Attallah Ph.D. Students Present at International Research Conferences

Jingwen Xing at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Annual Meeting

The Attallah College if Educational Studies cohort of 13 Ph.D. in Education students from Shanghai Normal University (SNU) recently traveled to the San Francisco area to attend and present at the annual meeting for the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), a global organization that brings together educational researchers and practitioners from around the world. The students involved are part of Attallah College’s first Chapman-SNU partnership, a three-year pilot program. As part of the program, the SNU students are spending their first year studying at Chapman alongside US-based Ph.D. in Education students in Orange County. Next year, they will return to China to complete their remaining Ph.D. courses under a hybrid model for their second year and will complete their research and doctoral dissertations in China during their final year.

Prospective CIES contributors are invited each year to propose research that fits the conference theme and builds on the evolution of educational practice within the field of comparative and international education. This year’s conference theme was the intergovernmental shift in perspective on the purpose of education.

All 13 of Attallah’s SNU cohort attended and two students, Jingwen Xing and Feijun Yu, presented. Feijun Tu discussed her research, “The Fear and Courage of Incomplete Teachers” at a roundtable session, and Jinwen Xing presented “Pilot Study on Financial Independence from the Perspective of American College Students” at a poster session.

Wanlu Li at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education Research Day

Attallah Assistant Professor Ryan M. Allen, Ph.D., accompanied the Attallah Ph.D. students to the conference, where he presented his research on predatory journals at a roundtable session. Dr. Allen has been involved with CIES since 2014 and serves on its committee in the Study Abroad and International Student SIG as awards co-chair.

Nine of the Ph.D. students also participated in the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education Research Day, which coincided with CIES this year in the Bay Area. This mini conference’s theme was “Promoting Interdisciplinary Approaches to bridging Educational Practice and Research.”

“These conferences are great opportunities for our SNU Ph.D. students to meet and network with other California-based graduate students,” said Dr. Allen. “This exposure also helps them build networks at home that will be immensely valuable when they return to China in the fall.”