Keynote Speakers

ICSEI 2023 Keynote Speakers

January 10, 2023

Promoting inclusion and equity in education: lessons from international experience

Inclusion and equity are increasingly seen internationally as major priorities for the development of education policies and practices. This presentation will draw on Mel Ainscow’s extensive experience of working with education systems in different countries to address the challenges involved. This has led to the development of an analytical framework that can be used to review existing approaches. The framework places schools at the centre of the analysis, whilst drawing attention to a range of contextual influences that bear on the way schools carry out their work. The use of evidence as a means of stimulating collaboration and experimentation is seen as a central strategy. This has major implications for leadership practices within schools and across education systems.

Mel Ainscow is Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Manchester, UK; Professor of Education, University of Glasgow, UK; and Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. A long-term consultant to UNESCO, he is internationally recognized as an authority on the promotion of inclusion and equity in education. He has recently led the development of a series of policy documents for UNESCO, including its Guide for Ensuring Inclusion and Equity in Education. Mel is also a consultant to an initiative organized by the Organization of American States, supporting national developments in nine Latin American countries. He has recently completed collaborative research projects with networks of schools in Australia, Chile, Uruguay and five European countries. Mel is currently chair of the Greater Manchester Education & Employment Board that coordinates improvement efforts focused on equity across ten local authorities. He is also coordinating ‘Every Learner Matters in Dundee’, a city-wide improvement strategy.  Examples of his writing can be found in: ‘Struggles for equity in education: the selected works of Mel Ainscow’ (Routledge World Library of Educationalists series). In the Queen’s 2012 New Year Honours list, Mel was made a Commander of the British Empire for services to education.

January 11, 2023

Performance Evaluation and Feedback for Professional Growth: Tools and Approaches for Continuous Improvement

High quality feedback has enormous possibilities for supporting professional growth, motivation, and commitment for teachers and leaders. But providing and receiving feedback is a challenge, and often avoided.  Why is it so hard? In my talk I will address:     

1) The What of Feedback: What are indicators of high-quality performance feedback?    

2) The Why of Feedback: What is the rationale and theory of change for how performance feedback can contribute to continuous improvement ?   

3) The How of Feedback:  What are specific examples or approaches to implementing   performance evaluation feedback to improve teacher and leader effectiveness?

I will present the results of research conducted with teachers and leaders on feedback and coaching approaches as we unpack barriers and challenges to this important strategy in the context of continuous improvement, professional development, and educator learning.    

Ellen Goldring is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Education Policy and Leadership, and Executive Associate Dean, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Her research focuses on education policy and school improvement, with emphases on school and district leadership. A fellow of the American Educational Research Association, she is the recipient of the University Council for Educational Administration’s Roald F. Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles, including a co-author of The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VALED). She currently serves as the editor-in-chief of the American Educational Research Journal. She is included amongst the most influential scholars in education policy in the United States in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. The primary theme of Dr. Goldring’s contributions is her concern with school district reform and preparing and supporting educational leaders who can creatively promote learning and teaching in complex policy environments.

January 12, 2023

The search for equity, inclusion and quality in Chilean education

Chile has undertaken educational reforms with different intensity and opportunity during the last decades, the most comprehensive reforms occurred in the second Bachelet government (2014-18). These reforms imply that private-voucher schools can no longer charge tuition, be for-profit, and select students. In addition, the administration of public schools is being transferred from municipal governments to 70 new local public educational services. The effects of these reforms and other policies on inclusion, equity and quality will be analyzed, as well as the upcoming challenges, including those that the pandemic has left behind due to the suspension of face-to-face classes.

Alejandra Mizala holds an economics degree from the University of Chile and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. She is Director of the Institute of Education and Professor at the University of Chile with the Center of Applied Economics, Department of Industrial Engineering. She is also Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Education at the University of Chile.

She has written articles, chapters in books and two books on a wide range of education topics. Her research is on the Economics of Education, with a focus on the impact of institutional arrangements and reforms on the outcomes of the Chilean school choice system, teachers’ labor market, and gender equality in education.

She has been member of the International Expert Committee of the Chilean University Admission System (2017-2019 and 2021). She also served as a commissioner on the Minimum Wage Committee (2010-11), the Presidential Labor and Equity Council (2007-08), the Presidential Pension Reform Council (2006) and the Presidential Education Reform Council (2006)

She has also worked as a consultant of international organizations (World Bank, IADB, UNESCO and ECLAC), foreign governments and the Chilean public sector, mainly the Education Ministry.

January 13, 2023

The Future Ready Leadership for Learning: Insights from Singapore

In an era steeped with uncertainties, education systems need to be adaptive and resilient to prepare learners with the vital skills to weather the challenges of the future. This presentation will highlight the importance of Future Ready Leadership for Learning as a means of enabling teachers, researchers, and policymakers to pre-empt and steer schools and educational systems toward desired outcomes amidst unpredictable futures. Reflecting on the experience of schools and the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore, I will address three key insights: i) the forms of interactions for learners inherent within the learning process in cognitive, affective, and purposeful terms; ii) consistent  leadership characterizations at every “middle” of the education eco-system to enable systemic change in schools; and iii) the role of NIE as a nexus for (interdisciplinary) research, practice, and policy. Moving forward, the insights drawn could hopefully better support educators and policymakers through translating research into practice more systemically and enabling policies to benefit all students.

Professor David Hung is currently the Dean of Education Research and Centre Director of Science of Learning in Education at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests are in learning and instructional technologies, constructivism and social constructivism, cognition and communities of practice. In particular, he is interested in the social cultural orientations in the system of schools in Singapore. In 2004, Prof Hung initiated the set-up of the Learning Sciences Laboratory and more recently, the Science of Learning in Education Center. He has been involved in the ICT MasterPlan initiative by the Ministry of Education since its inception in 1997 and has witnessed its evolution over the years in terms of student-centred inquiry learning mediated through technologies. A significant part of the present effort is on translation and the diffusion of educational innovations of which the eduLab funding initiative was pivotal. Prof Hung delved into issues of school and teacher leadership primarily due to the need to situate and sustain these innovative pedagogies, and from a systems’ perspective.  Due to his learning sciences and systems’ understanding in the nexus of research-policy-and-practice, Prof Hung manages significant research funds and publishes widely in both books and journals.