Call For Papers
Call For Papers
14th CESA Biennial Conference
Islamabad, 23-25 November 2025
We are pleased to announce the 14th CESA Biennial Conference, which will be held in Islamabad, Pakistan on 23-25 November 2025.
The theme for the CESA 2025 is “Challenges to Inclusive and Equitable Education” https://cesa2025.aiou.edu.pk/
Rationale:
While most children in the world today have access to formal education of some kind, the extent of that access and the quality of provision remain highly uneven. In recognition of this, UN SDG 4 focuses on the goal of achieving ‘inclusive and equitable’ education. But what exactly do ‘equity and inclusion’ mean, as applied to education, and what are the challenges to achieving these aims – particularly in the enormously diverse societies of Asia?
The 14th CESA conference, hosted by the Comparative Education Society of Pakistan (CESPAK) in collaboration with the Allama Iqbal Open University (Islamabad) takes this question as its guiding theme. We invite scholars from Asia and beyond to join us to debate how education systems have responded to calls to become more equitable and inclusive (and why), and to identify challenges that remain.
In discussing those challenges, we will focus not only on ‘solutions’, but also on ‘causes’. In the conference’s plenary sessions, leading international scholars will reflect on how social, economic, cultural and political contexts influence the inclusivity and equity of education systems. Key contextual factors include the pervasive insecurity experienced by today’s youth, and the enormous expectations placed on education to ‘transform’ society and render learners ‘future-ready’. Speakers will discuss the background to calls for ‘transformation’ and their implications for scholarship, policy and practice. Following on from CESA’s previous Hiroshima conference (on the theme of ‘Educational Crisis’), they will query the discourse of ‘crisis’ underlying the portrayal of ‘challenges’ requiring a ‘transformative’ response.
Any discussion of inclusion and equity necessarily involves reflection on exclusionary and inequitable ideas, practices and institutions. Participants in the conference are encouraged to share the findings of research that explores problems of educational exclusion, inequality or discrimination, with respect to class, gender, ethnicity, disability, residential status or any other dimensions. We welcome papers examining all types of education, whether formal or non-formal, from pre-school to tertiary level and beyond. Also encouraged is the submission of papers that examine how challenges to educational equity and inclusion are related to wider social, economic and political conditions in Asian societies. One significant aspect of those conditions involves the Covid-19 crisis and its enormous and lingering impact across the region. Another involves the spread of digital technology, the rise of AI, and their implications not only for equity and inclusion in education, but also for the sustainability of our existing social, political and economic order.
A further aspect of discussions of inclusion and equity relates to the state of the field of Comparative Education itself. In recent years, calls for ‘decolonisation’ of the social sciences, including educational studies and comparative education, have become increasingly prominent in Western (or Anglophone) educational scholarship. Such calls are premised on a vision of established scholarship as deeply exclusionary and ‘Eurocentric’. Participants in CESA’s conference are invited to contribute to this debate. To what extent do calls for ‘decolonisation’ resonate with Asian scholars? When it comes to addressing challenges to educational equity and inclusion, are such calls helpful or distracting? And if decolonisation is seen as a pressing challenge, what would it look like from Asian perspectives?
Paper presentations at the conference will be grouped around a number of sub-themes. An indicative list of proposed sub-themes is provided here.
The emergence of Islamabad as Pakistan’s capital in 1963 marked a deliberate shift from Karachi, strategically positioning the administrative hub on the Potohar Plateau in the northwest.
As Pakistan’s vibrant nucleus, Islamabad embodies the nation’s dynamic spirit. Balancing modernity with traditional values, it encapsulates the country’s aspirations and historical richness. It symbolizes a youthful nation’s pursuit of progress while honoring its cultural heritage.
