In Context, published between 2015 and 2017, and the editor of a new five-book series, Applied Linguistics for the Language Classroom, published in 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan, which includes his book, Language Teaching Methods and Methodologies: The Centrality of Context.

Over the last 25 years, he has been invited to present to around 25,000 teachers in 50 countries, in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as North, South and Central America. He is is based in Ontario, Canada, from where he works as a consultant for education organisations worldwide.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Moving Forward by Going Back: Not Changing but Innovating
Kay Irie
Gakushuin University, Japan

Biography

Kay Irie is a professor at the Faculty of International Social Sciences, Gakushuin University, Tokyo where she develops and coordinates a CLIL-based English program. She also teaches in the TESOL program at Graduate College of Education, Temple University Japan. Her current research interests include CLIL pedagogy, language learning psychology, learner autonomy, and research methods used in these areas including Q-methodology. She is co-editor of Realizing Autonomy: Practice and Reflection in Language Education Contexts (Palgrave 2012). Professor Irie serves on the board member of Education Research Foundation and the organizing committee for the Psychology in Language Learning 3 Conference to be held in 2018 at Waseda University.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Leadership and Innovation
Ljiljana Markovic
University of Belgrade, Serbia

Biography

Dr Ljiljana Markovic is Dean, Chairperson of the Doctoral Studies Program and Full Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She has previously served as Vice Dean for Financial Affairs, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade (2008-2016). She holds the positions of Chairperson of the Association of Japanologists of Serbia, Member of the University of Belgrade Council, Chairperson of the University of Belgrade SYLFF Committee, Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Bilingual Education Board, and Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Culture, Committee on Books Procurement for Public Libraries. In 2010 she received the Gaimu Daijin Sho Award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and in 2011 she received the Dositej Obradovic Award for Pedagogical Achievement. She is the author of a large number of publications in the fields of Japanese studies and economics.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Leadership and Innovation
Yvonne Masters
University of New England, Australia

Biography

Dr Yvonne Masters is currently an adjunct senior lecturer with the University of New England, NSW, Australia. She was a senior lecturer in Professional Classroom Practice in the School of Education, UNE, a position that she accepted after five years as Director of Professional Experience in the same School. Prior to taking up her position at UNE, Yvonne had 30 years' experience in secondary schools, including in the roles of Curriculum Coordinator, Deputy Principal and Principal, roles that developed her skills in leadership, project management, curriculum and assessment. Her teaching experience spans three Australian states. Yvonne's research interests centre on teacher education and policy, professional experience and virtual worlds, with a particular focus on distance education students. Yvonne was awarded her PhD in October 2010 and she has gained, in collaboration with other researchers, four Internal School of Education Research grants, been a partner in a $200,000 ALTC (OLT) grant, "VirtualPREX: Innovative Assessment Using a 3D Virtual World with Pre-service Teachers", in 2014 achieved a UNE Seed Grant for a one year project to explore teacher quality, and in 2015 gained a $50,000 OLT seed grant to develop resources to assist pre-service teachers to gain online teaching skills to assist them in teaching wholly online into virtual schools. She is still an active researcher and presents on both teacher education policy and online teaching at a range of events.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Thriving in Publication: Ethical Guiding Principles for Academic Publication

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Change in Education: By Whom? For Whom?
Peter McCagg
Akita International University, Japan

Biography

Dr Peter McCagg is Professor and Vice President for Academic Affairs of Akita International University (AIU), Japan.

As a member of the AIU board of trustees, Dr McCagg provides leadership for the faculty, who strive to make the university the best destination in Japan for international students to learn about this country, its people and language, and for Japanese students to prepare to become the global leaders that the founding president envisioned when he established AIU in 2004.

Prior to AIU, Dr McCagg worked for New York University as Clinical Professor of English and Director of The American Language Institute. He also taught for many years at International Christian University (ICU), where he served in various administrative assignments including Dean of International Affairs.

