The theme for ICSEI 2018 is "Deepening School Change for Scaling: Principles, Pathways & Partnerships". 

The rationale for the proposed theme is to emphasise NIE's and OER's interests in scaling and translating research to have a strong impact in schools. OER research is beginning to critically probe into the nature, characteristics, enablers and inhibitors of deep and sustainable school improvement, and how that can be scaled across schools through underlying principles, emergent and established pathways, and strong partnerships  between MOE and NIE. In addition, the notion of pathways and partnerships are embedded in the "3P framework" which emphasises that impactful research requires pathways, partnerships and research-practice programmes.

The following are sub-themes for potential contributors to explore:

1. Generating Principles for Change and Scaling
This strand is interested in how policy makers and school leaders can generate, sustain and scale innovative changes in education. It seeks papers that examine innovation in education, their diffusion processes, practices, and the social-cultural characteristics which impact efforts to scale these changes.

2. Partnering for Innovative Change
This strand focuses on the meaningful partnerships for impactful innovations that can be created and explored not only within and across education systems but with external organisations and corporations, in the larger local and global communities.  

3. Leading Capacity for Change
The focus of this strand is on leadership at multiple levels, such as the individual practitioners, school, cluster, zonal or district level, and the role of leaders in increasing individual and collaborative capacities to bring about and sustain innovative changes in school.

4. Measuring and Evaluating School Change
This strand is interested in how research can assist policy makers and schools to effectively measure and evaluate school change to accurately assess impact, and to sustain enablers while minimising barriers to school change.

5. Converging Pathways for Policy, Research and Practice
This strand seeks papers that probe the interrelationships between policy, research and practice, and propose how current gaps among these can be bridged so that there is  better synergy between research and practice in schools.

6. Growing Innovative Culture for School Change
This strand seeks papers that provide empirical evidence or theoretical insights that would enable policy makers and schools to cultivate group behaviours, habits of mind, and practices that encourage an innovation mindset and the entrepreneur dare to explore new frontiers in education.