2015 Conference Keynote Speakers

F. Michael Connelly is Professor Emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto and Honorary Professor Southwest University, Chongqing, PRC. He was Director of the Canada Project, Second International Science Study, International; Association for the Evaluation of Student Achievement, and Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Education/OISE/UT doctoral program. He wrote policy papers for the Science Teachers Association of Ontario, the Ontario Teachers Federation, the Ontario Ministry of Education, the Government of Egypt, the Queensland Education Authority, UNICEF, the World Bank, and The League of Arab States. He co-drafted the terms of reference for the Egyptian Professional Academy of Teachers, and was UNICEF consultant to The League of Arab States on pan-Arab teacher education and curriculum development. With Shijing Xu he is co-director of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Project Grant “Reciprocal learning in teacher education and school education between Canada and China”. He is the Education Judge for The American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) Book awards, given annually by the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.

Dr. Michael Connelly & Dr. Shijing Xu – Co-presenters

Reciprocal Learning might appear to be an intuitively straightforward concept. But there are significantly different models at work in the educational research and policy literature. Each of these models has far-reaching consequences for how research is framed and conducted. In this presentation three models are discussed: the traditional comparative model which is philosophically concerned with cultural differences in propositional knowledge (knowledge that) and action (knowledge how); the currently popular values laden comparative achievement/comparative values model concerned with best practices and their transfer from one culture to another; and the collaborative/partnership model concerned with common activity among educators from different cultures and what educators may learn from one another with respect to their personal practical knowledge which encompasses both knowledge how and knowledge that. This latter model provides the intellectual frame for the Partnership Project. These models are discussed in the context of specific cross-cultural educational issues, for instance, travelling concepts such as inquiry based learning and travelling teaching devices such as the Chinese Tangran and how to understand what happens to such concepts and devices as they move among educational cultures. With this background Reciprocal Learning is understood to be a nuanced concept with consequences for how research is conducted and for how learning relationships among two cultures are imagined.

Stefan T Hopmann, since 2005 Professor of Comparative Education and History of Education at the University of Vienna, following similar appointments in Germany and Norway. Guest stays at universities e.g. in Denmark, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and the US. General editor of the international Journal of Curriculum Studies. Member of the Editorial Board of the European Educational Research Journal and of the Journal of Educational Change. Invited keynotes at many national and international conferences (e.g. in China, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and the US). Review and evaluation assignments for many national and international research associations (such as AERA, EERA), journals and universities. Since a doctoral dissertation on Curriculum Making as Administrative Action (Lehrplanarbeit als Verwaltungshandeln; Kiel 1988) involved in historical and comparative curriculum research, including comparative studies (Didaktik meets Curriculum, 1995ff.; Achieving School Accountability in Practice, 2003ff.) as well as empirical research and national case studies. Currently leading a longitudinal study on policy based curriculum change in Austria (2010-2014).

Comparisons have been used in the making of curriculum ever since the emergence of public schooling. Yet, nowadays in a “globalized” world, such arguments have gained an unprecedented influence on how we shape the curriculum, be it in a class room, in a school or a State committee. There are many different approaches to comparing curriculum, e.g. by comparing curriculum contents, comparative testing, or comparing teaching across places, cultures, subjects, time or whatever else one may want to focus upon. This paper will give a short introduction to comparing curriculum as a specific form of social practice, arguing that only by understanding why people who do curriculum do what they do can we really compare different ways of doing curriculum and so learn from each other.

He holds a personal chair as a Professor of Education at the University of Auckland and is the Director of the Woolf Fisher Research Centre. He researches and publishes widely in areas of children’s literacy and language development and the design of effective educational programmes including models of large scale interventions with schools. He chairs and contributes to national bodies providing advice on educational policies, and has developed national educational assessments and resources. In 2014 he was appointed to the inaugural position of Chief Education Scientific Advisor to the New Zealand Ministry of Education. He consults on the design of curricula and educational interventions nationally and internationally. Academic recognition and responsibilities include membership of the International Reading Association’s Literacy Research Panel, and being inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame.

Variability is ubiquitous in interventions and innovations in schools. The phenomena are apparent in outcomes as well as in the fidelity of the processes of change, and the spread of those changes. Rather than seeing variability necessarily as a problem, identifying, understanding and building on variability can enable more effective change processes and greater reliability in taking changes to scale.

Ian Westbury is a professor emeritus of curriculum & instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is General Editor emeritus of the Journal of Curriculum Studies. He has worked on cross-national studies of school achievement, the German Didaktik tradition, and is currently completing a comparative study of state governance of the curriculum that draws on experiences in Finland, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, and the United States. He has been interested in China since teaching Chinese history at the University of Melbourne and is currently hosting groups of Chinese scholars and graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His doctorate is from the University of Alberta and he has an honorary doctorate from Åbo Akademi University in Finland.

Education has a long history of borrowing from other systems. Usually the relationship is ‘colonial’, schools in other countries have what our schools do not — they are better than our schools and classrooms in patterns of teaching, outcomes (achievement), etc. The SSHRC Partnership Project with its emphasis on reciprocal learning is different. It assumes a learning relationship that is two-way. But how can that ideal be operationalized? Drawing on the resource of Alexander’s Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education (2001), I propose a series of collaborative compare-and-contrasts of classroom architecture, protocols for student teachers’ lesson plans, and videos of demonstration lessons. Alexander provides a preliminary framework for such studies. I will make a case for such school-based work within the partnership project.