Flip the System

Jelmer Evers is a history teacher in a secondary school and is involved in classroom innovation. Jelmer gives advice, workshops and guest lectures on new forms of pedagogy and is involved in designing a new innovative teacher training college. He writes columns and articles for educational magazines and has edited Het Alternatief. He was nominated Teacher of the Year 2012 and named one of The Netherlands' 23 'New Radicals' by national magazine Vrij Nederland in 2013. He was nominated for the Global Teacher Prize in 2014.René Kneyber is a mathematics teacher in secondary school. He has written popular books on classroom authority and discipline and has edited multiple high-profile books, including the Dutch book Het Alternatief and the Dutch translation of Embedding Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam. In 2015 he became member of the Dutch Education Council on royal commendation.

"This book is a collection of powerful essays to examine, critique and even promise emancipation from what it describes as the deleterious, neoliberal reforms of education systems around the world over the past couple of decades. Articles from an international array of teachers, academics and writers…are packed into this fascinating and fairly dense academic read. […] the thrust of the book is positive and leaves the reader with six guidelines of future action…"– InTuition "This book takes a scholarly look at a world-wide issue… teachers from around the world and other educational experts, make the case to move away from this uneducational economic approach, to instead embrace a more humane, more democratic approach to education. This approach is called ‘flipping the system’, a move that places teachers exactly where they need to be - at the steering wheel of educational systems worldwide. It's not a book to be tackled by the faint-hearted, but once you become engrossed in the book, it is a fascinating read and a reassuring look at where teachers really should be - at the very centre of education systems, driving them forward." – Parent in Touch "This book strongly advocates that if teachers are to have any real agency in their work they need to be involved in defining the goal of the education they are providing […] This book is an antidote, if enacted, to the GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) – the neo-liberalisation of education." – Peter Gossman, Educational Developments"The authors provide a critical and passionate appeal to teachers and educational experts around the world to move away from the dominant economic approach and embrace a more humane path to a better education system, more focused on people. This book can be a useful instrument to inform educational policies in the world, because it faces four fundamental questions of all educational debates through a global perspective." - Stefania Capogna, Italian Journal of Sociology of Education"This book, with its avowed commitment to democratic and ‘educational’ forms of professionalism, is an important resource for teachers and one that has the potential to enable teacher professionals in these uncertain times to re-imagine their work beyond prevailing educational orthodoxies." – David Hall, Journal of Education for Teaching"I am going to recommend 'Flip the System: Changing Education from the Ground up', edited by Jelmer Ever and René Kneyber not because I am in it but because it challenges the reader to think differently about education. This is a book not about improvement, quality and excellence in education but how improvement, quality and excellence get in the way of thinking about what education is for, how it might work differently, and how it might actually contribute to making the world a better place. Now that is something to think about between dips in the pool." -Stephen J Ball is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. He is the author of several Education titles, including Edu.net and Global Education Inc.

• ForewordPrefaceIntroductionPart 1: A global problem: Accountability, privatization and controlChapter 1: Testing towards Utopia: Performativity, Pedagogy and the Teaching ProfessionChapter 2: Measuring what doesn't matter: The Nonsense and sense of testingChapter 3: Stephen Ball - On Neoliberalism and How it travelsChanging Education in Action in Cambodia: The Embattled TeachChapter 4: The Effects of Accountability: A case study from IndonesiaChapter 5: Thijs Jansen - On Quality and ProfessionalityChanging Education in Action in Georgia: ….Part 2: A New Paradigm: Flip the systemChapter 6: Good Education and the Teacher: Reclaiming Educational ProfessionalismChapter 7: Non-positional Teacher Leadership: Distributed leadership and self-efficacyChapter 8: The teachers’ voice: teacher unions at the heart of a new democratic professionalismChapter 9: Automony and Transparency: Two ideas gone badChapter 10: Teacher agency: What it is and why it mattersPart 3: A Change to the system: Collective AutonomyChapter 11: Whole systems approach: Professional Capital in SingaporeChanging Education in Action in Finland: The Collaborating TeacherChapter 12: Teacher-powered Schools: Rising above education’s blame cultureChanging Education in Action in Singapore: The Inquiring TeacherChapter 13: From top-down to inside-out: working in a teacher-led schoolChanging Education in Action in Mexico: The Embracing TeacherPart 4: A Question of Mindset: Supporting and activating teachersChapter 14: Teacher Leadership: A reinvented teaching professionChanging Education in Spain: The Inspiring TeacherChapter 15: Arjan van der Meij - On Peer review and maker educationChapter 16: Teacher Learning and Leadership Program: Professional Development for and by teachersChapter 17: The Polite Revolution in Research and EducationChanging Education in Action in Korea: The Travelling TeacherChapter 18: Supporting and Empowering Teachers: The Role of School-Community PartnershipsChanging Education in Action in Australia: The Connected TeacherConclusion: Flipping the Education System