Fernando Reimers

Fernando M. Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice in International Education and Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative and of The International Education Policy Program at Harvard University. He is interested in advancing understanding of the ways schools can empower students to participate civically and economically, and to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He is a member of UNESCO's Commission on the Futures of Education and is interested in supporting the creation of coalitions that collaborate in enhancing the relevancy of educational institutions and to strengthen the teaching profession.

Fernando M. Reimers

He teaches courses on education policy and educational innovation that explore how to support students in developing the competencies that help them improve their opportunities and quality of life and contribute to improve the world. He also chairs a number of education leadership development institutes focused on advancing adaptive leadership on behalf of supporting global citizenship education. He is the founding director of the International Education Policy Masters Program, a program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that supports the development of leaders of systemic efforts to enhance the quality and relevancy of education around the world. His recent book One Student at a Time. Leading the Global Education Movement. is an analysis of the contributions of the graduates of this program to the Global Education Movement. This book is also available in Spanish.

His current research focuses on educational innovation and the impact of education policy, leadership, and teacher professional development on education that supports the holistic development of children and youth. He directs the Global Education Innovation Initiative, a cross-country research and practice collaborative he founded focusing on education for the 21st century. His most recent book, Educating Students to Improve the World, is a theoretical framework to guide the transformation of schools and school systems to align them with ambitious goals for an inclusive and sustainable world. Another recent book, Audacious Education Purposes, is a comparative analysis of several national education reforms that broadened the goals of the curriculum to educate the whole child. Also recently published is the book Empowering Teachers to Build a Better World, a comparative analysis of large scale programs of teacher professional development focused on educating the whole child.

Other publications of the Global Education Innovation Initiative include the book Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century, also available in Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish. Another book Preparing Teachers to Educate Whole Students examines a series of exemplary programs of teacher professional development around the world. The book Learning to Improve the World is an analysis of the ways in which entrepreneurship education influences the entrepreneurial mindset and skills of students in six countries in the Middle East. Previous research has focused on the study of programs to improve the opportunities of students from marginalized backgrounds, as reflected in the books Unequal Schools, Unequal Chances and Hope or Despair, among others, as well as in the study of programs to civically empower students as presented in the recent book Lectores y Ciudadanos. Desafios de la Escuela en America Latina. He has done extensive work in the field of Global Education and led the development of a K-12 interdisciplinary curriculum aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and with Human Rights, published in the book Empowering Global Citizens, which is also available in Spanish. He has also developed frameworks to create school wide strategies of global education, and to develop global citizenship education curriculum, published in the book Empowering Students to Improve the World in 60 Lessons, which is available in Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. His recent book Teaching two lessons about UNESCO, and other lessons on Human Rights, is an invitation to educators to intentionally pursue the deeply ethical nature of our craft. The book Learning to Collaborate for the Global Common Good is an analysis of how educators can effectively address the challenges facing democracy and human rights around the world, and a series of curriculum resources aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Convinced that educational opportunity advances more when groups and institutions find common ground and learn to collaborate and to learn together in tackling complex education challenges, he has worked extensively in the development of approaches and tools to foster education dialogue and organizational learning as a way to leverage the synergies between educational practice, research and policy. These approaches are discussed in the book Informed Dialogue, which is also available in Spanish, and have been used extensively, including to support education dialogue in the context of the transition to peace in El Salvador, to advance education dialogue in Mexico, discussed in the book Aprender Mas y Mejor, to advance social dialogue on teacher education and support in Massachusetts, and to advance global dialogue on how to scale education reforms that support 21st century skills. Recent examples of processes of social dialogue based on this approach are reflected in the recent books Fifteen Letters on Education in Singapore, also available in Spanish, and Empowering All Students at Scale, also available in Portuguese and Spanish. The book Letters to a New Minister of Education contains reflections on the practice of leading system level educational change, and is available in Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. He recently engaged colleagues at the OECD and the World Bank in the development of decision support tools to assist system level education leaders develop strategies for educational continuity during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

He has written a series of children's books designed to foster intergenerational conversations around values and competencies which are necessary to live well with others in a diverse and interdependent world, which have been published in eleven languages.

As part of his commitment to advancing educational opportunity, he has served on the boards of several education organizations, including the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, where he chaired the Strategic Planning Committee, which works with all public universities in the State in the advancement of common Statewide goals. He serves also on the boards of Teach for All, Facing History and Ourselves, WorldTeach, the Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities, Inversant, the Global Scholars Program at Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars Advisory Board to the Fulbright Program. He advises leaders of governments, foundations, educational organizations and international development agencies. He has served on the US Commission for UNESCO and on the Steering Group of Education in Conflict and Crisis of the United States Agency for International Development. Working with a Task Force of Ministers of Education of several countries in the Americas, in 2015 he supported the development of an education strategy to advance the Interamerican Education Agenda agreed at the last summit of Presidents of the Americas convened by the Organization of American States. He chaired a Global Alliance on Teaching which produced the report Connecting the Dots to Build the Future of Teaching and Learning which is also available in Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish.

He serves on multiple advisory boards and committees at Harvard, particularly focused in advancing the global mission of the University and in strengthening collaborations with educational institutions. He has served on the Harvard faculty since 1998. Previous to that he worked at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, the Harvard Institute for International Development and the World Bank. He earned Doctoral and master's degrees in education at Harvard University and obtained a Licenciatura en Psicologia at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He received an Honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Emerson College, a Centennial Medal Award from the Institute for International Education, and a Global Citizen Award from the US Committee for Teaching About the United Nations. He was the CJ Koh Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. He is a member of the International Academy of Education and of the Council of Foreign Relations.