Bringing educators together across borders, generations and ideas
For more than a century, the World Education Fellowship (WEF) has created spaces where educators, researchers, practitioners, policymakers and reformers can meet, exchange ideas and explore how education can contribute to human development, international understanding and a more peaceful world.
From the Fellowship’s early international conferences in Europe to contemporary lectures, symposia, section meetings and collaborative events around the world, gathering people around important educational questions has always been central to WEF’s mission.
Today, that tradition continues through international and national events organised by WEF, its Sections and partner organisations.
A Global Meeting Place for Education
WEF conferences and events are designed to encourage dialogue, reflection, exchange and fellowship.
They bring together people from different educational traditions, disciplines, professions and countries to consider both enduring and emerging questions:
- What is education ultimately for?
- How can education support the full development of every person?
- How should schools, universities and communities respond to social and technological change?
- How can education strengthen democracy, peace and international understanding?
- What can educators in different parts of the world learn from one another?
The format may change, but the purpose remains remarkably consistent with the Fellowship’s beginnings: to create opportunities for people committed to education to meet, think together and learn across boundaries.
Forthcoming Events
Join the next WEF conversation
Details of forthcoming World Education Fellowship conferences, lectures, seminars, webinars, Section events and collaborative programmes will be published here as they are confirmed.
Events may be held:
In person
through WEF Sections, international gatherings and partner organisations.
Online
allowing members and friends of the Fellowship to participate across geographical boundaries.
Hybrid
combining face-to-face exchange with wider international participation.
Have an event to share?
WEF Sections are invited to submit details of forthcoming conferences, lectures, meetings and educational activities for inclusion on this page.
International Conferences
A tradition stretching back more than a century
International conferences have played an important role in the development of the World Education Fellowship.
The Fellowship emerged from the international New Education movement, with its first major conference held in Calais, France, in 1921. The gathering brought together progressive educators interested in creating forms of education better suited to the development of the whole child and to the building of a more peaceful international community.
Further international conferences followed, bringing educators from many countries into sustained conversation and helping ideas associated with the Fellowship travel across continents.
Among the notable early gatherings were conferences at Montreux in 1923 and Locarno in 1927, alongside later conferences and activities organised across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas and elsewhere.
These gatherings helped establish WEF as an international network for educational dialogue, experimentation and exchange.
WEF Lectures & Conversations
Ideas that connect education with the challenges of our time
Alongside major conferences, WEF supports lectures, conversations and smaller forums that allow important educational ideas to be examined in greater depth.
These events may explore subjects such as:
- education for peace and international understanding;
- creativity and human development;
- democracy, citizenship and participation;
- progressive and child-centred education;
- teacher development and educational leadership;
- comparative and international education;
- inclusion and social justice;
- sustainability and global responsibility;
- artificial intelligence, technology and the future of learning; and
- the continuing relevance of the principles that shaped the New Education movement.
The aim is not simply to present ideas, but to encourage thoughtful conversation between historical experience and contemporary educational challenges.
WEF Section Events
Local activity. International fellowship.
The World Education Fellowship has developed historically through its network of national and regional Sections.
Sections provide an important space for educators to interpret the Fellowship’s principles within their own educational, cultural and social contexts.
Activities may include:
- conferences and seminars;
- professional development;
- lectures and public discussions;
- workshops;
- school and university collaborations;
- publications;
- research activities;
- youth and community initiatives; and
- international exchanges.
Through these activities, local educational conversations become part of a wider international fellowship.
EXPLORE WEF SECTIONS
Partner & Collaborative Events
Working with organisations that share our educational purpose
WEF has a long history of collaboration with educators, institutions, professional associations and international organisations.
Where appropriate, the Fellowship participates in or supports events organised with partners whose work complements WEF’s commitment to education, human development, international understanding and constructive social change.
Collaborative activity enables WEF to connect its century-long intellectual and educational heritage with new communities, questions and movements.
From the WEF Archive
A century of people meeting around educational ideas
The history of the World Education Fellowship can also be read as a history of gatherings.
Conference photographs, programmes, journal reports and archival documents record generations of educators travelling across countries to meet colleagues, debate educational ideas and build professional friendships.
From the pioneering conferences of the 1920s to later international gatherings and contemporary WEF events, these records reveal a remarkable continuity:
Education advances when people have opportunities to meet, exchange ideas and imagine something better together.
Selected materials from past WEF conferences and events will progressively be added to the website as the Fellowship’s historical archive develops.
Host or Collaborate on a WEF Event
Bring the Fellowship into your educational community
Universities, schools, educational organisations and WEF Sections interested in hosting or collaborating on a conference, symposium, lecture, webinar or other educational event are welcome to contact the Fellowship.
We are particularly interested in activities that:
- encourage international educational exchange;
- connect research, policy and practice;
- introduce WEF’s educational heritage to new generations;
- address important contemporary educational questions; and
- strengthen relationships between educators across countries and cultures.
Stay Connected
Be part of the next conversation
Whether you participate through an international conference, a national Section, a lecture, an online conversation or another WEF activity, you become part of a tradition of educational fellowship that has continued for more than a century.
Explore forthcoming events. Meet fellow educators. Share ideas. Continue the conversation.
JOIN WEF