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If Malaysia wants schools that produce adaptable, creative, future-ready students, can it do so without first creating a system where teachers themselves experience autonomy, curiosity, and be trusted to lead? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Professor Fernando Reimers, the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education and director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative at Harvard University, and Aeti Abdullah, Executive Director of the Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange (MACEE), which administers the Fulbright Malaysia Program.
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00:10Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show
00:14where we want you to consider and then we consider what you know of the news of the day.
00:18We've just celebrated Teachers' Day, a day where we recognise that educators are the lifeblood
00:24of a country and we examine the future of the teaching profession and here in Malaysia as we
00:31enter a new phase of education reform with the 2026 to 2035 education blueprint, the question we
00:40want to ask is how can teachers be more empowered and more supported throughout the system? So
00:47helping me think this through, I have with me Professor Fernanda Ramas who is the Ford Foundation
00:54Professor of the Practice of International Education at Harvard University where he's
00:58also the Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative which focuses on education that
01:04develops 21st century skills. I also have with me in the studio Eti Abdullah who is the Executive
01:10Director of the Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange which administers the
01:18Fulbright Malaysia Programme. So both of you welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me.
01:24So I'll begin with you Professor Ramas, you've worked with education systems around the world.
01:28When we talk about teacher leadership, what exactly does that mean? I think for many of us,
01:34myself included, we think of teacher professional development or career advancement but for an
01:41educator what does that actually mean? The capacity of a teacher to inspire their students, to empower
01:47students to become architects of their own lives and contributing members of their communities which
01:52requires individual work but also work in partnership with other colleagues. That's why, that's why the
01:58concept of leadership because good education is never a solo sport. It's like playing on a sports team.
02:04And if you're playing a team, you know that one of the most important things you have to do is
02:08to
02:08learn to pass the ball. You have to know who else are you playing with. You need to,
02:12and so teacher leadership is about that. Teacher leadership, sometimes people confuse with getting
02:18outside of the teaching profession and advancing in administration and I think that's an incorrect
02:23notion. I think there is plenty of teacher leadership that people who remain in the classroom can exercise
02:29when they actually manage to create an empowering education for their students with their colleagues.
02:34So is it correct to use the term teacher leadership? I feel like we should get the semantics right because
02:40often you know you think what is a leader and who, where does the leader have the most influence and
02:46power? Can you tell me a little bit about how you see that within an educator role? I totally think
02:52that
02:52we should talk about leadership when we talk about teachers because a teacher, a best teacher is someone
02:57who can see in you things that you don't even see yourself and who can hold you to such standards
03:03that it can get
03:03you to do things you didn't know you were capable of doing. So that's leadership, right? It's the capacity
03:08to set a vision, to inspire people, to follow that vision, in this case for their own development,
03:14for the development of their students and of their whole classes. So I think it is correct to talk about
03:19teacher leadership, yes. Okay, and Eti, can we talk a little bit about where you see the role of teacher
03:24leadership, particularly from a Fulbright perspective? So Fulbright has been around in Malaysia for 63 years,
03:32so over six decades, and we have been, you know, sending Malaysians to the United States, about 1,000,
03:40over 1,000 Malaysians to the United States, and that includes teachers. So we have two programs of teachers
03:46that develop their leadership skills. And why is it important to build capacity in our teachers? Because they are the
03:54closest to the students, right, which I think is the most important stakeholders when we look at the
04:01education ecosystem. So I think that's the reason why I think it's important for us to center our teachers.
04:09And we hope that our programs, our Fulbright programs can help the Malaysian government do that. So for your
04:16information, Macy of Fulbright Malaysia, we're actually co-governed by both the US government and
04:23the Malaysian government. I think not many people know that. And many people think that we're just
04:27sending out, giving out scholarship and doing education has changed. But what we want to do more
04:33of is actually providing spaces to create conversation, bringing people together. Like in this instance,
04:42Professor Fernando Ramos is my former professor at Harvard. So how this visit came about is I think
04:52a few months ago, Professor actually reached out to me by email and asked whether I want to go to,
04:58flew over to Singapore because he has a program over there and would like to meet his former students.
