- Rental Event
Dr. Sahlberg will give a presentation on Education Around The World: Past, Present, and Future. Tickets are not required, but the department requests that attendees please register via the contact methods listed below.
Contact Name: Tammy Bartolet
Email: tlp205@lehigh.edu
Phone: 610-758-3226
Registration Link: https://ed.lehigh.edu/events/john-stoops-lecture-dr-pasi-sahlberg
The 2015–16 academic year is the celebration of Lehigh University’s founding in 1865—or the 150th Anniversary of Lehigh. Official events and activities will begin on Founder’s Day and end on Alumni & Commencement Weekend. Over the course of the year, Lehigh will shine a light on the people, places, events, breakthroughs and traditions that have withstood the test of time and have made Lehigh the institution that it is today—and is poised to become tomorrow.
The College of Education is acknowledging three key landmark anniversaries: 100 years of education at Lehigh, the 50th Anniversary as an official College, and the creation of our highly acclaimed Centennial School. For the fall event we will host the first John Stoops Lecture. John Stoops was the first Dean of the College of Education and an influential member of the Lehigh Valley.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Pasi Sahlberg, born 26 October 1959 in Oulu, Finland, is a Finnish citizen. He received Master of Science (Mathematics) in 1984 from University of Turku and PhD from the University of Jyvaskylä in 1996. He also has Teacher’s Diploma from the University of Helsinki in 1986.
Dr. Sahlberg has a long professional history in education and development. His teaching career started in Teacher Training School and Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki in 1985. He then moved to the Ministry of Education (National Board of Education) in 1991 to serve as Senior Advisor in science education, Head of the School Improvement Unit, and later as Counselor to the Deputy Director General on education policy development and education reform. In 2000 he took the leadership post at the Centre for School Development in the University of Helsinki.
From the beginning of 2003 he worked as Senior Education Specialist in the World Bank in Washington, DC. He was responsible for education portfolios and analytical work in Europe and Central Asia. Since June 2007 he served the European Training Foundation in Torino, Italy, as Lead Education Specialist offering policy advice to governments, schools and leaders to improve education policies and practices. Since December 2009 Dr. Sahlberg served as Direcor General of CIMO (Center for International Mobility and Cooperation) at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland. He has worked with governments and educators in Europe, Central Asia, North America, Africa and Asia-Pacific region to help them in improving education policies and implementing system-wide education reforms.
In his current job as a Visiting Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, MA, USA, Dr. Sahlberg works with graduate and doctoral students teaching courses about international educational change and how education policies and reforms can improve and also harm school systems, teachers and students in schools.
Dr. Sahlberg has an active figure in promoting educational changes in Finland and beyond. He has published several books, such as Cooperative Learning Handbook (with Shlomo Sharan in 2002) and Small Group Learning in Mathematics (with John Berry in 2003), Finnish Lessons (2011/2015) and more than one hundred articles in journals, research periodicals and magazines around the world. Some of the most read ones include “The Fourth Way of Finland” (2011), “Rethinking Accountability in a Knowledge Society” (2010), “Creativity and innovation through lifelong learning” (2009), and “Education Reform for Raising Economic Competitiveness” (2006). He served the Board of Directors of the International Association for Studies of Cooperation in Education (IASCE, 2006-2014) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD, 2011-2014) and is currently member of the Advisory Board of the Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB) and Open Society Foundations (Education Support Program). He is at the Editorial Board of the Journal of Educational Change, Journal of Professional Capital and Community, and Education Policy Journal. His book “Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?” (2011) won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award and he received the 2012 Education Award in Finland and the 2014 Robert Owen Award in Scotland. In 2013 he received First Class Knight of the White Rose in Finland.
His professional interests are in educational change and leadership, student learning, and global education policy development. He has worked with OECD, World Bank, European Union and several governments in 50 countries in Africa, Central Asia, Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, Pacific Region, Latin America and North America. He has been advisor to several governments and provided high-level strategic advice to policy-makers, prepared and reviewed education reforms and institutions, analyzed education reforms and spoke to the public and professionals about education and training around the world. He is Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki and at the University of Oulu. He enjoys family-life, reading, writing, music, basketball and golf.