Dean Fink
Dean Fink is an international educational development
consultant. He is a former superintendent and principal with
the Halton Board of Education in Ontario, Canada. In the past
ten years Dean has made presentations or conducted workshop in 30
different countries.
He is the author or co-author of Changing Our Schools
(Open University Press, 1996), Good Schools/Real Schools; Why
school reform doesn’t last (Teachers College Press, 2000), and
It’s About Learning and It’s About Time (Routledge/Falmer
Press, 2003). His most recent books are Sustainable
Leadership with Andy Hargreaves for Jossey Bass (2005), and
Leadership for Mortals: Developing and sustaining leaders of
learning for Corwin, (2005).
Alma Harris
Alma Harris is Director of the Institute of Education,
University of Warwick. She is also Deputy Chair of the Faculty of
Social Science. Her most recent research work has focused upon
improvement in schools facing challenging circumstances and the
relationship between distributed forms of leadership and
organisational change. She is internationally known for her
leadership research, focusing particularly on ways in
which leadership contributes to school development and
improvement. She is an Associate Director at the Specialist Schools
and Academies Trust.
Ben Levin
Ben Levin is Deputy Minister of Education for the province of
Ontario. His career in education started with his efforts, while in
high school, to organize a city-wide high
school students' union, and his election as a school trustee
at the age of 19. He is a noted scholar in education who has
also held leadership positions in a variety of organizations in the
public and non-profit sectors including serving as chief civil
servant for education in two Canadian provinces. As a
researcher he has written several books and more than 100 articles
in a wide range of publications.
Susan Moore Johnson
Susan Moore
Johnson is the Pforzheimer Professor of Teaching and Learning at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she served as
academic dean from 1993 to 1999. She studies and teaches about
teacher policy, organizational change, and administrative practice.
A former high-school teacher and administrator, Johnson has a
continuing research interest in the work of teachers and the reform
of schools. She has studied the leadership of superintendents, the
effects of collective bargaining on schools, the use of incentive
pay plans for teachers, and the school as a context for teachers’
work. Currently, Johnson and a group of advanced doctoral students
are engaged in a multiyear research study, The Project on the Next
Generation of Teachers, which examines how best to recruit,
support, and retain a strong teaching force in the next decade. She
is the author of Teacher Unions and Schools (1984),
Teachers at Work (1990), Leading to Change: The
Challenge of the New Superintendency (1996), and Finders
and Keepers: Helping New Teachers Survive and Thrive in Our
Schools (2004).
Marion Orr
Orr is the Frederick Lippitt Chair of Public Policy and
professor of political science, urban studies, and public policy at
Brown University. His fields of research include American politics,
urban politics, race, and school reform. His most current research
focuses on race, politics and school reform in large American
cities. He is the author of Black Social Capital: The Politics of
School Reform in Baltimore, (University of Kansas, 1999) and
co-author of The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics and the
Challenge of Urban Education published by Princeton University
Press (1999). He has also written a number of articles on different
aspects of urban politics.
Pasi Sahlberg
Pasi Sahlberg is a Senior Education Specialist at the World
Bank in Washington, DC. He is a former staff member of the National
Board of Education (Ministry of Education) in Finland and Director
of the Centre for School Development at the University of Helsinki.
He has world-wide experience in training teachers and coaching
schools to change. He has published writings on school development,
educational change and improving classroom learning, most recently
“Policy Development and Reform Principles of Basic and
Secondary Education in Finland since 1968” (2006),
“Education Policies for Raising Student Learning: The Finnish
Approach” (2006), “Education Reform for Raising Economic
Competitiveness” (2006), and “Teaching and
Globalization” (2004). His research interests include
educational change, school improvement, international education
policies and mathematics education.
Robert J Starratt
Robert J. Starratt, known to his friends as Jerry, is
Professor of Educational Administration at Boston College.
His work with schools has taken him to various states in the US, as
well as to Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, India, and various
countries on the Pacific Rim. Author of numerous books and
articles, Starratt’s recent publications have focused on moral and
ethical issues in education. He and his wife, Ruth, live
close to Boston.
Yong Zhao
Yong Zhao is University Distinguished Professor in the
Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special
Education at the College of Education, Michigan State University,
where he also serves as the founding director of the Center for
Teaching and Technology as well as the US-China Center for Research
on Educational Excellence. Zhao received his Ph.D in Education from
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996. His
research interests include diffusion of innovation, teacher
adoption of technology, computer-assisted language learning,
globalization and education, and international and comparative
education. Zhao has published extensively in these areas. His
articles have appeared in AERJ and Teachers College Record. He
received the 2003 Raymond B. Catell Early Career Award from
the American Educational Research Association. This award
recognizes “a scholar who has conducted a distinguished program of
cumulative educational research in any field of educational inquiry
within the first decade following receipt of their doctoral
degree.” His most recent publications include: What Should Teachers
Know about Technology: Perspectives and Practices (IAP, 2003) and
Research in Technology and Second Language Education:
Developments and Directions (IAP, 2005). His current work focuses
on the impact of globalization on education and the integration of
Eastern and Western educational practices.