05:07And I said, why don't you come over to KL and we curate a whole visit for you.
05:11So this is the reason why he's here also to celebrate our Fulbright 80th anniversary globally.
05:18Why are those networks important? So I like that you've put a lot of effort into
05:26maintaining relationships with your students. But there is an entire network of people who
05:32clearly are very passionate about increasing or empowering teachers and teacher leaders.
05:37Why is it important? I think when any of us is doing things that are difficult, that are challenging,
05:43it's helpful one to know that you're not alone, that there are other people with you in that journey.
05:48And it's always useful to have colleagues that you can reach out to, to think through for support,
05:54to exchange information. So most definitely at Harvard, we think that our primary mission as an
05:59institution is to educate leaders in various fields of practice. And one of the things that we try to
06:06teach our students is how important it is for them to remain in connection with each other.
06:11I say that explicitly to my students. One of the most important things that you're going to get from
06:16this institution are the friendships, the relationships that you're going to develop while you're here and
06:22that I hope you will maintain. So you may know that the Harvard Alumni Association is a fairly robust
06:26organization designed to strengthen that network. I had the pleasure on Saturday to participate in a
06:32convening to which a number of former students and graduates of the university were invited,
06:38as well as graduates of the Fulbright Program. And it was so good to see what people can do when
06:45they're together and share ideas. Similarly, when I was in Singapore, I organized another meeting of that
06:52sort with graduates. And when you bring people together who share an interest, who are in different
06:57positions in life and they discovered that they share an interest, say, in improvement of education,
07:02they can find opportunities to do things they were not considering. So I think that those networks,
07:08those invisible colleges, when you look at history, they have always been very important. Not always
07:14well studied or understood, but in my view, they are as important as the initiatives that come from
07:21government. I mean, very often governments are formed with people who have been parts of these
07:26networks and so on. So I take remaining in touch with my former students very seriously,
07:33because I know it benefits the mission that I'm trying to advance, which is to prepare them to
07:38improve education. On the note of building this network, when you talk about the role of governments in
07:45education reform, I think many of us think that's the sole responsibility of the government.
07:49Education reform lies under the purview of the government and if it doesn't work, if it fails,
07:56if it stumbles, the blame lies solely at the door of the highest man or woman in office. So when
08:04we
08:04think about how educational reform actually works in practice, how much of it is the government's role
08:11and how much of it are the networks in the ecosystem you speak about?
08:15Well, the government certainly plays an important role. The priorities that governments set, whether they
08:20decide to fund education, whether they decide to advance educational initiatives or improvement,
08:25is very important. But it's not the only thing that matters. What schools do in many places reflects
08:31what the society expects them to do. Take for example, a society in which there is a lot of pressure
08:38for
08:38students to perform in certain standardized exams. The most important actors here are the parents,
08:44who are putting a lot of pressure on their kids to get ready to pass those exams. And it almost
08:48doesn't
08:48matter what the government does, that pressure is going to be there. So I think it's good to understand,
08:53and I think most people in government, most government leaders understand that, that education is one of
08:58the enterprises that touches most people in any society, but especially in a society of young
09:04people like Malaysia. I can think of no other institution that touches more people. And what that
09:10means is that it's very important to think about who are the stakeholders who are going to be affected
09:16by any effort to improve education. And how do you mobilize, how do you first of all create the opportunities
09:22for mutual recognition,
09:24but also for learning together so that those stakeholders move in the same direction as opposed to working across purposes.
09:31And people call that idea collective leadership. Collective leadership is enabling a group of stakeholders
09:37from within government, from outside government to develop shared vision, to learn together,
09:42and then to each from their own points of view. You know, I, I define a successful education reform,
09:48not as a reform where the government is very clear on what needs to do, but a reform in which
09:53each, each relevant stakeholder understands what the goals of reform are, understands what they can
09:59do to support it, and does it, as a matter of fact, without being a hero, just does it. When
10:05you can create
10:06the conditions for that kind of collective leadership, the reform is successful. If you have a reform that is
10:11only important to government officials, that's always going to be a reform that's going to be limping along the way.
10:17Absolutely. Which is why I think it's really important that we have people from within the network,
10:22yourself, myself, even from the media. We are all part of the coalition building efforts that's needed to make
10:29education reform work.
10:30And the viewers are very important, the people of you in this program.
10:33Absolutely. We're talking about teacher leadership today. I do want to ask you, Professor, about the Malaysian context.
10:42In many Asian countries, Malaysia included, our education systems are historically built around compliance,
10:49around rote learning, around centralization, examination performance, as you mentioned.
10:57Can there be genuine teacher leadership in such a highly centralized system?
11:02Yes, but I think it will require a deliberate effort to help move the system to a more advanced stage
11:09of organization.
11:10When you look at the history of education systems, the creation of centralized systems,
11:15the creation of education bureaucracies, was actually a step forward relative to what existed before,
11:20because it is what allowed the creation of a mass public education system.
11:26But good as a bureaucracy is, it doesn't really tap on all the relevant knowledge of all the stakeholders.
11:34As you describe, a bureaucracy is very effective and well done for compliance,
11:39for ideas defined by a few people at the top of that system.
11:43The decision makers in that system are by design understood to be a limited group of people.
11:50And then the expectation is that the rest of the bureaucracy will execute, will comply, will implement.
11:55But we all know that in an education system, very often, those who have a best understanding of what the
12:01challenges are,
12:02and perhaps even of the solutions, are not the people who are far away, removed from the classroom,
12:07are the people in the classroom, the students themselves, the teachers, the principals, those working with them.
12:13So I think it is a missed opportunity for an education system.
12:17And so one way I'd like to convey that visually is people who think about an education system traditionally would
12:26think of it as a pyramid.
12:27At the top of which sits your minister and the council of ministers, and then you have the administration infrastructure,
12:34and then at the base of the pyramid you will have the teachers and the students.
12:37And I think the concept of the pyramid makes sense, given the number of people.
12:41But I'd like to think of an inverted pyramid, where at the top of the system are the most important
12:47actors.
12:47Who are they?
12:48The students, the teachers, and content.
12:51Because it is the interactions between those three that determine whether students are learning or not,
12:56and what they're learning.
12:57Now their work is possible, because the next layer is enabling that work.
13:02And what is the next layer?
13:03Your teachers, the mechanisms that you have to attract people into the profession to prepare them.
13:09They, in turn, are, their work is possible, because there is another layer that enables them,
13:15your school principals, the organization.
13:17So if you invert that pyramid, I think it produces something very powerful,
13:22which is to cause everyone in the system to understand that the raison d'etre,
13:28the reason they exist, is to make it possible for the base of the pyramid to do its work.
13:33The base of the pyramid is not there to carry out the designs of people at the top.
13:37They are there to conduct empowering teaching and learning,
13:41exciting teaching and learning, that helps the students understand the connection
13:45between what they're learning, the world outside of school,
13:48that empowers them to become architects of their own life.
13:51And if everybody understands, and our mission is to support that,
13:55to make that possible, that I think represents a transition
13:58from a, from a traditional bureaucratic mode of governance,
14:02to a more modern mode of government that recognizes that good ideas
14:06don't always sit in the office of the minister,
14:09that there are tons of good ideas, and there are good practices.
14:12Just a very simple example. I have studied and advised educational reforms
14:17in many different countries. And very often those reforms begin
14:21with a few people advising a minister saying,
14:23we should do A, B, or Z. And then the task becomes one of convincing, evangelizing,
14:28convincing the rest of the system that they should do that.
14:31But very few people begin with the premise,
14:34that there are already good things happening in the system.
