Facilitators
OUR EDUCATION NETWORK LEAD FACILITATORS
Bill Martin
Bill Martin is the best leader John has encountered in 30 years of educational and business experience in over 20 countries. He has won national awards as a principal in the USA and his services are in strong demand to help schools to make sustained progress. On two occasions Bill has led his staff to create award-winning schools, and these were in challenging areas. Most recently, Monroe High School in Detroit won an award as one of the top high schools in America.
Bill brings a huge store of personal practical knowledge on systems thinking, forming leadership teams, and growing leadership in schools. He has worked in nine different countries, in the education, government and corporate sectors.
Bitte Sundin
Bitte Sundin is the director of a school district in the city of Norrköping, Sweden. The district contains both pre-schools (1-5 years old) primary and secondary schools. She has been engaged in developing schools, first as a teacher in secondary schools, then as a principal. For the last 13 years she has worked both as a director and as a developer of schools. Her main interest is training teachers and principals how to develop students’ thinking skills, and how to organize for that.
Bitte has also worked with teachers training in university, and as a consultant with leadership training. Together with her husband, Professor Bengt Lennartsson, she was convenor of the 13th International Conference on Thinking (ICOT) in Norrköping in 2007, and founder of the online Thinking Schools Network.
James Nottingham
James Nottingham is director of his own company, Sustained Success, and author of the critically acclaimed book: “Challenging Learning”. He has been a teacher and leader in both primary and secondary schools, and was co-founder and director of RAIS, an award winning, multi-million pound regeneration project supporting education, public and voluntary organisations across north east England.
In 1999 he featured in a nationally televised documentary about Philosophy for Children and inquiry-led learning, and in 2008 was listed in the Future 500, ‘a definitive list of the UK’s most forward thinking and creative innovators.’ He is a co-founder of p4c.com, as well as European Coordinator of OUR Education Network.
Jens Karlsson
Jens Karlsson is principal of Söderporten school, Norrköping - the first school in Sweden to join OUR network. The school is extremely multi-cultural, with most children having recently arrived in the country and speaking Swedish as a second language. With the help of OUR network processes and the leadership of Jens and his co-principal, Peter, Söderporten achieved in 2010 the best exam results since the introduction of the Swedish grading system in 1997.
Jens has a masters degree in pedagogical leadership. He is also an examiner for the assessment and quality control of Swedish schools. Since 2009, he has also been supporting all the other Swedish schools in OUR network, and continues to grow as a network facilitator.
Dr John Edwards
Dr John Edwards is Managing Director of Edwards Explorations, an Australian-based company focussed on exploring and developing human potential. He has a long and distinguished career in educational research, and has been one of the major research grant recipients in cognitive science in Australia.
He is internationally recognised for his research on thinking and professional growth and learning. He is one of the few top international researchers to have turned his research into award-winning practice in education, elite sport, business and industry. John is also a personal coach to a number of business leaders, elite sporting coaches and players, and school leaders, around the world.
Kate Perkins
Kate Perkins has over twenty years experience in the dynamics of individual, organisational, industry and community development. Prior to founding her own consultancy company, Kate was a senior manager with the Education Department of South Australia and involved in teacher training, curriculum development and research. In her consulting work, she draws on this background, on studies in leadership, and on the experience she has gained in working across all levels of government and diverse industries and communities.
Kate has spent many years developing her understanding of facilitation methods that genuinely involve participants in the thinking, planning and implementation of change, and that challenge them to think laterally as an integral part of the process. She has developed a unique approach to building effective thinking teams.
Lindsay Harby
Lindsay Harby is an experienced West Australian principal who has had great success implementing the TDS process into his school. He brings no-nonsense on-the-ground experience with implementation of these processes within the reality of the current Australian context. Lindsay is the first Australian Network principal to have facilitated a number of other schools in successful implementation of OUR Education process. He has also worked with similar processes in elite sports.
Martin Renton
Martin Renton is a UK consultant and trainer in primary and secondary schools nationally and internationally, and in Further and Higher Education institutions. An experienced practitioner, Martin has worked in middle management and senior leadership in schools, as Head of a number of departments in different contexts (notably History, Geography, Music and ICT).
Martin has also worked with BBC Education, is a published author, a Visiting Fellow of Newcastle University, the Learning Skills Development Agency (Northern Ireland) and is completing his Doctorate in Education. His approach to pedagogy can be seen in Radical Encouragement (Imaginative Minds; 2006) and Thinking through Music (Chris Kington; 2009).
