Post by Fernando Reimers

Over several years, I’ve developed a project-based approach to teaching comparative education policy, one in which students work in teams and engage with real-world clients to conduct policy analyses and help solve vexing education challenges. In this video https://lnkd.in/dJ8-9dKz , I describe that approach and what I’ve learned about preparing education leaders through authentic, practice-centered work. I’m also glad to share that this recently published book, Learning Education Policy in Practice: Comparative Analyses from Classrooms to Systems https://a.co/d/03szs1TY , presents some of the policy analyses produced by students in my course at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Education Policy Analysis and Research in Comparative Perspective (Fall 2025). Each chapter began as a client-facing study, then was strengthened through feedback, revision, and review. What’s in the book (14 comparative cases, from classrooms to systems): Curriculum, assessment, and system coherence: strengthening competency-based learning assessments in Kyrgyzstan. Access, retention, and reintegration: institutionalizing dropout reintegration after COVID-era disruption in Malaysia. Leadership pipelines and governance capacity: building practice-oriented policy leadership development in Nepal. Equity + learning through bundled reforms: sequencing transport for girls, school meals, and edtech in Islamabad, Pakistan. Education in fragile/conflict-affected settings: improving outcomes and social cohesion in Thailand’s South Border Provinces. Teacher quality, accountability, and support: redesigning how evaluations connect to improvement in Chile; addressing teacher absenteeism in Papua, Indonesia. Technology and AI as system challenges (not just tools): supporting teachers’ work in Uruguay’s digital era and building teacher AI capacity amid disruption in wartime Ukraine. Language, inclusion, and multilingual learners: multilingual EdTech for Indigenous communities in India, and strategies to improve multilingual learners’ achievement in Delaware (USA). Whole-child development and the future: scaling socio-emotional learning in Mexico (Coahuila) and designing policy pathways for environmental education that foster pro-environmental behavior. Across contexts, the common thread is making tradeoffs explicit, equity and feasibility, innovation and capacity, short-term gains and long-term institution building, while using comparative evidence to widen the set of plausible options.