Note: You will find the option to vote below, after the statements. When prompted, please log in to your ICSEI member account first.
Each person standing for election was asked to provide a 300-word statement (without citations or references) detailing their motivation and contributions to school effectiveness, improvement, innovation and ICSEI, including their vision for ICSEI.
The statements are listed in the same order as nominees are listed on the ballot paper.
Nominee’s Statements: President-Elect
Dr Danette Parsley EdD
For more than twenty years, including in my current role leading Marzano Research, I have worked at the nexus of school improvement research, practice, and policy. I love collaborating with educators at all levels of the system to generate and use evidence for improving practice and, ultimately, opportunities and outcomes for students. Actively participating in ICSEI has enriched and strengthened my work through access to cutting-edge research, multiple perspectives, and opportunities to develop partnerships and exchange ideas. I am passionate about ICSEI’s goals for building an increasingly diverse, inclusive, and representative community and strive to bring those values to the forefront of our decision making—from speaker selection to committee membership to organizational policies. As a Board Member, I have served as chair of the Generational Renewal, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee; helped to identify and implement online systems for membership and conferences that increased efficiency, transparency, and engagement; and supported planning for multiple annual congresses. The global pandemic changed the world, including the context and process of schooling, and ICSEI must grow and sustain a healthy, diverse membership to advance our mission of enhancing quality, equity, and excellence in education. To do so, I see several related priorities for the coming years. We need to accelerate progress toward becoming a more representative and inclusive community – one where members from a spectrum of geographies, career stages, cultures, genders, and other social identities belong and have voice and influence. We must experiment with fresh and innovative ways to engage and collaborate, both virtually and in person. Finally, we must build on the work of recognized leaders in the field while creating meaningful opportunities for new generations to lead us into the future. I would be honored to serve ICSEI in the role of President-elect as we work to achieve these strategic priorities.
Professor Dr Melanie Ehren PhD
I’m a Professor in Educational Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, director of research institute LEARN! and honorary professor at University College, Institute of Education. I have a disciplinary background in educational and school effectiveness and worked in various policy and research roles which aimed to improve schools and education systems. My current academic work is informed by using a comparative approach to understanding and improving outcomes of education systems, including projects in the EU, Africa, Asia and the U.S.
ICSEI provides a unique platform for exchange and collaboration between research and practice. I’ve been an active member for the past three years, particularly in running the Crisis Response in Education network (CREN) and leading the online research labs during the pandemic. These labs offered a highly valuable new experience and mode of joint work for the community that I’d like to incorporate as a regular part of ICSEI. Labs like these allow a wider part of our community to work together on a more regular basis in a carbon-neutral manner. It also offers more opportunities for exchange for those who don’t have funding to travel to our conference.
As a president-elect my first aim would to ensure the diversity of our community and equality of opportunity for a wide range of international colleagues to engage with ICSEI. I will seek to increase our membership in underrepresented countries and type of professional role of members and the type of activities we organize to ensure the attractiveness of membership.
A second aim would be to strengthen ICSEI’s position in the international landscape of educational associations. I would seek active communication and collaboration with organisations such as the AERA, ECER, the OECD, and UNICEF to strengthen our profile, ensure we have a distinct offer to our members and provide opportunities for our members to share their work where relevant.
Nominee’s Statements: Board Member
Assistant Professor Dr Mauricio Pino Yancovic PhD
Since I became an ICSEI member, I have been able to contribute and benefit from its networks and committees. I have participated in the Professional Learning Network, the Generational Renewal, Inclusion and Diversity (GRID) Standing Committee, and more recently as Co-Coordinator of the Crisis Response Educational Network. I am also aware of the work and value of all its networks and committees. One of my deepest and humble motivations to become a board member is to try to give back to this institution what it has given to me. As a young researcher from Latin America, I think I can contribute to the board to expand our boundaries regarding our influence and engagement with social media, the support of new platform for our international congress, and I also think I can help to develop and support strategies for the inclusion of a new generation of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.
Finally, I believe that one of the key assets of ICSEI is the interaction of an enthusiastic global community. I think I can help to support and enhance the relationship that we are building in this community between countries from the Global North and the Global South. This is a necessary bond, considering the current challenges that we are all facing regarding the climate crisis and our post-pandemic world. An international community committed to educational equity, effectiveness, and improvement requires addressing these challenges together, and I would love to help to strengthen this international relationship.
Dr Paul Campbell EdD
ICSEI is a powerful and changing community that draws upon an important history, while also looking ahead to the new possibilities that come with an increasingly complex world, the intersection of practice, policy and research in response to that, and how our membership is growing and diversifying as a result.
