Pasi Sahlberg keynote speaker

Pasi Sahlberg is Finnish educator and scholar. Dr. Sahlberg has a long professional history in education and development. He worked as schoolteacher, teacher educator and policy advisor in Finland and was actively engaged in planning and implementing education reforms in Finland in the 1990s.

He has served the World Bank in Washington, DC, the European Commission and the OECD as an external expert advising foreign governments in more than 45 countries around the world. His research interests include international education policies, educational change, and classroom teaching. He is board member of several educational organizations, including the ASCD, the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education (IASCE), and the Centre on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB).

He is also editorial board member of Journal of Educational Change, European Journal of Educational Evaluation and Research, and Educational Policy Studies Journal. He speaks around the world about educational improvement, enhancing equity and excellence in schools, and the future of schooling.

He has spoken at the national Parliaments in England, Scotland and New Zealand, and addressed the European Parliament in Brussels twice.

He is a former Director General of CIMO (National Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation) at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture in Helsinki where he led internationalization of Finnish education system.

Pasi Sahlberg is a visiting Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, MA, USA. 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.

His bestseller book “Finnish Lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?” won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award and he received the 2012 Education Award in Finland and 2014 Robert Owen Award in Scotland.

In 2013 he received First Class Knight of the White Rose in Finland.