On Saturday 11th October 2025 the 22nd IOE CI Annual Chinese Teaching Conference took place at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society.
We would like to thank all delegates for attending this year’s conference themed ‘Evolving Classrooms – Adapting Methods of Mandarin Teaching to Keep Pace with Changing Contexts’ – it was a wonderful day and a great opportunity to see so many of the Mandarin teaching community in person, sharing ideas, knowledge and best practice.
The conference was attended by delegates from all over the country, speakers from a range of Chinese education-related settings, workshop presenters from UK schools and the IOE’s Centre for Chinese Language Education, and prize-winning student performers. There were 15 workshops for delegates to choose from, three plenary sessions featuring academics and Chinese education experts from around the world, and three student performances.
The conference opened with the wonderful student performance from Molly Jones who studies at Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys.
The opening plenary featured speeches by Zhu Hua (Director of International Centre for Intercultural Studies at IOE), Zhou Wei (Minister Counsellor for Education Affairs, Chinese Embassy), Zhao Yang (Dean of the School of Chinese as a Second Language, Peking University), and Matt Schofield (Centre Manager & Head of Operations for the Centre for Chinese Language Education at UCL Institute of Education).
There was a video message from Michael Spence, President & Provost of UCL, for Katharine Carruthers, former Director of the Centre for Chinese Language Education and Global Strategic Academic Advisor (China). Katharine retired in the summer and during the first plenary there were speeches to celebrate her work as well look forward to her continuing collaborating with the Centre For Chinese Language Education in an honoury role.
After attending very inspiring workshops, a peek at the exhibitor stands and a Chinese lunch, delegates enjoyed student performance by Conor Geraghty who studies at Calday Grange Grammar School.
The afternoon plenary was chaired by Michelle Tate (IOE). Michelle led a discussion on exploring how students remember Chinese characters with Michaela Zahradnikova, (Assistant Professor and International Coordinator, Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic) and Lydia Hargreaves-March (Doctoral Researcher at UCL IOE, Head of Mandarin at Pinner High School). Michaela and Lydia both had engaging presentations sharing their insights into how students retain key information and there was a lively Q&A session which followed.
After hearing these inspiring speakers, delegates wandered off to take advantage of the opportunity to choose two further workshops to attend from a wide and varied range of topics.
A fun student performance by Hassan Ali Mohammed, Harjun Randhawa, Freddie Sisk, Rueban Dulai, and Josh Woodcock from Queen Mary’s Grammar School followed the final workshop. After this, the IOE CI 2025 Excellence Awards Presentation were presented. A chance for our Chinese teaching community to celebrate colleagues’ success in teaching Chinese, their efforts and their talent. Congratulations to all of the Excellence Award winners: Johann Kamper, Min Qiao, Guoping McCullough, and Melissa Carr.
The conference programme closed with the final plenary, ‘Being Chinese in modern day Britain’ chaired by Xiaoming Zhu (IOE). During the plenary, Xiaoming was in discussion with authors of HaHa! Britian: Xue Xinran(薛欣然) and Zhang Pu, and Tian Tian (Mother’s Bridge of Love). Following insightful conversation, twenty attendees were delighted to win a signed copy of HaHa! Britain.
After a very productive day, attendees were invited to join the drinks reception for the final opportunity to catch up with colleagues and the IOE team, to celebrate and reflect on a great day.
We look forward to seeing you at next year’s conference!