This coming academic year (2015/2016) I will teach new course at Harvard Graduate School of Education called Hard Questions on Global Educational Change. It will focus on some of the most widely and passionately debated issues in current education reforms and help students to improve their skills to communicate their ideas and views. Classes run from September to late April on Wednesdays at 4pm (EST). Following is the description…
read moreIn April 2015, the Swedish Government appointed the Schools Commission that is chaired by Anna Ekström. She is Director General of the Swedish National Agency of Education (Skolverket). School Commission main task is to follow up the recommendations made by OECD’s education policy review that was published in Stockholm in early May. The recommendations of the OECD report focus on three priorities: conditions that promote…
read moreMy teaching at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in academic year 2015/16 consists of three courses. Two of them are semester-long, full (four credit) courses and third is a yearlong, new course. Here are brief introductions of each of them. International Lessons from Successful Education Systems (A-317). This course will take a closer…
read moreI have joined the Open Society Foundations Education Support Program Advisory Board. This program works to make the right to education meaningful by combating inequality and discrimination in education and exposing structural inequalities that reproduce education disadvantage and exclusion. This is what the OSF…
read morePART 2: INTERNATIONAL MODELS OF TEACHER EDUCATION Week 6 – March 4 Research-based Teacher Education in Finland The class will be given an introduction to a research-based…
read moreCOURSE DESCRIPTION In recent years international organizations have shown an increased interest in questions related to teachers, teacher education, and teacher policy. Most influential of these institutions are the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with its two global initiatives, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and…
read moreLast year marked another busy year in terms of visitors on this website: Over 200,000 visitors and nearly 3 million hits during 2014. Thank you all for that. I will do my best to manage this site so that the most recent material related to Finnish Lessons 2.0 would be available for you. You will also find all presentations that I make this year posted under “Finnish Lessons” manu as before. As far as my work…
read moreThe Book Fair opens on Wednesday 8 October, with the opening ceremony on Tuesday evening. Our speakers at the opening ceremony are author Sofi Oksanen, PhD Pasi Sahlberg and Finland’s president Sauli Niinistö. That is when Finland’s pavilion will be officially opened. Finland’s Minister of Culture and Housing, Pia Viitanen, will cut the ribbon, andTango Orchestra Unto will play Finnish tango music for…
read moreI am honored to be the recipient of the 2014 Robert Owen Award that is an annual recognition for inspirational educators issued by the Government of Scotland. This award is issued as part of Scotland’s hallmark annual education conference, the Scottish Learning Festival, in Glasgow every September. In the opening ceremony of the Scottish Learning Festival on 24th September Scotland’s education minister Michael Russell…
read moreNew and comprehensively updated edition of Finnish Lessons will appear in January 2015. The first edition that was published in November 2011 has had an unbelievable journey. It has been translated into 16 languages so far and counting. It won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award issued by the University of Louisville, KY, and took me to span in Parliaments of European Union, Scotland, England, Australia, New Zealand and Latvia. I have…
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