Mary Wilson
Mary Wilson has been involved in education for 27 years in New Zealand. Mary is currently the establishment Principal of a year 1-6 school, Baverstock Oaks School, in Auckland. She has a special interest in: the differing ways people learn, particularly the use of in-depth questioning; high level thinking practices; the establishment of strong learning cultures; learner ownership; distributed leadership; and the use of personal visioning to generate professional growth.
She has been involved in consultancy work with adult learners for a number of years, creating sustainable change and positive attitudes to life-long learning. She regularly makes invited presentations at both national and international conferences around developing strong leadership and learning cultures. Mary is the New Zealand Coordinator for OUR Education Network.
Ragnhild Isachsen
Ragnhild Isachsen has been a teacher since 1971 in both primary and secondary schools in Norway, and is now the principal of Hogsnes school and kindergarten. She has been a school leader since 1995, and has a special interest in leadership and how to build productive learning environments in schools.
In the autumn of 2006, Hogsnes became the first school in Scandinavia to join OUR Network. Since then, Ragnhild has supported the 15 other schools, immigration service and pre-schools in Norway that have joined OUR Network, being an inspirational leader and coach to them all. She believes old dogs can learn new tricks and lives by the motto, "living in the learning pit, and loving it!"
Stephen Gaskin
Stephen Gaskin has been a leader of change for over thirty years in US intermediate and secondary schools. As a principal, he has led schools of every size, each achieving State recognition. He became an education consultant and staff developer for the Educational Service Center in Houston, Texas. He was responsible for coaching, supporting, certifying and providing professional development for 54 school districts. Steve specializes in personal visioning and couples’ shared visioning. He has supported Habits of Mind training in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the Middle East, and helped school districts across the USA create smaller learning communities. He has his own consulting company, SGEC.
Steve Stanley
Steve Stanley is the Managing Director of the Centre for Professional Excellence (CPE) in Perth. CPE specialises in the design, implementation and analysis of strengths-based professional learning, internal capacity building, and effective change processes. His focus is on people as the key resource in any organisation. The programs developed are unique to each client and context. Steve has worked in schools and was the Director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching in Western Australia. He works with clients across education, information technology, finance, government authorities, and elite sports. The development of top class leadership through personal coaching is central to most CPE programs.
Tony McGruther
Tony McGruther is the Director of Leadership Projects (Schools) with the ACER National Leadership Centre. He is also Principal Consultant to the Bound for Success Leadership Development Strategy in Far North Queensland Region. He has been a primary school principal for twenty-five years concluding his career serving as President of the Queensland Association of State School Principals and the Australian Government Primary School Principals Association. His current career focus is in the area of whole school improvement processes.
Lisa Wolford
Lisa Wolford is currently a Professional Development Trainer for the Adams 12 Five Star School District, located just outside of Denver, Colorado. She works to build capacity of the school system by developing administrators as instructional leaders and teachers as collaborative thinkers who focus on optimising learning for every student. In an era of increased accountability for teachers and schools working with fewer resources, her focus has been on equipping leaders and teachers with the tools tomake the most of every learning opportunity.
Lisa began her career as a high school English teacher and plublications adviser. She went on to become an instructional coach for a large suburban high school before moving to district-level professional development. She earned her B.A. in English from Wake Forest University and her M.A. in Administrative Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Colorado-Denver. She has presented at local and national conferences in America. Her areas of expertise include:
- Instructional coaching
- Backwards design of instruction
- Fostering teacher collaboration
- Group facilitation
- The Workshop approach to instruction
- Building a shared mission and vision
- Systems thinking and reform
As the Network grows, key members from Network schools are joining the Facilitator Team. The aim is for this Network to become self-generating, and to continue to evolve the processes and the networking benefits.
Fredrik Hoper
Fredrik Hoper is Development Manager for the educational authority in Varberg, Sweden. He is responsible for developing ICT as a pedagogical tool in teaching and learning. For 13 years he worked as Principal in a combined primary and secondary school. Fredrik is interested in developing schools and to give principals support in their aspirations to improve results. He found the OUR concept the best way to do this. He was also one of the members of the committee who organised the 13th International Conference on Thinking in Norrköping 2007.
