Prof. Reimers from Harvard University Came to Huaxia Curriculum Forum, and Made a Report on Global Education Innovation Plan
2017-12-27
On December 12th, at the invitation of ICI, prof. Fernando Reimers from School of Education of Harvard University visited ECNU, and made a report on Huaxia Curriculum Forum. The report was about "Global Innovative Education Plan: Researching and Strengthening the Public Education System". The forum was hosted by Dr. Xiao Sihan, and Ma Mingyan, a graduate form the School of Education of Harvard University, interpreted for this forum.
How to cultivate students' qualities so that they can meet the challenges of the 21st century better? It is an educational issue that focused by almost all countries in the world currently. Prof. Reimers responded to this question by introducing his team's Global Education Innovation Program.
Prof. Reimers first introduced his own work experience briefly and mentioned that before he became a professor at Harvard University, he worked at the World Bank, and his job was to provide policy advice on the fiscal expenditure of education funding. After the September 11 attacks, he began to pay attention to the cultivation of students' morality and personality, and to think about how the school fostered qualified citizens. What’s more, he tried to improve the community through mutual cooperation. This became his starting point for creating a global education innovation program.
Then, prof. Reimers went on to introduce three aspects of the Global Education Innovation Program: The first aspect is applied research, which aimed at helping the government make policies; the second aspect is to influence educational policies through academic research, he has organized different groups to exchange and discuss the educational issues that they are concerned about, thus, the influence could be generated; the third aspect is to develop simple tools to help principals, teachers to change their leadership and teaching strategies.
At the end of the speech, Prof. Reimers and the audience discussed about the advantages and the education fairness of off-campus education in global education. He pointed out that fair education can only be achieved by bringing soft skills into the classroom.