For nearly 40 years, Dr McCagg has dedicated his life to helping Japanese engage with people from outside Japan in responsible and meaningful ways, and to helping students from around the world successfully navigate life in Japan.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Leadership and Innovation
Keith W. Miller
University of Missouri – St. Louis, United States

Biography

Keith W. Miller is the Orthwein Endowed Professor for Lifelong Learning in the Sciences at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, United States. In that position, he is partnering with the St. Louis Science Center. Dr Miller’s research interests are in computer ethics, online learning, and software testing. He is a past editor-in-chief of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. He was awarded the 2011 Joseph Weizenbaum Award in Information and Computer Ethics by the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT), and is currently the President of that society. He has been a principal investigator of grants from the US National Science Foundation to study the effects of ethics education for computer science students, and to encourage scientists to become teachers.

Featured Workshop Presentation (2024) | TBA

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Sophisticated Machines and Innovative Education: Who (or What) Will Thrive?
Bernard Montoneri
National Chengchi University, Taiwan

Biography

Bernard Montoneri earned his PhD (African, Arab, and Asian Words; History, Languages, Literature) and his BA in Chinese from the University of Provence, Aix-Marseille I, France. He has taught Literature (European, French, Children, American, and British) and languages (French, English, and Italian) for two decades. He has studied eight languages, including Sanskrit, and has obtained eight university diplomas. He is, as of August 1, 2017, an Associate Professor in the Department of European Languages and Cultures, at National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. He has around 50 publications, including journal papers, conferences papers, and books. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the IAFOR Journal of Education until December 31, 2017. Bernard edited 12 issues of the journal. His research interests include French literature, children's literature, translation studies, French and English writing, automated scoring systems, teaching and learning evaluation, data envelopment analysis, networking, and teaching methods. He is a reviewer for top academic journals and has obtained more than 20 teaching and research grants.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Thriving in Publication: Ethical Guiding Principles for Academic Publication
Kristin Palmer
University of Virginia, USA

Biography

Dr Kristin Palmer is the Director of Online Learning Programs at the University of Virginia (UVa). In this role, she is responsible for open educational resources, facilitating the assessment and fulfilment of pan-university e-learning needs, and conducting research. She represents UVa on the Networked Learning Collaborative of Virginia (NLCVa), she is a co-chair of the Online Education Advisory Committee, and is a member of the Accessibility Task Force and the President’s Strategic Planning Steering Committee. She co-created and is on the Advisory Board for the annual Innovation in Pedagogy Summit at UVa.

Prior to UVa, Dr Palmer worked in both education and business on complex technology projects. She has worked at Hewlett-Packard, eBay, Intuit, and Disney.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Leadership and Innovation
Zachary Walker
Institute of Education, University College London, UK

Biography

Dr Zachary Walker is an academic, author, and speaker. In 2018, Zachary joined the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education (IOE) as an Associate Professor. At IOE, Zachary currently serves in the Department of Psychology and Human Development as the Programme Leader for Graduate Programs in Special Education and International Inclusive Leadership.

Prior to joining IOE, Zachary was a faculty member at the National Institute of Education in Singapore from 2013-2018, where he served as a leader in Pedagogical Development and Innovation and on the 21st Century Teaching and Learning Framework taskforce.

He was named a Think College Emerging Scholar (2012), as well as a Millennium Milestone Maker by the World Academy for the Future of Women (2015). He was awarded the John Cheung Social Media Award for Innovation in Teaching and Pedagogy (2015), and was nominated for the Wharton School Reimagine Education Awards (2016). Zachary's current work focuses on educational neuroscience, mobile technology, and leadership. He has delivered talks to education leaders and higher education faculty in North America, Central America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | The Things that Do Not Change
Tien-Hui Chiang
Zhengzhou University, China

Biography

Distinguished Professor Tien-Hui Chiang is the Vice President of RC04 (Sociology of Education) of International Sociological Association, UNESCO, a member of the Constitutional Standing Committee of the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies UNESCO and the International Distinguished Professor of University of Crete, Greece. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar, visiting at UW-Madison, Wisconsin, USA, Guest Professor at Beijing Normal University and is the Ex-President of the Taiwan Association for Sociology of Education. His specialty covers sociology of education, globalization and education policy, sociology of curriculum, teaching profession and comparative education. He has written over 100 essays. He was the co-editor of Cross Education Dialogue, Crisis in Education and Interculturalism. He was also a contributor to Elite, Privileges and Excellence edited by Professor S. Ball. His outstanding academic achievements have awarded Professor Chiang many prizes, such as the Distinguished Scholar of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. He is the editor of International Journal of Educational Research and Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and a section editor of the Springer Encyclopedia: Educational Philosophy and Theories and the Springer Encyclopedia: Teacher Education.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Teacher Competences Function as the Discourse of International Competitiveness within the Institutionalized Milieu in the Epoch of Globalization
Steve Cornwell
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) & Osaka Jogakuin University, Japan

Biography

Steve Cornwell is the President of IAFOR, and President of the Academic Governing Board. He coordinates and oversees the International Academic Advisory Board, and also serves on the organization's Board of Directors.

