4th Asian Roundtable of Presidents of the Universities of education. > History of ARPUE > History of ARPUE

On 22 May 2009, the Roundtable of Presidents of Universities of Education was formed in Hong Kong by the leaders of 30 higher educational institutions in Asia with the aim to facilitate contact between educational leaders and educators and to support the development of educational endeavours. The theme was aptly phrased “Universities of Education: Transforming Future Learning in Asian Societies”. The inaugural event was hosted by the Hong Kong institute of Education, Hong Kong (HKIEd). The event saw presentations by several distinguished speakers, namely, Professor XuJialu, Director of the College of Chinese Language and Culture, Beijing Normal University and a former Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, PRC: Professor Dato’ Dr. Ibrahim Ahmad Bajunid. Senior Vice President. INTI-University College Laureate International Universities, Malaysia, and Professor Mark Bray, Director of International Institute for Educational Planning, United nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Also attending the event included Professor Ruth Hayhoe, a distinguished scholar and HKIEd’s President Emerita. The speakers emphasized the importance of promoting regional and international collaboration on aspects of education and teacher education.

Following the success of the inaugural event, a 2nd Roundtable was again hosted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education on 3 November 2011. The 2nd Roundtable further committed participating universities to further strive to advance knowledge about all aspects of education and to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education and teacher education through the theme: “Envisioning the Future Asian Universities of Education”. The members pledge to provide a platform for universities to build awareness, appreciation and support for educational endeavors that will have positive impacts on education policy, practice and innovation.

The biennial event of the Roundtable of Presidents of Universities of Education was held on 7 November 2013 and was hosted by Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia. The theme of the Round Table in Malaysia is “Empowering Change in Education”. Through the 3rd Roundtable, educational leaders and educators suggest Change in education could include, though not be limited to: curricula overhaul, student learning, workforce planning to address issues of sustainable education, innovative approaches to teaching and learning, and new approaches to meeting challenges in educational leadership and management. As the educational leaders and educators in Asia step through that path of change in education, their engagement and ‘voices’ of expertise guided and supported the work and change the way education is transformed to give us new empowering change in Education.

The upcoming roundtable will be held on February 2, 2016 at Gwangju National University of Education. The topic of this roundtable is ‘Cultivating humanity in education.’ Performance-oriented and competitive nature of the contemporary society has brought to our schools myriads of issues. These issues should be considered seriously in terms of fundamental roles of education. It is believed that the foundation of the education stems not from a person dedicated to social functions, but from a person who encompasses noble characters. Like ‘the quality of education cannot surpass that of the educator,’ the fundamentals of character education are absolutely affected by the characters of educators. It is our hope that through this roundtable, we will be able to examine the current status of the character education in Asia and to share various opinions of character education from different regions. In addition, we wish to establish a consortium for character education that will incorporate the results of the roundtable.