The Education We Need for a Future We Can′t Predict

For decades Tom Hatch has been engaged in school reform as an observer, researcher, and participant—as well as the involved parent of three children. He has surveyed efforts across the United States and much of the world—notably Norway, Finland, and Singapore—sympathetically but not uncritically. In this magisterial work, he presents the lessons he has learned and offers sage advice to those who seek to improve our schools—anywhere, everywhere.

-- Howard Gardner, Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education

You won’t find a better book on system change in education than The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict. It addresses all the key issues and does so from the ground up. We learn why schools don’t change; how they can improve; what it takes to change a system; and, in the final analysis, the possibilities of system change. It has remarkable geographical range based on lived-in familiarity of the countries in question: the US, Finland, Singapore, South Africa, Norway, and more. Above all, The Education We Need renders complexity into clarity as the writing is so clear and compelling. A powerful read on a topic of utmost importance.

-- Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus

It is highly unusual and wonderfully refreshing to read a book so carefully pitched to our turbulent times as Tom Hatch’s The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict. This magnum opus masterfully blends a moving personal memoir, trenchant social and political analysis, and an inspiring vision of a better world. This is must-reading for all serious educators and change leaders in the age of the coronavirus and beyond.

-- Dennis Shirley, Duganne Faculty Fellow and Professor

The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predictis an absolute must read for everyone interested in effective and equitable educational changes. Drawing on Tom Hatch’s extensive expertise from research and direct involvement in educational improvement work, this book provides wise advice and practical actions ranging from micro-innovations for teaching, learning and equity in classrooms, to school improvement and reform, and large-scale change to transform education systems. I cannot recommend this book highly enough – Tom tackles long-standing and emerging educational issues in new ways with an impressive understanding of the challenging complexities, but also feasible possibilities, for ensuring excellence and equity for all students. 

-- Carol Campbell, Associate Professor

Tom Hatch has been ‘in the arena’ where policy, programs, people, and power converge to educate children. In his fantastic, informative new book, The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict, Tom travelled the globe to study how individuals, classrooms, schools, school systems, and nations ‘try with despair and hope to change and transform educational opportunities.’ Whether you’re a parent, practitioner, or policymaker, this book is written for you to take action to improve schools and communities; and to create new educational possibilities.

-- Pablo Muñoz, Superintendent of Schools

This educational odyssey is a fascinating story about why we need, now more than ever, to both improve our schools and transform education systems at the same time. In the era of global health crisis, political instability and economic uncertainty, Tom Hatch and colleagues bring us a much-needed message of optimism and hope: We can change schools for better and improve education systems if we really want to do so. This book is a must-read for those who want to think differently about the education and what it takes to have schools that our children need for a future we can’t predict.

-- Pasi Sahlberg, Professor of Education Policy
Tom Hatch has worked at the center of some of the landmark school reform initiatives of our times. He has inside knowledge of the promise and the disappointments of school reform. In this perceptive book, Hatch shares his well-informed vision of what can work in efforts to improve our schools. The book is a timely and valuable contribution to our literature on school improvement. -- William Damon, Professor of Education

Very few books on school reform contain so many ideas and insights into how to develop and improve education and educational systems for the future challenges. This book underlines in a very interesting and absorbing way the fact that we do not know about the future and we can’t predict it. We can, however, create a future together by offering a right to good teaching and learning in our systems. In this task, our education must focus on humanity, equity, democracy, sustainable way of life and at the same time to take into account the uniqueness of a person and the richness of multi cultures.

-- Mikko Salonen, Educational Leadership Consultant, Coach

There are many reasons to feel discouraged about attempts to substantively transform public education these days. The grammar of schooling has proved remarkably hard to change, most reform efforts have failed to prepare our children for the messy world we’re passing on to them, and we’re now entering a world where disruptions to life and work will likely become part of our everyday realities. If you’re one of those unwilling to give up to hopelessness, or if you’re already on the verge of losing hope, you have to read this book by Tom Hatch. The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict is at the same time thoughtful and pragmatic, American and global, micro- and macro. Tom provides a thoughtful analysis of why it is so hard to change schools and what it takes to make meaningful change stick in classrooms and across entire education systems. Tom’s book is a good reminder that our way out of this mess and towards a brighter future is to be found in our human agency, understood as our capacity to exercise choice in the face of uncertainty. And it shows, through example, how and why it is so important - even urgent - for the United States to look beyond its borders to learn from the amazing educational transformation work going on abroad, all the way from Europe to Africa, from South-East Asia to Latin America. 

-- Santiago Rincon Gallardo, Education Consultant

Education is plagued by an absent of knowledge on the intricacies related to "making change happen" in education focused governmental and non-governmental organizations. Tom Hatch provides numerous examples of change efforts in the United States and in numerous countries that dot the globe. Global and local change approaches are described in ways that are helpful to leaders struggling to design strategies to inform strategic and tactical approaches that are evidenced based and relevant to common struggles organizations face in diverse geographic, demographic and political contexts. The lessons learned draw upon research and practical knowledge derived from the vantage point of a highly skilled researcher and his family’s real-life journey in educational systems in Norway, Sweden, and the United States.

The various conceptualizations of change strategies included in this book provide a much-needed resource for practitioners, reformers and policy makers to consider in planning and implementing change in complex times in a variety of educational settings across the globe. Tom’s personalization of research offers excellent case studies offer a variety of ways to think about making change happen. Readers are certain to identify with a rich array of relevant research and practice whether planning change for an education oriented non-profit, schools, districts, or state and national change projects. 

-- Larry Leverett, Retired Executive Director

Hatch has written a deeply personal and reflective book that weaves decades of personal and global research evidence with his own personal experience as a student, parent and scholar in different countries. As a result, The Education We Need provides a unique, timely and compelling argument for how lives within schools and education systems are inextricably linked to local and national context.

This book will be essential reading for my students! -- Karen Edge, Reader in Educational Leadership

A well written and well-argued book, bringing in the value of small scale changes in improving whole educational systems across the developed and developing world. It is healthily critical, reflective and humble while seeking to be constructive and ultimately optimistic, too. The book shows that educational transformation without social transformation is extremely unlikely on any significant scale, but that substantial improvement of what already exists is feasible, desirable and, of itself, can make significant contributions to equity.

-- Andy Hargreaves * Research Professor, Boston College, Director of CHENINE (Change, Engagement & Innovation in Education), University of Ottawa, President & Co-Founder, ARC Educati