School of Education

The Centre for Transformative Change in Schools (CenTCS) is pleased to announce the speakers for the first School of Education-wide colloquium of the 2026–27 academic year, taking place on Friday, 30 October 2026 at the University of Glasgow.

Hosted by CenTCS, the colloquium will focus on Transformative Educational Change, building on the Centre’s 2025–26 publication, Transformative Educational Change: A CenTCS Lexicon. The event will bring together international scholars and colleagues from across the School of Education to examine transformative change from a range of theoretical, disciplinary and professional perspectives.

We are pleased to announce the international respondents we will hear from during the morning session: Professor Gert Biesta, Professor Nancy Fichtman Dana, Professor Kevin Kumashiro and Professor Andrew Peterson. 

Gert Biesta is Professorial Chair in the Faculty of Education of the University of Melbourne, Australia, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pedagogy, Religion and Social Studies, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway, and Emeritus Professor of Public Education at Maynooth University, Ireland. He is an appointed member of the Education Council of the Netherlands, the constitutional advisory body of the Dutch government and parliament and has, over the past two years, been an expert advisory for the Council of Europe’s European Space for Citizenship Education/. He writes about the theory of education and the philosophy of educational research. So far his work has appeared in 24 languages.

Nancy Fichtman Dana is Professor of Education and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida. An internationally recognized scholar of practitioner inquiry and professional learning, she has authored or co-authored 12 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters focused on teacher and school leader development through inquiry.

Throughout her career, Dr. Dana has received numerous honors for her teaching, research, and writing. Prior to joining the University of Florida in 2003, she served on the faculty at The Pennsylvania State University, where she helped create and launch an award-winning inquiry-based Professional Development School program.

At the University of Florida, she championed inquiry as a signature pedagogy within teacher education and developed graduate courses that introduced hundreds of masters and doctoral students to practitioner inquiry. She also played a key role in the development of UF's award-winning Teacher Leadership for School Improvement Program and the Professional Practice Doctorate in Teachers, Schools, and Society, both of which highlight inquiry as a cornerstone of professional learning.

Beyond her university work, Dr. Dana has partnered extensively with schools, districts, and universities throughout the United States and internationally to support inquiry-based professional learning. Her work has taken her to Belgium, the Netherlands, China, South Korea, Estonia, Slovenia, Spain, and Portugal, where she has helped educators use inquiry as a pathway to growth, reflection, and improvement.

Kevin Kumashiro is an internationally recognized expert on educational policy, school reform, teacher preparation, and educational equity and social justice, with a wide-ranging list of accomplishments and awards as a scholar, educator, leader, and advocate. He is the former Interim Dean of the School of Education at Hofstra University (2023-24) and former Dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco (2013-2017). He has taught in early childhood, K-12, and higher education across the United States and abroad (public, private, and religious), and has consulted for school districts, organizations, and agencies. He founded and directed the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education from 2002-2013.

Dr. Kumashiro has authored dozens of articles and essays in academic journals and periodicals, as well as research briefs and position statements, and his work has been supported by over $4 million in federal grants.  He is an award-winning author and editor of ten books, including Troubling Education (recipient of the 2003 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award), Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning toward Social Justice (now in its Third Edition), Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture, and most recently, Surrendered: Why Progressives are Losing the Biggest Battles in Education. 

Andrew Peterson is Professor of Character and Citizenship Education at the University of Birmingham and is the Deputy Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. He is Editor of the British Journal of Educational Studies and is a Co-Editor of the Journal of Philosophy in Schools. His research focuses on how educators and educational settings can support the moral and democratic flourishing of their students, their settings, and their communities. More recently, he has become particularly interested in the relationship between sport and character development. He leads and co-leads several international research projects, and works with schools, universities, and other organisations in various countries around the world – including through his role in the newly established Global Character Alliance.

Through a recorded panel, these internationally recognised scholars will offer perspectives on key themes relating to education, professional learning, equity, educational research and the wider purposes of education. Their contributions will provide a stimulus for further discussion during the afternoon session, when colleagues from the School of Education will participate in a panel discussion connecting these themes to their own work and contexts.

The afternoon session will bring these international perspectives into conversation with scholarship across the University of Glasgow School of Education. Gaston Bacquet, Katarzyna Borkowska, Professor Simon McGrath, Dr Yvonne Skipper and Matthew Sutherland will participate in a panel discussion exploring how transformative educational change connects with their own research and professional practice.

Gaston Bacquet is a teacher educator whose work draws on Buddhist philosophy, international wisdom traditions and decolonial studies. His scholarship focuses particularly on nonviolence, whole-person formation and the development of ethical and humanising approaches to pedagogy and teacher preparation.

Katarzyna Borkowska works across interconnected areas of gender, learning and transformative change; the role and responsibility of higher education in society; and artificial intelligence, knowledge and epistemic authority in education. Her interdisciplinary research considers how changing forms of knowledge, authority and institutional responsibility can both reproduce and challenge inequality.

Professor Simon McGrath, Chair in Education, works on the relationship between education and development, with particular interests in skills development, vocational learning, diverse forms of work and integral human development. His current research includes work on just transitions, access to vocational education and training, and the future of the university.

Dr Yvonne Skipper, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, specialises in applied and co-created research developed in partnership with young people, teachers and other organisations. Her work includes research on misinformation and digital safety through Project Real, as well as initiatives that use collaborative writing to support learning, participation and engagement.

Matthew Sutherland, Lecturer in Teacher Education, researches social inequalities in education. His work has critically examined the narrowing of the secondary school curriculum and its implications for young people’s subject choices, qualifications and attainment in Scotland, alongside his wider involvement in quantitative methods in education.

Together, the speakers bring perspectives spanning educational philosophy, practitioner inquiry, social justice, citizenship education, teacher education, decolonial and humanising pedagogies, higher education, educational development, digital literacy and educational inequality. The breadth of expertise represented across the programme will create opportunities to examine transformative educational change from multiple vantage points and to consider how different traditions of research and practice can speak to one another.

The colloquium reflects CenTCS’s commitment to creating spaces for sustained scholarly dialogue around the possibilities and challenges of transformative educational change. Bringing together perspectives from within and beyond the University of Glasgow provides an opportunity to consider how transformation can be understood across different educational contexts, and how research, teaching, professional learning and engagement can contribute to more equitable educational futures.

As part of CenTCS’s wider programme of research exchange and network-building, the colloquium also strengthens connections across disciplinary, professional and geographical boundaries. The Centre looks forward to the conversations that will emerge from the day and to carrying these conversations forward through its research, partnerships and wider academic community.

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First published: 5 October 2026