Dr Cornwell is Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Osaka Jogakuin University, and also teaches in the online portion of the MA TESOL Programme for the New School in New York. He helped write and design several of the New School courses and has been involved with the programme since its inception.

He has also been involved with the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), (an affiliate of IAFOR) serving on its National Board of Directors as Director of Programme from 2012-2016; where his duties involved working with a volunteer team of 50+ to put on JALT’s annual, international conference each autumn.

Most recently, since 2012, he has been the Committee Chair of Osaka Jogakuin University’s Lifelong Learning Committee and is responsible for their evening extension Programme geared towards alumni and community members. He is also the Vice-Chair of Osaka Jogakuin University’s English Education Committee which is responsible for suggesting policy regarding English Education and also responsible for developing material for the integrated curriculum.

Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

He is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children, and lives in Japan.

Paul Lai
Nagoya University, Japan

Biography

Dr Paul Lai is the director and founder of the Department of Academic Writing Education (Mei-Writing) at Nagoya University, Japan. After receiving a DPhil in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences from the University of Sussex, he has been devoting himself to research on how to make logic education practical and indispensable to higher education.

Dr Lai came to Japan in 2006, first working as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo Institute of Technology for a project on logic application. In 2008, he moved to Hokkaido University, where he started a project to apply logical thinking education to academic writing. Through the project, he helped the university establish the pilot scheme for its first academic writing centre.

In 2010, Dr Lai moved to Nagoya University, where he is developing the project of applying logical thinking education to research writing. In 2011, the Department of Academic Writing Education (nicknamed “Mei-Writing”) was established based on the logical thinking approach. Since then the department has employed 11 full-time associate professors and more than 20 teaching assistants.

During his time at Hokkaido University, Dr Lai was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation for his distinguished services at the writing centre. Since moving to Nagoya University, he has won an education grant for the Mei-Writing project five consecutive times. In April 2017 he won a four-year Kakenhi grant from JSPS for the development of logic education in research writing.

Featured Presentation (2017) | Change in Academic Writing Education
Tzu-Bin Lin
National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

Biography

Dr Tzu-Bin Lin (林子斌) is an associate professor at the Department of Education and Graduate Institute of Education Policy and Administration, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Prior to this position, he was the full-time learning researcher at Bournemouth University (BU) in the UK and assistant professor in the Policy and Leadership Academic Group in the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore. While working at NIE, He was the Coordinator for Management and Leadership in Schools (MLS) program for two years. Currently, Dr Lin is the Head of Intern Program and Supervision Division at the Office of Teacher Education and Career Service at NTNU. He is also in charge of the nation-wide leadership empowerment program for potential curriculum leaders in junior high schools funded by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. Dr Lin’s research interests are in education policy and leadership, media literacy and TESOL. He was the executive editor and editorial board member of the Bulletin of Educational Research. Currently, he is an assistant editor of Cogent Education and editorial board member in several international journals such as Asia TEFL, NAMLE journal of Media Literacy Education, Secondary Education Quarterly (Chinese) and Journal of Educational Research and Development (Chinese).

Featured Presentation (2017) | Continuing Professional Development for Educational Professionals in Secondary Schools: A Case Study of a Leadership Empowerment Program in Taiwan
Yvonne Masters
University of New England, Australia

