Spotlight speakers 2009
Graham Samuel Maxwell PhD. FACE, Educational Consultant
Graham Maxwell is an educational consultant based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. From 2002 to 2005 he was a Deputy Director of the Queensland Studies Authority where he was responsible for advising on curriculum and assessment policy and research and managing the statewide systems of assessment, moderation and testing.
Prior to that, he spent 30 years teaching and researching in the School of Education at the University of Queensland. His professional career began in 1962 as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and science.
Over the years, he has been involved in consulting, researching and writing on a wide range of education and training issues, particularly policy and practice concerning assessment. His contributions have ranged from preschool to postgraduate, across all sectors of education and training, for various boards, agencies, authorities, committees and associations, and in local, state, national and international contexts.
Philosophically, he is committed to advancing student learning and wellbeing through authentic, contextualised and teacher-directed assessment. Through his contributions to and commentaries on the Queensland system of moderated school-based assessment for over 35 years, he is recognised internationally as an expert on assessment moderation.
He maintains consultative connections with various educational assessment reform projects in the USA and the UK for which he has made invited presentations. Recent consultancies and publications have dealt with assessment, moderation and standards in schools and universities, and most recently with organisational change in the Pacific Community.
Selected publications
- Maxwell, G.S. (forthcoming). Moderation of student assessments by teachers. In Baker, E., McGaw, B. & Peterson, P. (eds), International Encyclopedia of education (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
- Maxwell, G.S. (2009). Defining standards for the 21st century. In C.M. Wyatt-Smith, J.J. Cumming (eds), Educational assessment in the 21st century: Connecting theory and practice (chapter 14: pp. 265-286). Springer.
- Maxwell, G.S. (2008). Setting standards: Fitting form to function. Paper presented at the 34th IAEA Annual Conference, Cambridge UK.
Further information for spotlight: Imagining the future of educational assessment: Lessons from Queensland and other places on Wednesday 23 September at 12.00 pm.
Carla Rinaldi, President of Reggio Children.
Carla Rinaldi is President of Reggio Children in Reggio Emilia, Italy. She is also a professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. She worked side-by-side with Loris Malaguzzi from 1970 until 1994 in the municipal infant toddler and preschool system of Reggio Emilia, where she was the first pedagogical co-ordinator. She lectures frequently on the Reggio Emilia experience in several countries around the world.
She has co-authored or authored a number of books such as An Encounter with Reggio Emilia: Children's Early Learning Made Visible and In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Contextualising, Interpreting and Evaluating Early Childhood Education (Contesting Early Childhood).
Further information for spotlight: The Adult Role in the Early Years Setting on Wednesday 23 September at 13.00 pm.
Frank Crawford, HM Inspectorate of Education
Frank started his education career as a science teacher in St Mungo’s Academy and St Andrew’s Secondary in the East End of Glasgow, coincidentally the part of Glasgow where he was born and went to school. Frank had a period of secondment to Glasgow City Council in science education, a post funded through additional money for deprived areas. He was appointed to the Inspectorate in 1985 from a senior management post in Holy Cross High School, North Lanarkshire.
In 1992, Frank joined the new Audit Unit within the Inspectorate and headed up the team that produced the first national Standards and Quality Report for Scottish Schools (the forerunner of Improving Scottish Education) and another team which rationalised performance indicators into the first How good is our school?
Frank became Chief Inspector as head of the Audit Unit at the time of the introduction of the setting-targets initiative. Frank has taken on a range of remits within the Inspectorate, including involvement in international projects, and is currently responsible for secondary inspections, special school inspections, quality systems developments, educational futures and The Journey to Excellence project. (He likes driving fast cars, motorbikes and ride-on lawnmowers.)
Further information for spotlight: The Journey to Excellence – 2020 AD on Wednesday 23 September at 15.30 pm.
Andreas Schleicher, Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division (Directorate for Education)
As head of the Indicators and Analysis Division, Andreas Schleicher’s responsibilities include directing the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the OECD Indicators of Education Systems programme (INES) and directing the development of projects including the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).
Previously Andreas has held such OECD posts as the Deputy Head of the Statistics and Indicators Division in the former Directorate for Education, Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (1997-2002) and Project Manager in the the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (1994-1996). Originally a graduate in Physics, he subsequently studied mathematics at Deakin University in Australia, where his master's thesis received the Bruce Choppin Award.
In 2003, he was awarded the "Theodor Heuss" prize, named after original president of the Federal Republic of Germany, for "exemplary democratic engagement" in association with the public debate on PISA. In 2002, Andreas recieved an Honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
A German citizen, Andreas Schleicher is married, with three children. He speaks German, English, Italian, French and Spanish.
Further information for spotlight: A Global Perspective on Education: Key Messages from OECD PISA will take place on Thursday at 13:00 pm.
Ollie Bray
Ollie Bray is the National Adviser for Learning Technologies at Learning and Teaching Scotland. He is a former Deputy heateacher at Musselburgh Grammar School and Company Chair of Volunteer Development East Lothian (VDEL).
He has won numerous awards for classroom practice and project development, including a Royal Geographical Society Innovative Teaching Award, two Learning and Teaching Scotland ICT Enhancement Awards and a Microsoft / SQA Partners in Learning Award. He has contributed to the publication four textbooks and various other online and off line resources. Recently he became one of the first teachers in Scotland to be appointed as a CEOP Ambassador (Child Exploitation Online Protection Agency).
Ollie is a member of the Association of Outdoor Learning and a full member of the Association of Mountaineering Instructors (AMI). For more information read his learning log.
Derek Robertson
Derek Roberston began his teaching career in Dundee in 1994. During his time in class he witnessed two boys, who were in his lower ability maths group, engaging with a complex problem-solving environment on the Super Nintendo console.
He was astonished at how they engaged with the problems, how they were challenged by them and how they used their own suite of strategies to solve the problems in order to be successful at the game.
Derek noted that this behaviour did not happen in the traditional maths setting and it made him reflect on the context of the game and why it facilitated such impressive abilities in children who had not shown it in the world of learning that they were expected to engage with in class.
This chance observation gave birth to Derek’s interest and passion for games based learning. Two years as an ICT staff tutor in Dundee City Council was followed by a position as a lecturer on the B.Ed(P) and PGDE(P) courses at the University of Dundee.
This position allowed him to establish games based learning as a topic of study for his teaching students and then to his successful application to lead games based learning initiatives for Learning and Teaching Scotland via the Consolarium.
Derek is now partnering local authorities and teachers throughout Scotland to explore the impact of computer games in the classroom and is contributing to the growing body of work that is helping to change the discourse about the position and practical application of games based learning in classrooms.