Call for papers

The 19th AFDECE colloquium will take place

from August 1st to August 3rd at the IFASIC (Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo).

You can propose a communication until March 31st, 2023.

The IFASIC (Kinshasa)

is organizing the 19th AFDECE(French Association for Comparative Education and Exchanges) international Colloquium from from August 1st to August 3rd 2023

The AFDECE 2023 international symposium is a continuation of the 2022 symposium (University of Havana, October 25-28, 2022) which focused on the issue of educational inequalities in the world and the actions to be taken to reduce them. It was a question of studying the inequalities between the countries of the North and the countries of the South in front of education, the social inequalities, the inequalities related to the sex, the spatial inequalities, the inequalities related to the handicap, the inequalities in front of the mother tongue or the foreign languages, the inequalities in front of ICT...

As a follow-up to this reflection, the 19th AFDECE colloquium, which will be organized by IFASIC in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), will focus on the issue of education in a context of crisis.

Starting from the premise that education must be a common good for humanity, we will ask ourselves the following central question: How can we allow all citizens of the planet to have equitable access to education?

Today, the planet is sick, a victim of our mistreatment, with the consequences of this human unconsciousness, global warming and the desertification of certain parts of the world, which leads to the inexorable flight of their populations to more hospitable lands, at least from a climatic point of view.

Today, the planet is experiencing a glaring disparity in terms of wealth distribution and access to well-being. Will we continue for long to accept that 1% of the human race holds half of the world's wealth and that the richest 20% own 95% of the world's assets? This mismanagement of the planet results in hunger, migrations... and pandemics that aggravate social inequalities, as recent studies on the Covid crisis have shown. And what about the wars that add to this apocalyptic picture?

Education has a central role to play in these crisis contexts. What can be done to ensure that all young people have the right to a quality education, so that the 244 million out-of-school children in the world (UNESCO) attend school? What can be done to reduce "learning poverty" (see UIS-UNESCO indicator 4.1.1.), which has increased by a third in ten years in the countries of the South? Will we be able to accept for much longer that today, in the world, 70% of 10 year old pupils are unable to read a simple text? But isn't this constant, which is obvious in the countries of the South, also true in certain countries of the North, where populations of pupils are very heterogeneous in terms of their social expectations? How can we manage education in the context of the current crisis without better political management of these problems at the global and local levels? How can we reduce the glaring inequalities in economic resources and in education so that all our children can have access to education, regardless of their origin? How can we ensure that the universal right to digital technology becomes a reality in terms of infrastructure, equipment, resources and uses, particularly in the service of education, training and learning? How can we revisit and transform our education systems to adapt them to tomorrow's world?

These questions will be addressed at the 19th AFDECE conference to be held at IFASIC in Kinshasa from August 1 to 3, 2022, on the sidelines of the Jeux de la Francophonie.

The comparative framework established by AFDECE, as well as the intercultural perspective of this 19th colloquium, offer a particularly favourable ground for rigorous and constructive exchanges around our theme. These exchanges should lead to concrete proposals for action.
This colloquium concerns researchers, decision-makers, trainers and teachers.

At the closing ceremony, a prize will be awarded for the best thesis published in French in 2022-2023 on the theme of the conference.

Instructions for authors

Your paper proposal must be in line with one of the workshop themes presented above. 

Your communication proposals must be sent to AFDECE exclusively in digital form no later than March 31st, 2023.

The text of the proposal should not exceed 3000 characters including spaces.

The following must be included in a legible manner

• The title of the communication
• The name and surname of the author
• The institutional affiliation
• The position
• The email address

The proposal must be in line with one of the proposed themes.

 It will include :

• four to six key words
• a research problematic,
• the methodology used
• the essential results
• a short bibliography of the authors cited in the proposed text.

It should be sent in Word format to the following address: info@afdece.com

 The complete texts to be published must be sent before the conference (15 000 characters including spaces maximum).

 Instructions for oral presentations

Papers may be presented in French or English. Speakers will be requested to use a slide show in one of the two other languages, different from the language used for the oral communication.