October 2007, Page 5

IASCE 30th Anniversary Conference –
Nagoya, Japan, June 6-8, 2008

The year 2008 will be a special one of IASCE. We are proud to announce a second international conference, after the January 2008 conference in Turin, Italy. The 2nd conference will be held in Nagoya, Japan on June 6-8. This will be our first international conference in Japan and our second in East Asia, after the successful 2004 Singapore conference.

From its founding in the 1970s, IASCE has encouraged the dissemination and development of cooperative learning and related educational practices, and the significance of cooperative learning has been recognized all over the world. Recently, the waves generated by cooperative learning have reached Asian countries, blending with their own promotive educational activities. Thus, IASCE is proud to mark its 30th anniversary with an international conference in Japan.

This conference will be a joint event with JASCE’s (Japan Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education) 5th national conference. Although JASCE is a young organization, formed in 2004, Japan has more than fifty years of cooperative learning. JASCE sees this conference as an opportunity to share this rich history with our colleagues from other countries and to contribute to the development of cooperative learning around the world.

The Nagoya, June, 2008 conference offers educators an opportunity to explore formal and informal educational models, strategies, and practices for successful cooperation in education. During the conference, participants may have a chance to visit Japanese schools which have extensively implemented cooperative learning. In various workshops and interactive sessions, participants will share resources and expertise and will interact with educators who are helping students in the diverse range of educational context found in today’s schools. The languages of the conference will be Japanese and English. Some sessions will be solely in either English or Japanese, while others will be bilingual with translators.

The conference invites presentations that address theory and practice, as well as traditional and action research in the following areas:

§ Building cooperation and resolving conflict in schools and communities with diverse needs

§ Multidisciplinary collaboration between Cooperative Learning and other instructional methods

In the morning, school visitations are scheduled at Inuyama city schools. Participants in the school visits will gather at 8:00 am and depart for the school together by chartered bus. In the afternoon, some half-day workshops are scheduled while an optional guided city tour can also be arranged. Tour participants may be able to enjoy a panoramic view of the city from the top floor in Japanese castle “Inuyama-Jo” (a national treasure).

Two conference days will include various paper presentations as well as experiential sessions by leaders in the field and others. Learn new skills and consider novel points of view. Learn how to apply workshop contents to your respective content areas and grade levels. Also included are stimulating, interactive keynote presentations, and roundtables with informal interaction.

Last, but not least, from Friday to Sunday, an exhibition on the history of Cooperative Learning in Japan and the world will be held.

For details on Pre-conference Workshops and the Call for Proposals, please go to: