Flip the System: Changing Education from the Ground Up

Education is threatened on a global scale by forces of neoliberalism, through high stakes accountability, privatization and a destructive language of learning. In all respects, a GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) has erupted from international benchmark rankings such as PISA, TIMMS and PIRL, causing inequity, narrowing of the curriculum and teacher deprofessionalization on a truly global scale.

In this book, teachers from around the world and other educational experts such as Andy Hargreaves, Ann Lieberman, Stephen Ball, Gert Biesta, Tom Bennett and many more, make the case to move away from this uneducational economic approach, to instead embrace a more humane, more democratic approach to education. This approach is called ‘flipping the system’, a move that places teachers exactly where they need to be - at the steering wheel of educational systems worldwide.

This book will appeal to teachers and other education professionals around the world.

Jelmer Evers is a history teacher in a secondary school and is involved in classroom innovation. Jelmer gives advice, workshops and guest lectures on new forms of pedagogy and is involved in designing a new innovative teacher training college. He writes columns and articles for educational magazines and has edited Het Alternatief. He was nominated Teacher of the Year 2012 and named one of The Netherlands' 23 'New Radicals' by national magazine Vrij Nederland in 2013. He was nominated for the Global Teacher Prize in 2014.

René Kneyber is a mathematics teacher in secondary school. He has written popular books on classroom authority and discipline and has edited multiple high-profile books, including the Dutch book Het Alternatief and the Dutch translation of Embedding Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam. In 2015 he became member of the Dutch Education Council on royal commendation.