GCES Symposium 2013

Florian Waldow

Florian Waldow heads a research group at the University of Münster, Germany. Among his major research interests is the study of educational borrowing and lending. Florian Waldow took his doctorate at the Comparative Education Centre of Humboldt University, Berlin, in 2005. Before coming to Münster, he worked at Humboldt University and at Uppsala University, Sweden. Together with Prof. Gita Steiner-Khamsi (New York), he has edited the 2012 edition of the World Yearbook of Education on the topic of “Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education”.

Russell Kerr

Russell Kerr is the founder and CEO of Hands On Learning Australia, a Harm Prevention Charity working to re-engage students with their school and the local community. Hands On Learning is a program that significantly increases confidence, attendance and retention of disengaged students 11 to 16 years of age.

Russell taught in secondary schools for 30 years before developing the Hands On Learning method in 1999. Russell specialised in teaching and supporting young people struggling with mainstream education and won the 2003 Westfield Premier’s Education Scholarship. This gave him the opportunity to explore international approaches to educating disengaged young people. Since then, Hands On Learning has become a respected model for re-engaging and maintaining disaffected students at school in indigenous, rural, and urban settings.

Dagmar Voith

Dagmar Voith was born in 1961 in Switzerland. She studied Scandinavian and German Studies at the University of Basel from 1981-1988. She then earned the equivalent of a Master’s Degree in 1988 and started working for a chemical company in Basel. There, she was in charge of recruiting, personnel development and gender issues in the personnel department. In 1991, she moved to the United States where she received an M.A/M.Phil and earned her ABD in German Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. After moving back to Switzerland in 2002, she started to work for the public School System and became Principal of the Bridge School in Basel in 2008. Bridge School is a system that allows young people who haven’t succeeded in finding an apprenticeship or who don’t have the grades for higher secondary school levels to improve their skills for entering VET programs. Her responsibilities include strategic, financial and personnel development of this school of around 700 students and 120 employees.

David Imig

David Imig leads an effort that helps to establish to transform the education doctoral degree for American graduate schools of education. Imig is leading a group of faculty drawn from 56 colleges and universities across the United States to “reclaim the education doctorate” and make it the degree of choice for aspiring school and teacher leaders. With funding and support from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, Imig is guiding the initiative intended to lead to fundamental changes in all aspects of the preparation of professional practitioners – and the way they are mentored and supported in the initial years of their tenure as school and/or learning organization leaders.