Biography

Dr Yvonne Masters is currently an adjunct senior lecturer with the University of New England, NSW, Australia. She was a senior lecturer in Professional Classroom Practice in the School of Education, UNE, a position that she accepted after five years as Director of Professional Experience in the same School. Prior to taking up her position at UNE, Yvonne had 30 years' experience in secondary schools, including in the roles of Curriculum Coordinator, Deputy Principal and Principal, roles that developed her skills in leadership, project management, curriculum and assessment. Her teaching experience spans three Australian states. Yvonne's research interests centre on teacher education and policy, professional experience and virtual worlds, with a particular focus on distance education students. Yvonne was awarded her PhD in October 2010 and she has gained, in collaboration with other researchers, four Internal School of Education Research grants, been a partner in a $200,000 ALTC (OLT) grant, "VirtualPREX: Innovative Assessment Using a 3D Virtual World with Pre-service Teachers", in 2014 achieved a UNE Seed Grant for a one year project to explore teacher quality, and in 2015 gained a $50,000 OLT seed grant to develop resources to assist pre-service teachers to gain online teaching skills to assist them in teaching wholly online into virtual schools. She is still an active researcher and presents on both teacher education policy and online teaching at a range of events.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Thriving in Publication: Ethical Guiding Principles for Academic Publication

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Change in Education: By Whom? For Whom?
José McClanahan
Creighton University, USA

Biography

Dr Joseph (José) McClanahan is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Associate Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. There, he teaches at all levels of the curriculum, including language and culture courses abroad. He has taught in both Latin America and Spain. Recently, his research interests have focused on the area of teaching courses related to Languages for Special Purposes, in particular courses related to teaching Spanish to future healthcare professionals. He also has a strong interest in curricular development and design that centres on new students entering the university. He has also led student educational trips to almost every continent on the globe.

Featured Presentation (2017) | Skills for the Future: How Mentoring Students Through Undergraduate Research Provides Tools for Success After University
Ted O’Neill
Gakushuin University, Japan

Biography

Ted O’Neill is a professor at Gakushuin University, Tokyo, in the Faculty of International Social Sciences. He previously taught at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Tokyo Medical and Dental University and J. F. Oberlin University. Ted was co-editor of The Language Teacher for the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) and later served on the JALT National Board of Directors as Director of Public Relations from 2012 to 2016. He received an MA in ESL and Bilingual Education from the University of Massachusetts/Boston, USA in 1996 and completed a postgraduate Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy through the Graduate School of Education at the State University of New York in 2014. He is a part of a research group studying implementation of content-based language education and content and language integrated learning in East and Southeast Asia with the generous support of The Research Institute for Oriental Cul­tures at Gakushuin University.​

Justin Sanders
Osaka University, Japan

Biography

Justin Sanders has worked in a range of educational settings globally. Most recently he served in Singapore as Global Recognition Manager for the International Baccalaureate (IB), helping the organisation build bridges with higher education institutions around the world and improving postsecondary pathways for more than 100,000 IB students annually. Before relocating to Singapore, he spent several years with the IB’s research department in Washington, DC, investigating and communicating the impact of an IB education. During his time at the Association for Community College Trustees, he assisted community college boards and senior administrators around the United States in improving their institutional governance and administration. Prior to moving to Washington, he served for two years as an education volunteer with the United States Peace Corps in Azerbaijan, where he worked on improving educational infrastructure and capacity in a small rural community. Throughout his career, he has helped to organise dozens of local, national and international education conferences and events. He holds a BA in intercultural communication from the University of Arizona, an MA in international education from The George Washington University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in international education at Osaka University, Japan. His research explores the conception and implementation of internationalisation at national universities in Asia.

Zachary Walker
Institute of Education, University College London, UK

Biography

Dr Zachary Walker is an academic, author, and speaker. In 2018, Zachary joined the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education (IOE) as an Associate Professor. At IOE, Zachary currently serves in the Department of Psychology and Human Development as the Programme Leader for Graduate Programs in Special Education and International Inclusive Leadership.

Prior to joining IOE, Zachary was a faculty member at the National Institute of Education in Singapore from 2013-2018, where he served as a leader in Pedagogical Development and Innovation and on the 21st Century Teaching and Learning Framework taskforce.

He was named a Think College Emerging Scholar (2012), as well as a Millennium Milestone Maker by the World Academy for the Future of Women (2015). He was awarded the John Cheung Social Media Award for Innovation in Teaching and Pedagogy (2015), and was nominated for the Wharton School Reimagine Education Awards (2016). Zachary's current work focuses on educational neuroscience, mobile technology, and leadership. He has delivered talks to education leaders and higher education faculty in North America, Central America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | The Things that Do Not Change