14:36And that if you could spotlight those things,
14:39and try to understand why they're happening,
14:41and you could bring that knowledge back to the system, you would inspire.
14:45In my own experience, people are much more motivated to do things
14:48when they see what is possible than when you tell them what they're doing wrong,
14:53what needs to be happening, that the sky is falling over them.
14:56Right. That's human nature, isn't it? We want to be inspired by things that already work.
15:01But when things don't work is when governments tend to increase monitoring,
15:08increase standardization, increase measurement. You think about weak academic performance,
15:14governments really clamp down on that. They want to see better student outcomes,
15:17measurable by certain standards. So do you think that that's the wrong response?
15:24That sometimes excessive accountability actually weakens the very thing we want to do,
15:30which is empower teachers, trust the intellectual capacity of teachers?
15:35Well, I think accountability is a useful thing. The notion that people need to be accountable for
15:40the results of their actions. But accountability is a multidimensional thing. Yes, students need to be
15:46accountable for showing up and doing their work. Teachers need to be accountable. Principals need to be
15:52accountable. Administrators need to be accountable. Ministers need to be accountable. I think what is
15:57sometimes short-sighted in education systems is that we take a half-hearted notion of accountability
16:04and say, well, let's make teachers accountable without asking, is the rest of the system accountable?
16:10Because in order for teachers to do their work, others, remember that inverted pyramid, need. So for
16:15example, if you have a principal who never takes an interest in teaching and learning, who doesn't work to
16:21create the conditions that make it possible for teachers to improve their practice, that's not a very
16:27enabling condition for teachers to produce excellent work. Who should be accountable for that? Not the teacher,
16:33the principal. If you have a system in which the levels of administration that are supposed to be
16:40enablers, in fact, put demands that are not aligned with what an educational reform is trying to do,
16:47and that happens often, then those supervisors should be accountable. So I think accountability
16:52is a good thing. And I believe that measurement of both outcomes and processes is useful because
16:58there are tools that can provide learning. But the most important process is learning itself. The
17:05most important process is improvement, using that information to build feedback loops that help
17:11people understand, okay, what do I need to do differently? And from that point of view, one of the most
17:16powerful things that an education system can do is to develop what some people call a theory of change,
17:24an articulation of what it is that we're trying to do and how we're going to do it, that is
17:30widely
17:30understood, that is widely shared, and that serves as the backbone of feedback loops that can help us
17:37get better all the time. I really like that theory of change because I want to know how
17:43an individual exceptional teacher can create an impact beyond her scale, his scale, which is why
17:52fellowships are important. When you think about that, the theory of change and the impact one individual
17:58can have, how do you assess that when you send one person for a fellowship? What is the return that
18:08you're hoping from that person? Yeah, so we have a few programs that we send teachers to the states,
18:13and we hope that when they come back, you can see that ripple effects in the students in the classroom
18:20and change the style of teaching because we want them to be able to think differently,
18:25right? Because more often than not, if you're just staying in your safe bubble, you tend to do the same
18:33thing every day, hoping for different results. So what we want to do is empower the teacher as well as
18:38the mid-career professionals within the education ecosystem to think differently, right? Like for myself,
18:44I went to Harvard and I had to unlearn and relearn a lot of things. And I was lucky because
18:50in my
18:51classroom, it's 51% international. So you get a diverse perspective and you get, say, 100 different
18:59ways of doing, you know, providing solutions. So I really hope with our program, that's what we want
19:06to do, right? And when they come back, they can, you know, multiply the effect. And with Professor
19:13Reimers here, I hope that we can get, you know, hundreds of touch points, rather than just, you know,
19:19sending four or five teachers every year. So I think, but in this week, you have met hundreds of people,
19:25and I hope that will lead to, you know, many more continued conversations, even after he flies back to
19:33Cambridge. Well, hopefully him being on the show with us today will also expand that ripple effect.
19:39When you think about the theory of change, what is your theory of change moving from depth to breadth?