Sub-themes for paper presentations
Researchers can submit their work on the following sub-themes:
1. Policy frameworks and curriculum planning
How can comparative research contribute to an understanding of the contextual factors that shape policy and curricula? What are the implications of education policy frameworks and formal curriculum development for equity and inclusion, as well as for other goals we have reason to value? How far, and why, do nationalist and instrumentalist visions of education’s purpose dominate in policy discourse (as reflected, for example, in prioritisation of ‘patriotic education’ and STEM)? To the extent that such visions prevail, what is lost or neglected in terms of education’s potential contribution to building more equitable and inclusive societies?
2. Teacher education and pedagogy:
What role do arrangements for preparing the teaching force play in creating the conditions for equitable and inclusive education (or its opposite)? How can we understand the role of the teacher and the importance of teacher professionalism? Why do we hear growing talk today of the significance of technology in ‘transforming’ the role of teachers, and how should educational comparativists respond to this?
3. Assessment and evaluation:
Assessment practices are crucial to education’s role in certifying or validating individuals for positions in higher education or the labour market. As such, the credibility of assessment is fundamental to education’s claims to deliver equity and inclusivity. To what extent to our existing arrangements for assessment and evaluation fulfil this function? In a context of intense (and intensifying) competition for credentials across Asia, how should we understand the role of high-stakes examinations in reflecting and reinforcing ideologies of ‘meritocracy’?
4. Higher education:
Across contemporary Asia and beyond, we have moved (or are moving) from elitist to mass provision of higher education. This has involved a transformation of the meaning and nature of higher education, involving widespread commercialisation and commodification of the sector (though with significant national variations). We have also seen a rapid growth in cross-border flows of students seeking international credentials. How should we understand these developments and their implications for equity and inclusion – within countries, and between them?
5. Educational technology and AI:
Powerful interests are promoting the transformational potential of digital technology and AI, placing pressure on schools and teachers to incorporate the use of related tools in their pedagogical practice. Some advocates of technology also hype the potential of technology to bypass schools and teachers altogether, offering direct access to ‘learners’. To what extent, and why, should such calls be welcomed – or resisted? What can we learn from Asian experience so far?
6. Educational finance and administration:
What are the implications for inclusion and equity of different approaches to educational finance and administration? In particular, how should we interpret growing pressure in many societies for the commercialisation or privatisation of educational institutions? What is causing such pressure, and what are its effects on students, educators and educational institutions?
7. Shadow education:
Related to the growing role of the private sector in educational provision in many societies is the expansion of examination preparatory tutoring – the most widespread form of ‘shadow education’. What is causing the growth of the ‘shadow’ sector in education, and what does this phenomenon mean for students, for formal educational institutions, and society at large?
8. Education for global citizenship (GCED), peace and sustainable development:
Related to SDG 4.7, this sub-theme embraces a wide range of issues and concerns involved in efforts to create a more peaceable and sustainable world. How is this discourse – associated with initiatives such as UNESCO’s 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainability – interpreted in policy and practice across Asia? Why do policymakers and commentators in different societies choose to emphasise different aspects of this agenda, and does this matter?
9. Gender and challenges to equity in education:
Issues of gender are relate to all of the other sub-themes listed. However, problems of equity and inclusion affecting girls and women in particular are so serious as to warrant a dedicated sub-theme. What is the situation of girls and women in terms of access to education, and educational trajectories, in societies across Asia? Has there been significant movement in related areas of policy and practice, in what direction, and why? And what is the relationship between ideological or cultural stances on gender equity and inclusion and wider political agendas for education?
10. Mental health, psychology and ‘social and emotional learning’:
Education policy discourse today features much talk of the need to foster ‘resilience’ in order to prepare young people for the challenges of the 21st century. Psychology and neuroscience are widely seen as offering insights key to rendering learners ‘future-ready’. But to what extent do such ideas and the related promotion of ‘social and emotional learning’ really address the challenges of 21st-century life? Or is the focus on individuals and their mental states (or ‘brains’) often a way of shifting responsibility from the state and society onto learners themselves?
