Steven Rivkin 

Bio and Research Interests

Steven Rivkin is professor and head of the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois Chicago, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and fellow at CES-IFO Research Institute in Germany and the International Academy of Education. He is the author of many studies in the economics and sociology of education including educator effectiveness and labor markets, educator evaluation and compensation reforms in large urban districts, charter schools, school desegregation, accountability, class size reduction, peer influences, the geography of academic mobility and instruction time. His work focuses on the United States, but he has also written on education in Chile and Central Europe. His recent work focuses on educator and school effects on post-secondary outcomes including engagement with the criminal justice system. Rivkin has served on numerous government advisory committees and task forces and was a member of the Amherst and Amherst Regional School Boards. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of Economics.

Sylvia Schmelkes

Bio and Research Interest

Sociologist, Master in Educational Research and Development, both in Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City.  Educational researcher since 1970.  She has published more than 400 articles, chapters and books on the quality of education, adult education, values education and intercultural education. She founded and was General Coordinator for Intercultural and Bilingual Education in the Education Ministry in Mexico. She chaired the governing board the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the OECD.  She received the Joan Amos Comenius Medal from the Check Republic and UNESCO for her contributions to education in 2008. She was head of the Research Institute for the Development of Education in Universidad Iberoamericana.  She chaired the governing board of the now extinct National Institute for the Evaluation of Education.  She is an honorary fellow of UIL and has received three honorary PhDs.   She served as Academic Vice President of Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. She served as co-chair of the International Expert Group on SDGs in Higher Education convened by UNESCO to write the report Knowledge Driven Actions: Transforming Higher Education for Global Sustainability.  At present she is an Honorary Researcher in Universidad Iberoamericana and coordinator of the Chair on Educational Justice that carries her name.    

Tina Seidel

Friedl Schöller Endowed Chair of Teaching and Learning Research
Technische Universität München

Bio and Research Interest

Tina Seidel's research interests include digital educational technologies such as simulations for university teaching, the development of professional vision among teachers at schools and universities, video analyses of teaching-learning interactions, as well as meta-analyses and evidence-based teaching.

Ulrich Teichler
Professor, International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER-Kassel),
University of Kassel (Germany) from 1978 to 2013

Bio and Research Interest

Ulrich Teichler, born 1942, was for 35 years (1978-2013) professor on higher education at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER Kassel) and at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Kassel (Germany), and he was about half the period Director of the Centre. Already as a student (at the Free University of Berlin), he became member (from 1965 to 1978) member of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research in Berlin, when he also submitted his doctoral dissertation to the University of Bremen. His research activities and publications focused on higher education and the world of work, systems of higher education in comparative perspective, international mobility and cooperation in higher education, the academic profession as well as the situation of higher education research. He analyzed the search of higher education to strike a balance between accepting societal expectations and playing a proactive, “unexpected” role for society. For example, he emphasized that logics of national higher education systems varied more substantially that widespread assumptions on global trends suggest, he undertook many research projects funded by “political” and governmental agencies. He spent extended periods of research in Japan, the U.S. and the Netherlands, he was guest lecturer or visiting professor in ten countries, and his academic activities brought him to more than 80 countries. More than 500 publications each were written by him in German and in English, and more than 200 articles were published into 20 other languages. He was the founder in 1988 of the internationally most active association of researchers in his area of expertise, i.e. the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER).

William H. Schubert
Professor Emeritus of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Illinois at Chicago

Research Interest

William H. Schubert retired in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where he was a faculty member since 1975. Before his university work he was an elementary school teacher in Downers Grove, Illinois from 1967-1975. Schubert received his Bachelor’s Degree from Manchester College, a Master of Science in Philosophy of Education from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his 36 years at UIC, he held positions of Chair of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Director of Graduate Studies, Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Curriculum Studies, Coordinator of the M.Ed. in Educational Studies, among others. At UIC, Schubert received the College of Education Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, the University Excellence in Teaching Award, the University Graduate Mentoring Award, and the Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award. He has published 17 books, 200 articles and chapters, several poems, has made over 250 presentations at scholarly and professional organizations, chaired over 60 Ph.D. dissertations and served on committees for over 100 others. In 2005, he was designated as a University Scholar at UIC. Schubert’s primary scholarly interests are curriculum history, theory, inquiry, and development in both school and non-school contexts. In this work he developed ideas such as the synoptic curriculum text, the speculative essay, curriculum genealogies, teacher lore, and fictionalized autobiographies in curriculum studies. During the past decade he has focused especially on education that has emerged in resistance to forces of conquest and colonialism (past and present) in the United States and in diverse countries and cultures. Additionally, based on his interest in teacher lore and in the biographical and autobiographical work of professors of education, he is also writing stories of educational experience as a window to theory and praxis.

Dr. Wolfgang Schneider
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg

Bio and Research Interest

Wolfgang Schneider is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Germany. He received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Heidelberg in 1979. His research interests include the development of memory and metacognition, giftedness and expertise, the development of reading and spelling, as well as the prevention of reading and math difficulties. He was Vice-president and President of the German Psychological Society (2000-2004), and also Vice-president of the University of Würzburg (2004-2009). He is author and (co-) editor of about 50 books, including a volume on “Memory Development from Early Childhood through Emerging Adulthood” (2015), and (co-)authored more than 500 journal articles and book chapters.  Schneider was President of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD) from 2010 to 2012. He is a member of the Leopoldina (German Academy of Natural Sciences).  

Yael Kali

Bio and Research Interests

Professor Yael Kali is Head of the Educational Technologies Program at the School of Learning Sciences and Educational Leadership at the University of Haifa, where she leads research on learning, pedagogical design, and educational innovation. She is a Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) since 2024. Her work focuses on large-scale school–university partnerships that foster mutual learning among students, teachers, education researchers, and scientists.

Over the years, Professor Kali has led major competitive research grants and established national research centers, including the Learning in a Networked Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE, 2013–2019) and the Taking Citizen Science to School (TCSS Center, since 2018). In 2023, TCSS was recognized in the Community Engagement Initiative of the Year category for the Asia-Pacific region by the Triple E Awards.

Yong Zhaoe
Foundations Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas

Research Interest

Yong Zhao is a Foundations Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. He is also a professorial fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Health and Education Policy, Victoria University in Australia. His works focus on the implications of globalization and technology on education.

Yuko Nonoyama-Tarumi

Bio and Research Interest

Yuko Nonoyama-Tarumi is a Professor in the Sociology Department at Musashi University.  She also is the Director of the Global Data Science Course. She is a sociologist whose research interest is inequality in student achievement, with primary focus on family background, family structure, and parenting. She uses quantitative methods, mostly large-scale cross-national data as well as national data.  Dr. Nonoyama-Tarumi is interested in policy-relevant questions and is currently a member of Expert Committee of National Achievement Study. She has worked as a staff at JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) and UNICEF, and as a consultant to OECD and UNESCO Global Monitoring Report. Her interest has always been in inequality among countries and within countries, and how to improve the educational situation of economically-disadvantaged students.