19:49So the most, I think one of the most important needs in our time is to look at the biggest
19:56drivers
19:57of social change or disruption, which are, in my view, climate change,
20:04in my view, the changes that AI is producing to the world of work, resilient inequalities,
20:12violence within societies and across societies, and to some extent, democratic backsliding,
20:19a certain abandonment of the idea that crystallized after World War II,
20:24that every person has certain basic rights just because they're human, regardless of their race,
20:30their gender, their religion, and so on. If you look at the world today,
20:34some of the violence that we see in the world is actually the result of not recognizing the same
20:40dignity and human rights of everybody. So those changes are happening outside the schools.
20:45And to go back then to education reform, what sound education reform should do, should be to ask,
20:52what are the competencies that we need to develop in education institutions so that people understand
20:57those challenges, care about them, and have the skills to mitigate the risks that come from those
21:03challenges, which are very serious. And once you're clear on those outcomes, you can then map backwards,
21:09what are the kinds of educational experiences that we can plan for a person so that they gradually go
21:16from kindergarten to high school and develop that full range of skills. And this is entirely doable.
21:21With my colleagues, I developed some years ago something called the World Course. And the World Course was
21:27a kindergarten through high school program, 350 units aligned with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
21:34and the Sustainable Development Goals. So this is doable. Now the question is, how do you then do that at
21:39scale?
21:39So the task is to engage in a system to articulate the various stakeholders we've been talking about,
21:46so we all move in the same direction. That's, that's how I think about a theory of change of how
21:50to
21:50transform a system. If I had to summarize it, I would say, we need to open the doors and the
21:56windows of
21:57schools to the outside world. And the students need to be coming in and out, so they understand that what
22:02is happening. The school is not a capsule. It's not an echo chamber. The school is in full communication
22:08with the outside world. The students need to see how what they're learning in school is helping them
22:14understand what they see outside the school is preparing them for that world. When the students don't
22:19see that, some of the best students check out. They may be there physically, but their mind is no longer
22:25there. They think this is not relevant. Right. But the person who helps them see that is the teacher.
22:29And the teams of teachers, not the teacher working in isolation, but the teams of teachers. Exactly.
22:34How, how would the teams of teachers be able to do that if they themselves are not then equipped or
22:42have the capacity built within them to address some of these future challenges? Exactly. I think that's
22:47where it's very important to think about teacher professional development and offering support. And it's
22:52very important to recognize that professional development is not just preparing individuals for
22:58individual performance, but it's preparing them for team performance. Very useful to know that
23:03good instruction is a team sport. Right. It's of no great use to a student to have an exceptional teacher
23:09once in their career and then have terrible teachers the rest of their careers. What every teacher does
23:14builds on what the teacher before did in the grades in which students are exposed to multiple teachers.
23:19It's important that those teachers talk to each other. That the best teaching is the teaching in which the students
23:25can see the
23:26connection between what they're learning in different subjects. And that's going to happen if those
23:30teachers talk to each other, if they plan together. So it is a good school, the school that allows good
23:35instruction is really like a symphony. It's like a concert. It's not just one player. You have multiple players
23:41and they need to be in harmony with each other. And so professional development, good professional
23:46development helps that orchestra play in harmony at excellent levels. So I understand you are a prolific
23:54writer of books and you've just published a couple of books. So one a week ago and one a few
24:00months ago.
24:00One on AI and education in the global south and one on education for a climate changed future. Can we
24:07talk
24:07about how those books might be used for building teacher leadership here in Malaysia?
24:12Why don't we hear from you? And then I'm going to tell you my own views.
24:16Yes. So we curate his visit here to make sure that we cover, you know, meeting teachers, hearing
24:24student voices, teacher leaders, policy makers, and both in education and higher education. Right? So the
24:32common theme in most of the programs is AI, you know, how it disrupts education and how it can,
24:39you know, amplify education and help we do a lot more good things. So what we want to do
24:48is to make sure that a lot of people have access to these books. We've been talking a lot of
24:53these
24:53two books in all of our events. And what we are planning to do next is to translate it into
24:59Bahasa,
25:00into BM. So it is more accessible, right? It's no use if it can be accessed to just a group
25:08of people.
