Based in the United States, and hosting an annual conference as well as issuing several publications, CIES aims to encourage and promote comparative and international education and related areas of inquiry and activity.

[7] CIES was a founding member of the World Council for Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) which held its first conference in Ottawa, Canada in 1970.

This five-day conference showcases comparative and international research and includes participants from around the globe who engage in knowledge exchange and professional development.

CIES has been characterized by many scholars as eclectic and inclusive in the research methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and academic disciplines that compose its work.

In alignment with broader social science trends following World War II, much of the work presented at the Society's early annual meetings and published in its journal concerned the relationship between education and national development.

[16] While an appreciation of diversity and a concern not to be Eurocentric characterized the work of many of the Society's founders such as Isaac Leon Kandel, the geopolitical context of the Cold War resulted in a strong commitment to modernization theory.

In recent years, just as the field of comparative education has itself evolved, CIES has become a venue for an extremely wide range of disciplinary and epistemic approaches with research perspectives informed by postpositivism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and feminist theory commonly appearing alongside economics of education, development economics, and more quantitative social research approaches.