Serving as the Educational Leadership Network Co-coordinator since 2017, Co-chair of the Publications sub-committee of the Communications and Knowledge Sharing Standing Committee since 2019, and co-editor of the ICSEI Dialogic since its inception in 2020, I have established a strong network across the ICSEI community and beyond, and a reputation for action, creativity, inclusivity and innovation. Underpinning this has been the pursuit of advancing knowledge creation, amplification, exchange, and mobilisation for educational change, achieved through a focus on inclusivity, creativity, and a social justice.
As a Vice Principal in Early Childhood and Primary education in Hong Kong, and as a Scholar Practitioner Fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change, my work is at the intersection of practice, policy and research. This aligns with my rationale for sustained and varied engagement with ICSEI, and offers important perspectives to contribute to envisioning and creating the future of ICSEI.
As a board member, I envisage ICSEI expanding its reach and influence through reviewing and enhancing our digital infrastructure, reengaging members in designing forms of sustainable activity between congresses, and new ways of sharing and amplifying new ideas, focusing on changing or creating spaces that enable the amplification of the voices of those traditionally marginalised or underrepresented. With this, I believe ICSEI will continue to grow in reach and relevance for a diverse and changing membership and audience. Focusing on engagement, collaboration, involvement, and amplification of perspectives and ideas from across the globe, ICSEI remains an exciting and inspiring community.
Dr Christine Grice PhD
My motivation is to connect with educators committed to building scholarship that connects research and practice, to collectively nurture ICSEI’s community. As a practice theorist this is strongly connected with my educational leadership work focussed on leading ‘me to we’ practices. I have a substantial record of effective collaboration across sectors and jurisdictions, initiating co-designed and collaborative research with schools and system leaders, including Social Ventures Australia, NSW Department of Education, AISNSW (Association of Independent Schools) and Catholic Education. I have 25 years of professional and research experience in educational leadership as a principal, deputy, and curriculum leader, enhancing stakeholder credibility.
Effective schools make a difference to students and communities. Effectiveness can be perceived as a neoliberal ‘done to’ aim, but ICSEI provides opportunities to reinvent rigor through local and community-involved research as an effective way of transforming education where evidence-informed practice is co-created. Improvement is less about teaching techniques and more about returning to a values-led philosophy of leading pedagogy, where the future of innovation is about joy and creativity. My recent contribution to ICSEI at their 2022 congress relayed my work on salvaging as a leading practice for sustainability and hope.
My vision for ICSEI is to nurture an inclusive global learning community that:
- enables equity of voice in dialogic spaces and events
- connects educators within and between congresses
- mentors through strategically planned forums, and local and international collaborations that grow industry engagement, creating new ideas that make a difference to our world.
- contributes expertise and knowledge in public debate, impacting policy and practice.
I have demonstrated these capacities as Coordinator of PEP (Pedagogy, Education and Praxis) Australia, and as Coordinator of Educational Leadership SIG for AARE (Australian Association for Research in Education). Both have successfully involved communication and events within and between gatherings to build sustainable communities.
Professor Dr Melanie Ehren PhD
I’m a Professor in Educational Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, director of research institute LEARN! and honorary professor at University College, Institute of Education. I have a disciplinary background in educational and school effectiveness and worked in various policy and research roles which aimed to improve schools and education systems. My current academic work is informed by using a comparative approach to understanding and improving outcomes of education systems, including projects in the EU, Africa, Asia and the U.S.
ICSEI provides a unique platform for exchange and collaboration between research and practice. I’ve been an active member for the past three years, particularly in running the Crisis Response in Education network (CREN) and leading the online research labs during the pandemic. These labs offered a highly valuable new experience and mode of joint work for the community that I’d like to incorporate as a regular part of ICSEI. Labs like these allow a wider part of our community to work together on a more regular basis in a carbon-neutral manner. It also offers more opportunities for exchange for those who don’t have funding to travel to our conference.
My first aim would to ensure the diversity of our community and equality of opportunity for a wide range of international colleagues to engage with ICSEI. I will seek to increase our membership in underrepresented countries and type of professional role of members and the type of activities we organize to ensure the attractiveness of membership.
A second aim would be to strengthen ICSEI’s position in the international landscape of educational associations. I would seek active communication and collaboration with organisations such as the AERA, ECER, the OECD, and UNICEF to strengthen our profile, ensure we have a distinct offer to our members and provide opportunities for our members to share their work where relevant.