25:08So we want to make sure that it is accessible to a lot of people. And in those books, there's
25:12a lot of
25:13frameworks that can be used immediately by teachers and hopefully will be adopted by our policy makers as
25:20well. We, we spoke to a few, we, we actually spoke to, uh, the minister of education earlier and he,
25:27she seems very, very, uh, positive about the frameworks that, uh, professor Ram has shared.
25:32Ah, wonderful. So let me say a word about these books. Sometimes when people say,
25:36I write a lot of books, uh, I feel the need, 57, but let me, let me be honest about
25:42the books.
25:42I have written four different kinds of books and they each serve a purpose. It is the case that
25:48there are books that I write myself or with a coauthor or a few coauthors reflecting my research.
25:53I have only written 17 of those. Then there are the books that I have put together with colleagues
25:58that I have edited and they serve the purpose of actually building collective leadership,
26:03bringing a community together, learning from each other and publishing that. And I've done,
26:07you know, the 30 of those books. And to some extent, those books may be even more influential than
26:12the books that I have written myself because more people feel that it is their book. And then there's a
26:17third kind of book that I have written, which have the main goal of getting the best work of my
26:22best
26:22students published. And so I do that as part of my teaching. I think it's very important that
26:27my students learn to write. When I receive my students, I first give them a pen and then I tell
26:32them I'm going to ask you to write in this class. So those are, they're all books, but my own
26:37participation
26:38in them is different. In the third kind of book, I'm more of the orchestrator. The students write the book.
26:43In the books with my colleagues, I do play a more active role and I normally write several chapters
26:48of those books, but I don't do this alone. This is, this is like a concert. And then there are
26:53the
26:53books that I write myself. And then there is a fourth kind of book, which are children's books. I have
26:57written five children's books and they are of a different genre. So let's talk, I think you're talking
27:02about the first kind of book, only 17 of those. It is true that the last two books reflecting work
27:08with
27:08colleagues in the initiative. The first one is on AI and education. And what we did was very simple.
27:13We said, in what ways is this new technology going to transform education? And we make in the book,
27:20by the way, the book is open access. It can be downloaded for free. If you just Google my last
27:25name,
27:25Fernando Riemers, it was published by Springer. And then you write the book, Artificial Intelligence
27:30and Education in the Global South, A System Perspective. You can find the book and download it.
27:35So what we said is, we said there is a distinction between
27:38innovation and transformation. Innovation is to do something cool with AI,
27:42which there is no doubt in my mind that it'll happen. It's happening.
27:46We don't need to do a study for that. Transformation is very different.
27:49Transformation is asking, what are the biggest challenges of education in the Global South?
27:54And can AI help us solve that? And then the book, with that framework, said,
27:58okay, let's look at an education system. What are the components of the system?
28:02Let's look at the evidence on how is AI being used about the moment? What does the evaluation tell
28:09us about the effectiveness of that? And then what are the implications of this knowledge for policy
28:14makers, for practitioners, for researchers, and for developers of technology? And what are the ethical
28:19questions? I can tell you that on that book, to go back to the image of the inverted pyramid,
28:24most of the action of AI in education is at the top. People creating bots of various kinds to help
28:30students, which is fine, but there are so many missed opportunities in helping improve the governance
28:36of the system, teacher leadership, teacher preparation. So that's one big takeaway of our book.
28:41I'm so sorry to have to stop you there, but time is jealous of us at the moment,
28:44and I want to thank you so much. This is such a rich topic. We could talk all night about
28:48this,
28:48but unfortunately, it's all the time we have for you on this episode of Consider This. I'm Melissa
28:52Agres, signing off for the evening. Thank you so much for watching, and good night.
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