51st Annual Conference:
July 16-18, 2025 + Extended Access

Our four subthemes this year are:

Education for sustainable development:

Student, teachers and staff need to ensure their wellbeing in the present while at the same time preparing to play a leadership role in confronting the VUCA challenges in the future.  This balance is all the more difficult to attain in conflict zones, where even a bare minimum of support and educational continuity are hard to achieve. How can we best prevent student and staff burnout?  What specific knowledge, skills and values should we be fostering among students faced with climate change and ongoing military conflict?

Enduring relevance of education:

Higher education becomes most significant when it enables students to function well in their careers after graduation. This can be achieved by helping students to develop a range of skills while still at university through community engagement and academic partnerships with industry, NGOs, or the Third Sector. Given the unpredictability of the “VUCA world” in which we live and work, what can best ensure that the learning they experience ensures higher education remains relevant?

Transformative learning:

The premise of transformative learning is that learning should help students become aware of the frame of reference within which they reach their judgments through self-reflection and thus broaden their capacity to engage with other points of view.  In an increasingly diverse campus, where equity and equality are viewed differently by different groups, how can we best help students both identify, remain true to or develop and change their own values while at the same time expanding their ability to understand and communicate with “the other” in a genuine and meaningful way?

Technological and digital emerging trends:

Though the rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has often outstripped our capacity to grasp its potential both as an aid and as an obstacle to learning, those who fear its effects in academe seem more numerous than its supporters.  What new knowledge tools do AI and other digital technologies offer that might be of use?  And how can we best integrate technological innovation into the existing curriculum to prepare our students for the current world of work, while safeguarding against its dangers?