I spent the past week surrounded by education practitioners and researchers from around the world, and I left energized. The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference in San Francisco brought together more than 2,000 people across 100+ sessions. We moved from conversations on AI in education to social-emotional learning to youth development. Being in those rooms pushed me to think more critically about the range of approaches shaping education systems globally. 

One session really stuck with me: “The Nuts and Bolts of Feedback Loops,” led by GCE-US members Building Tomorrow and the International Rescue Committee (IRC). They designed the session as a hands-on exercise in implementation research. We walked in, grabbed “boarding passes” with group numbers and surprise destinations, and jumped straight into a scenario about a rural education program facing implementation challenges. In small groups, we had to define a research question and choose tools to better understand the problem. 

 Grace Rector participating in "The Nuts and Bolts of Feedback Loops" Workshop

As we worked through the exercise, I started to notice a pattern. Four out of five groups landed on the same research question. Those same groups also chose the same tool: an implementation gap analysis workshop. It felt like the obvious choice, but it also made me pause. We all brought similar training and instincts into the room, and that shaped how we approached the problem. The facilitator from Building Tomorrow pushed us on this point and shared practical ways to rotate methods and challenge our default approaches so we don’t limit our analysis. 

I kept thinking about that idea of default approaches in two back-to-back sessions on AI in education. Organizations like Lapis and the IRC shared tools they’ve built to support teachers and students, including chatbots delivered through WhatsApp. These tools are already in use in places like Afghanistan and Nigeria, expanding access to learning support in low-connectivity settings. 

At the same time, the sessions raised real concerns. One speaker pointed out a growing divide, that while wealthier schools will use AI to augment learning, lower income schools will use AI to automate learning. I also saw how language barriers show up in these tools. One example, in Uganda, showed higher performance when the chatbot performed in English (85%) but much lower accuracy (45%) in Luganda, a local language. If we don’t address these gaps, we risk reinforcing the same inequities we’re trying to solve. 

All of this brought me back to one question: who should shape these solutions? At GCE-US, we believe young people need to be at the center. Students experience these systems every day. They understand where they work and where they fall short. 

That’s why we invest in our Youth Fellows and build their leadership, communication, and advocacy skills so they can take on these challenges and push for more equitable education systems in the U.S. and globally. 

I’m excited to bring what I learned at CIES into our Youth Fellows programming and keep connecting global conversations to youth-led action. 

Grace Rector (GCE-US), Whitney Warren (Building Tomorrow), and other colleagues at CIES