Pasi Sahlberg - Hard Questions on Global Educational Change: Policies, Practices, and the Future of Education

Janine Campbell, Aline Hankey, and Jonathan Seiden

Momar Dieng, Elaine Koh, & Lauren Marston

Fairuz Alia Jamaluddin, Lauren Owen, and Elyse Postlewaite

Aditi Adhikari, Jason Brown, and Amanda Klonsky

Chu Chen, Reema Souraya, and Kolja Wohlleben

Love Basillote, Terence Tan Wei Ting, and Sharon Yoo

Zachary Goldman, Wen Qiu, and Randy Tarnowski

In the summer of 2015, between the 2 academic years at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), I was looking for ideas for a new course for our masters and doctoral students. In most schools of education around the world, there are not too many options available to study international education issues such as school reforms, teacher policies, or teaching practices in different countries. The other theme often absent in university course catalogues is an inquiry into global educational reform that would provide balanced perspectives to debated questions about policies, practices, and the future of education. I decided, therefore, to offer our students a course titled Hard Questions on Global Educational Change.

There was, however, one condition I set for myself before teaching this course: I didnt want to teach this course alone; I wanted to have one or two others work with me. I was lucky to find two students who were brave enough to take the challenge. Vanessa Rodriguez was, at that time, a doctoral candidate at HGSE, and I was part of her dissertation committee. Jonathan Hasak graduated from HGSE 2 years ago; he was my former student and a current teaching fellow in my other courses.

Before more formal acknowledgements, it is necessary to say a word or two about the course itself. We selected 21 students for this course based on their motivation for and experience with global issues in education. We decided to meet with them weekly for 90 minutes during the entire year in order to create a safer and more comfortable environment in which to learn about complex questions in education. We expected students to learn, among other things, about the most common problems and controversies related to educational reforms, to understand these educational-change questions from international perspectives, to learn to distinguish facts and fiction about difficult educational-change questions, and to leverage social media and other tools for promoting change and sharing ideas.

Near the end of the fall semester, after listening to the students debate and read their essays, we thought these conversations and ideas should be shared more widely than just with the teaching team. Therefore, we gave students two questions to work on during winter break: Would you be ready to write a chapter about one hard question that is close to your heart? What would that question be? That is how the idea of this book was born. All students were excited to be part of this journey that was actually inspired by a book written and edited by Arizona State University professors David Berliner and Gene Glass: 50 Myths and Lies About American Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education (Teachers College Press, 2014). In our book we decided to include seven globally discussed controversial questions about educational change.

We worked intensively over the entire spring semester on these seven questions. By making literature reviews, reading current academic and popular texts, interviewing experts and scholars, and writing numerous draft versions, students became truly engaged in learning more and writing better. Limiting the word count available to each student team challenged the authors to focus on clarity and find their own way of writing. How well students succeeded is up to you to judge when you read the rest of the book.

There are many people who deserve to be acknowledged due to their contribution in ensuring that this book saw the light of day. First, I want to thank my coauthors Vanessa Rodriguez and Jonathan Hasak for their companionship during planning and teaching the course upon which this book is based. Without their support and help to the students, this book would not have been possible.

Second, each student separately and the entire class collectively deserve thanks and praises: Aditi Adhikari, Love Basillote, Jason Brown, Janine Campbell, Chu Chen, Momar Dieng, Fairuz Alia Jamaluddin, Zachary Goldman, Aline Hankey, Amanda Klonsky, Elaine Koh, Lauren Marston, Lauren Owen, Elyse Postlewaite, Wen Qiu, Jonathan Seiden, Reema Souraya, Randy Tarnowski, Terence Tan Wei Ting, Kolja Wohlleben, and Sharon Yoo. This international class of 15 nationalities, ranging from Singapore to Chile and China to the United States, provided rich global perspectives with which to delve into some of the most important questions in education from multiple angles.

Several renowned scholars and thinkers generously made their views and their time available by visiting our classes. Special thanks go to Angelo Gavrielatos, Andy Hargreaves, Stephen Heyneman, Rebecca Holcombe, Phil McRae, Nicholas Negroponte, Diane Ravitch, Sir Ken Robinson, Yong Zhao, Howard Gardner, and Marty West. As part of collecting data for their essays, students also interviewed education specialists around the world. While they are too many to be mentioned here, we sincerely thank them all for helping students to gain deeper understanding of their hard questions.

I also want to thank colleagues at HGSE who made it possible to teach the course that led to this book. Special thanks to my faculty assistant Wendy Angus at HGSE who provided instrumental help and support to us all during the academic year.

No book can ever be completed without the hard work, encouragement, and gentle push of the publisher. I am grateful to Sarah Biondello at Teachers College Press for her excellent eye as editor and for her patience at times when we were making last-minute changes and requests. I have learned, again, new things about writing and also about editing texts of my coauthors from Sarah. Well done indeed!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I want to thank my wife, Petra, and our sons, Otto and Noah, who have shared my time with this book longer than I promised it would take. Looking at your own children who are still too young to be at school gives you a particular point of view to educational questions. Each of the hard questions in this book is important for my sons future as well as for those of millions of other parents. That has been my excuse when I was supposed to be with my family but instead worked on these texts. I know they will understand and accept that, one day.