A FORMER Director General at Finland’s Ministry of Education who has featured on 60 Minutes and a Future Schools Alliance founder who has dyslexia and sees the world differently are both coming to Noosa to help shake up our education system.
Professor Pasi Sahlberg, now based at the Gonski Institute at the University of NSW, and Peter Hutton, from the Future Schools Alliance will lead a ‘Blue Sky Thinking’ forum on the Sunshine Coast on Friday 11 October.
Up to 80 local education professionals will converge for the invitation-only event.
Aimed squarely at promoting educational reform, the forum is an initiative of Member for Noosa Sandy Bolton and CQUniversity Noosa, which will host the event.
CQUniversity’s Associate Vice-Chancellor (Sunshine Coast region), Teressa Schmidt says the forum has the potential to develop transformative ideas and goals for the education system, across both practice and policy.
“Peter Hutton has a reputation for transformational insight and how to implement significant pedagogical, organisational and cultural change in schools,” Ms Schmidt says.
“Peter has extensive leadership experience in both the state and independent school systems and he has led significant, successful innovation in both sectors. As a person with dyslexia, Peter sees the world differently, and has spent his life challenging assumptions and conventions.
“Pasi Sahlberg has worked as schoolteacher, teacher-educator, researcher, and policy Adviser in Finland and has deep understanding of how sustainable system-level improvements happen,” Ms Schmidt says.
“He has gained working knowledge in over 60 countries around the world as former senior education specialist at the World Bank in Washington, DC, lead education specialist at the European Training Foundation, and as a visiting professor at Harvard University.
“In 2017, he featured in a 60 Minutes story contrasting the school systems in Australia and Finland.”
What: Blue Sky Thinking forum
Who: Up to 80 educational leaders
Where: CQUniversity Noosa, 90 Goodchap Street, Noosaville
When: Friday 11 October