This year’s Yidan Education Forum, themed “Nurturing Future Learners: Designing Learning Spaces and Building Learning Communities for Tomorrow”, brought together educators, architects, curators, and social innovators to explore how space and community can shape the future of education.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration and integration have become a consensus in global educational innovation, and this trend is increasingly significant for the future of education. The forum plans to focus on the concepts, models, methods, and case studies of cross-disciplinary collaboration in education from an ecological perspective, inviting experts and scholars from home and abroad to attend and share their research findings.

Education inherently looks towards the future, with the tomorrow of human society embedded in today's education. Technological, cultural, and innovative advancements continue to reshape education towards the future. We understand that education will remain a pivotal force in the future, but how it reshapes society and civilization is the uncertainty we seek to explore.

The superior innovation ecosystem of major bay areas across the globe has nurtured the sustainable development of education and society by creating clusters of education innovation and using them to drive technological advancement and high-quality social progress. Yidan Education Forum initiated the Roundtable Forum Series in 2023. The first Roundtable Forum focuses on the Education Ecosystem in a bay area, especially in the context of Education Innovation, City Development and Sustainable Society. The Roundtable Forum serves as an exclusive dialogue platform for education innovation scholars and practitioners from different bay area across the world to discuss and collaborate.

Families, schools, and communities are facing pressing challenges amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, human conflict, and environmental and natural threats. How should we cultivate our children to have the ability coping with the uncertain future? Through literacy education, children will have grit and become lifelong learners; Through sustainability education, we can reduce the harm to nature and the environment; Through developing education ecology, all stake holders could work together and build a better future. In Yidan Education Forum 2022, we discuss topics such as the Future Learner Competency Frame, sustainability education, learning through play and lifelong learners, and the development of education ecology.

Pioneering innovative advancements have often been preceded by global events that have forced us to rethink and reimagine existing practices. The ongoing pandemic has brought numerous challenges that have greatly impacted global education. But these challenges have also led to opportunities. The robust interweaving of digital technologies, artificial intelligence and rampant globalization in the post-pandemic era has made the need to restructure the existing education ecosystem, even more prominent. By exploring how our schools, families and societies can support each other to promote education innovation, we can further diversify our education models. The Yidan Education Forum for 2021 thus focuses on reimagining and reshaping our education ecosystems to address our challenges.

Liberal education has had a long-standing tradition and influence, both in China and in the West. From the end of the 19th century, the development of liberal education in China was mutually influenced by the traditions and developments from within China and in the West. This in turn led China to explore the model of liberal and general education as it exists today within its higher education model. Chen Yidan Foundation and the Graduate School of Education, Peking University jointly invites local and overseas scholars to have presentations and discussions on the related topics under the core theme of - exchange between liberal education of China and the West.