11. ‘Special education’:
Educational provision for students with disabilities or learning difficulties is often dealt with under the banner of ‘special education’. How do different societies and education systems address the challenges of provision for these groups? What factors account for the different approaches we see across Asia and beyond? And what are the implications of policy and practice in ‘special education’ both for disabled students themselves and for society more widely?
12. Technical and vocational education:
Policymaking elites across Asia as elsewhere have long been keen to promote the technical or vocational (TVE) ‘track’ as an alternative to the ‘academic’ route. Policy rhetoric frequently bemoans the allegedly irrational prejudice that deters many students from taking the vocational path. But how attractive is TVE as an alternative to academic instruction? What precisely is the economic case for TVE (and for what kind of TVE)? Or to what extent does TVE remain ‘a good idea for other people’s children’, useful largely for branding a proportion of students as ‘failures’ in the competition for credentials and high-status employment.
13. Multilateral organisations and global educational governance:
Multilateral organisations such as the OECD, World Bank and UNESCO today play a considerable role in disseminating much of the terminology and conceptual apparatus of education policy discourse. But what exactly is the nature and extent of their influence on policy and practice in Asian contexts? To what extent do these multilateral organisations shape the direction and purpose of education reforms across Asia? Or is the invoking of multilateral targets and agendas by national policymakers often a way of legitimating reforms that governments would anyway have pursued, for reasons of their own?
14. Distance learning and non-formal education:
Advances in digital technology and the near-universalisation of access to the Internet have had a significant impact both on distance learning practice, and on public perceptions of its potential. The same technological shifts have also meant that much non-formal education is now accessed online. The Covid-19 pandemic gave a huge boost to the adoption of online delivery in all spheres of education. But to what extent is the apparent ease with which distance learning can now be accessed something to be welcomed? How far, or in what circumstances, does online delivery enhance or undermine equity and inclusion?
15. Lifelong learning and adult education:
Much talk of the need for lifelong learning is today associated with perceptions that rapid change in technology requires workers constantly to ‘re-skill’ and adapt. But there are other ways of conceptualising lifelong learning – for example, by seeing it as a source of fulfilment for learners, rather than simply as a means of enhancing or ‘re-tooling’ their ‘human capital’. In other words, lifelong learning, like other forms of education, can have an ‘intrinsic’ as well as an ‘instrumental’ value. What conceptions of lifelong learning are prevalent in different Asian societies today, and why? And what are the implications for societal equity?
16. The decolonisation debate - Asian perspectives:
Fervent calls today for ‘decolonisation’ can be seen as demanding ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’ at a global or civilisational level. Adopting a narrative of enduring ‘hegemonic’ dominance by ‘Western coloniality/modernity’, decolonial theorists in the field of comparative education exhort us to embrace ‘Indigenous’ knowledges and push back against Western ‘epistemic violence’. To what extent do such calls resonate across Asia? How far can the key challenges confronting Asian education today be explained by reference to Western ‘coloniality’? Or do Western/Eastern, ‘coloniser’/‘colonised’ binaries distort or obscure the most pressing issues facing Asian educators and educational scholars?
Important Dates:
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Call for abstract/paper | 10th February 2025 |
| Deadline for abstract submission | 30th April 2025 |
| Notification of abstract acceptance | 15th May 2025 |
| Early bird registration deadline | 30th September 2025 |
| Deadline for registration | 30th October 2025 |
| Pre-conference workshops/webinars | 22nd November 2025 |
| Conference dates | 23-25 November 2025 |
Mode of Presentations:
- Multimedia Presentation
- Panel Discussion
- Keynote Speeches
- Round table discussion
- Poster presentation
- Documentary
We cordially invite you to participate in CESA 2025.
Best regards,
CESA 2025 Organization Committee
Contacts:
Email: cesa2025@aiou.edu.pk
Conference Website: https://cesa2025.aiou.edu.pk/
