International Perspectives on Education Reform: Who's Who

Mel Ainscow is a professor of education and the co-director of the Centre for Equity in Education at the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom. His work focuses on inclusion, teacher development, and school improvement.


Stephen E. Anderson is a professor of educational administration at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on school improvement internationally at the classroom, school, and district levels.


Rukmini Banerji is the director of the Assessment Survey Evaluation Research Centre in New Delhi, India, and a senior member of the national leadership team for Pratham, a nonprofit organization in India working in education. Her work has included designing, implementing, and researching large-scale interventions for improving learning in primary schools. She is on Twitter: @Pratham_India

Gabriel Cámara is the founder of Mexico City-based Convivencia Educativa (Educational Coexistence) A.C. and Redes de Tutoría S.C. (Mentoring Networks), a group of researchers and advocates that conduct educational projects with public and private agencies. Through tutorial networks, the organizations promote large-scale educational change in Mexico.

Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro is a retired professor of political science at the State University of Campinas/Brazil; an associate researcher of the Center for Public Policies at the State University of Câmpinas, São Paulo, and the executive director of SEADE, a public foundation of the state of São Paulo responsible for the production and analysis of social and economic data. Previously, she served as Brazil's vice-minister of education; the president of the National Institute of Education Evaluation and Research/INEP, located in Brasilia; and the state secretary of education of São Paulo.

Madhav Chavan is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Pratham, a nonprofit organization in India working in education. His work has focused on innovating and building models for improving children’s learning that are being used at scale in India. He is a recipient of the Skoll Leadership award, as well as the WISE Prize in Education. He can be found on Twitter: @Pratham_India

Amanda Datnow is a professor and the chair of the department of education studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the politics and policies of school reform, particularly with regard to the professional lives of educators and issues of equity.

Sherry L. Deckman is an assistant professor of social and cultural foundations of education at Ithaca College in New York. Her research explores diversity in higher education and professional development for educators related to addressing inequity.

Lorna Earl is a retired associate professor from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, the president of Lorna Earl and Associates, and a part-time professor at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand. Her areas of research include assessment, using data for decisionmaking, evaluation methods, knowledge mobilization, and networking for school improvement.

Michael Fullan is professor emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Recognized as a worldwide authority on educational reform, he advises policymakers and local leaders around the world on helping all children learn. He can be found on Twitter: @MichaelFullan1

Patrick Griffin is the chair of education, the director of the Assessment Research Centre, executive director of the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills Project, and the associate dean, all at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, in Australia. He is a project team leader for UNESCO in southern Africa and a World Bank consultant in Vietnam and China.

Silvina Gvirtz is the general executive director of Conectar Igualdad (Connect Equality); a professor at Universidad de San Martín, a visiting professor at the University at Albany in New York, and a researcher at CONICET (National Scientific and Technology Research Agency), an independent center under the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Productive Innovation in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Between December 2011 and August 2012, she served at the Ministry of Education of Buenos Aires province. She can be found on Twitter: @silvinagvirtz

Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. His research focuses on educational change, teacher professionalism, and sustainable leadership. He can be found on Twitter: @HargreavesBC

Alma Harris is a professor and the director of the Institute of Educational Leadership at the University of Malaysia and the president of the International Congress of School Effectiveness and School Improvement. Her areas of expertise are leadership in schools and distributed leadership. She can be found on Twitter: @almaharris1

Jonathan D. Jansen is vice-chancellor and rector of the University of the Free State in central South Africa, the president of the South African Institute of Race Relations, and a fellow of the Academy of Science of the Developing World. His research focuses on reconciliation efforts and on assisting disadvantaged schools in changing their culture and performance. He can be found on Twitter: @JJ_UFS

Elena Lenskaya is the dean of education at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and a World Bank consultant on education programs involving assessment and quality assurance.


Ann Lieberman is a senior scholar at SCOPE (Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education) and SCALE (Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, & Equity) and professor emeritus at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is widely known for her research on teacher leadership and development, collaborative research, and school-university partnerships.

Helen Janc Malone is the editor of the book Leading Educational Change (Teachers College Press, 2013). Her research centers on expanded learning and system-level change. She serves on editorial boards for the Afterschool Matters Journal and The Journal of Expanded Learning Opportunities. She holds a doctorate in education policy, leadership, and instructional practice from Harvard University.

Barry McGaw is a vice-chancellor’s fellow at the University of Melbourne and the chair of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority. He was the director for education at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. His research interests include educational measurement, curriculum and assessment in upper-secondary education, and policies to enhance equity in education.

Pak Tee Ng is the associate dean, leadership learning, and the head of policy and leadership studies academic group at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), in Singapore. He has written extensively about school leadership and education policy and reform in Singapore.

Pasi Sahlberg is the director general of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and an adjunct professor of education at the Universities of Helsinki Oulu and an international thinker on education policy and change. He can be found on Twitter: @pasi_sahlberg

Andreas Schleicher is the deputy director for education and skills and a special adviser on education policy to the secretary-general at OECD. As the head of OECD’s programs on indicators and analysis, he oversees the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), as well as the Survey of Adult Skills, the Teaching and Learning International Survey, and the benchmarks on the performance of education systems.

Dennis Shirley is a professor of education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. He is the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Educational Change. His research focuses on assisting beginning teachers to design and guide large-scale research and intervention projects for school districts, states and provinces, and nations. He can be found on Twitter: @dennisshirley and @JournalEdChange

James P. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change, a professor of human development and social policy at the School of Education and Social Policy, and a faculty associate at the Institute for Policy Research, all at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He is also a principal investigator of Distributed Leadership Studies at Northwestern, a collection of research projects focused on exploring the distributed leadership framework.

Louise Stoll is a professor at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning within the Institute of Education at the University of London. Her research projects and international consultancy focus on how schools, districts, and national systems create capacity for learning and improvement.

Esteban Torre is an adviser to the general executive director of Conectar Igualdad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Before that, he served as a political adviser to the minister of education of Buenos Aires.


Yong Zhao is the presidential chair and associate dean for global education in the College of Education at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and a fellow of the Brussels-based International Academy for Education. His works focus on the implications of globalization and technology on education. He can be found on Twitter: @yongzhaouo



The above individuals are contributing posts to the time-limited Education Week blog, International Perspectives on Education Reform. The posts appearing in the blog reflect the views of the individual authors and not the group as a whole or the professional affiliations of the authors.

A version of this article appeared in the October 02, 2013 edition of Education Week