Dr. Yong Zhao
Biography: Yong Zhao is University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. He is a fellow of the International Academy for Education. His research interests include computer gaming and education, diffusion of innovations, teacher adoption of technology, computer-assisted language learning, and globalization and education. Zhao has extensive international experiences. He has consulted with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in many countries on six continents. His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution.
Title: Homogenization or Diversification: Education in the Age of GlobalizationDescription: Globalization is undoubtedly one of the major forces shaping our world in the 21st Century. Education systems around the globe have begun to interpret the implications of globalization and form strategies. An unfortunate yet very popular interpretation is that schools must prepare students to compete with students in foreign nations. As a result, schools around the world are pushed to homogenize their curriculum in order to outperform others in international assessments. Schools are considered as businesses and test scores on a few subjects represent their profit margin - the bottom line to judge their performance. As a result, it narrows the curriculum to a few subjects considered essential for competing with others. Zhao's presentation is based on his new book: Catching UP or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization. For more information, please visit his website: http://zhao.educ.msu.edu
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Dr. Allan Odden
Biography: Allan Odden is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Co-Director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE); and Co-Director of Strategic Management of Human Capital (SMHC) in public education, a CPRE project. CPRE is a consortium of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Pennsylvania, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, Teachers College-Columbia, and Stanford Universities. He formerly was professor of education policy and administration at the University of Southern California (1984-1993). He is an international expert on the strategic management of human capital in education, teacher compensation, education finance, resource allocation and use, resource reallocation, school-based management, and educational policy implementation. His most recent book is Ten Strategies for Doubling Student Performance and he is finishing a book on strategic talent management in education.
Title: Strategic Directions for New Teacher Compensation StructuresDescription: Allan Odden's keynote will discuss why current teacher salary schedules are not aligned with the strategic goals of education systems today. After providing an overview of the various elements of teacher compensation, Odden will describe how new salary structures can be created with elements that do align with the strategic directions of education systems today, including schedules based on teacher knowledge and skills, incentives for subjects experiencing shortages, and issues to address in designing bonuses based on improved student performance. He will address how various measures of teacher effectiveness can be incorporated into such new salary systems.
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Charlotte Danielson
Biography: Charlotte Danielson is a former economist and an educational consultant based in Princeton, New Jersey. She has taught at all levels, from kindergarten through college, and has worked as an administrator, a curriculum director, and a staff developer. In her consulting work, Ms Danielson has specialized in aspects of teacher quality and evaluation, curriculum planning, performance assessment, and professional development.
In addition to working as a teacher and administrator, Ms Danielson has served as a consultant to hundreds of districts, universities, intermediate agencies, and state departments of education in virtually every state and in many other countries. This work has ranged from the training of practitioners in aspects of instruction and assessment, the design of instruments and procedures for teacher evaluation, to keynote presentations at major conferences.
Ms Danielson is the author of a number of books supporting teachers and administrators.
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Description: In all international schools, teacher appraisal is an important component of ensuring teacher quality, with the additional purpose of promoting professional growth. But most educators acknowledge that their approaches fall far short of those objectives and, in truth, achieve neither purpose very well. How can teacher appraisal be improved? How can it be designed in such a way that it ensures teacher quality, and represents a process that teachers find professionally rewarding? This presentation will provide a model of differentiated teacher appraisal, based on clear standards of practice and an approach that engages teachers not only in demonstrating their skill, but in those activities that promote professional learning: structured opportunities for self-assessment, reflection on practice and professional conversation.
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