The School of Education at IU Bloomington was among six institutions to participate in the Midwest Comparative and International Education Society virtual conference on Sept. 3.

Patricia Kubow, professor of international and comparative education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, served on the conference’s organizing committee and as moderator and discussant of the “Policy Approaches in Education” session.

Thirteen IU School of Education graduate students presented their research at the conference:

• Michael Bienz on the education of refugees from Myanmar in Thailand.
• Shukufe Rahman on the development of informal curriculum for Rohingya in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
• Norah Alharbi and Yusra Ibrahim on legal special education provisions of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
• Antonia Bacigalupa Albaum on changing mission statements and policy priorities in Salvadoran higher education.
• Zack Rice on bilingual intercultural education challenges in Peru.
• Alexandria Truex on language policy and separatist sentiment in Catalonia.
• Takuya Akada on the pursuit of higher education as a cultural construction in contemporary Cambodia.
• Mariah Pol on peace education and curriculum development for U.S. teachers on an international learning experience in Northern Ireland.
• Katheryn Purcell on students’ ideological autonomy and the role of cosmopolitanism in citizenship dialogue.
• Ling Chen on language and cultural value transmission of early educators teaching English and Chinese to young children.
• Nausheen Iftikhar on gender bias in primary-level textbooks and visual illustrations in studies of Muslim countries of South Asia and South East Asia.
• Hana Jun on history teachers’ curricular changes to address gender in South Korea. 

The other participating schools and colleges of education were from Loyola University Chicago, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota Twin Cities and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.