Education to Build Back Better: What Can We Learn from Education Reform for a

This open access book examines the implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic for education systems and argues that major education reforms will be necessary, particularly in the Global South, to address the learning loss caused by the pandemic. To inform those reforms, knowledge about the implementation reforms in the Global South is necessary, and such knowledge is seriously lacking as the existing literature on the implementation of educational change focused principally in reforms in countries in the Global North. This book contributes to address this gap by examining five major education reforms in India, Egypt, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Senegal, and by presenting two novel approaches to climate change education using a bottoms up strategy of reform. The chapters examine the implementation process drawing on a theoretical model of educational change by Reimers (published in Educating Students to Improve the World by Springer in 2020).


The book concludes discussing the implementation of such reforms as an evolutionary and learning process, characterized by four dimensions: the goals of the reform, the drivers of the reform, the reform strategy, and the mindsets about educational change which undergird the implementation strategy.

Fernando M. Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education and Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative and of the International Education Policy Masters Program at Harvard University. An expert in the field of Global Education, his research and teaching focus on understanding how to educate children and youth so they can thrive in the 21st century. He is a member of UNESCO's high level commission on the Futures of Education.

Uche Amaechi is a Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where he teaches about leadership, organizational behavior, and social entrepreneurship. Uche is also the ELT coordinator at the Fletcher Maynard Academy where he works on school leadership, community engagement, and matters of race and equity. Uche also sits on the boards of schools and nonprofit organizations focused on supporting students from underrepresented groups.

Alysha Banerji is a Ph. D student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an Editor at the Harvard Educational Review. Her research focuses on the ethics of citizenship and civic education for global citizenship. She has an M.S.Ed in International Education Development from the University of Pennsylvania and has experience working in education in India, the USA, and Chile.

Margaret Wang is an M. Ed in International Education Policy graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously a high school economics and social studies teacher in Bahrain, she is now committed to helping the youth be stewards of the sustainable development goals. She is currently the co-founder of SubjectToClimate, an online connector for K-12 educators to find climate change teaching resources, and Innovate for Africa, a social impact organization supporting aspiring African entrepreneurs.