Educational leadership is a tough challenge at the best of times, with many pressures from all sides. But particularly now, with so much shifting, high levels of uncertainty, and polarising issues at play, it’s arguably an even rougher sea to navigate. In such a context, my guest this week has done an amazing job of gathering vital insights from 67 amazing education leaders around the world, herself included, to bring some collective wisdom to bear on the subject.

Jennifer D. Klein is an author and former head of school with extensive international experience and over 30 years in education--including 19 in the classroom. She is a product of experiential project-based education herself, and she lives and breathes the student-centred pedagogies used to educate her. She became a teacher during graduate school in 1990, quickly finding the intersection between her love of writing and her fascination with educational transformation and its potential impact on social change. She spent nineteen years in the classroom, including several years in Costa Rica and eleven in all-girls education, before leaving the classroom to support educators’ professional learning in public, private, and international schools. Motivated by her belief that all children deserve a meaningful, relevant education like the one she experienced herself, and that giving them such an education will catalyze positive change in their communities and beyond, Jennifer strives to inspire educators to shift their practices in schools worldwide.

Jennifer has a broad background in global education and global partnership development, student-centered curricular strategies, diversity and inclusivity work, authentic assessment, and experiential, inquiry-driven learning. She has facilitated workshops in English and Spanish on four continents, providing the strategies for high-quality, globally connected project-based learning in all cultural and socioeconomic contexts, with an emphasis on amplifying student voice and shifting school culture to support such practices. She is committed to intersecting global student-centered learning with culturally responsive and anti-racist teaching practices, and her experience includes deep work with schools seeking to address equity, take on brave conversations, build healthier community, and improve identity politics on campus.

Jennifer’s first book, The Global Education Guidebook: Humanizing K–12 Classrooms Worldwide Through Equitable Partnerships, was published in 2017, and her second book, The Landscape Model of Learning: Designing Student-Centered Experiences for Cognitive and Cultural Inclusion, was released in 2022. Her third book, Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership: Doing Right by Learners without Losing your Job, to be released in September, 2025, is based on interviews with 67 educational leaders around the world who are facing resistance to practices they know are good for learners. Jennifer's experiences as a head of school in Colombia provide a through line as she explores the strategies leaders are using to manage resistance.

Jennifer has worked with organizations such as the Buck Institute for Education, the Center for Global Education at the Asia Society, The Institute for International Education, Fulbright Japan, What School Could Be, the Centre for Global Education, TakingITGlobal, and the World Leadership School. Most recently, she served as Head of School at Gimnasio Los Caobos (Bogotá, Colombia) for three years, where she was able to put her educational thinking into practice with profound impact on the quality of student learning and their growth as agents of change.

Links:

Jennifer’s website: https://www.principledlearning.org/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdeborahklein/

This is the first part of a 4-part series exploring the ways in which artificial intelligence is impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world, through the lens of Anthropic’s recently announced partnerships. In this episode, I talked with Þórdís Jóna Sigurðardóttir, the Director of the Directorate of Education and School Services in Iceland who is exploring the implications of AI for teachers' workload and working conditions, in partnership with Anthropic, Google and the Icelandic Teachers’ Union (KI). I was struck by how significant the learning focus of this pilot was, with a genuine openness to be both careful and curious in exploring the implications of AI in a country with diverse learning needs, and contrasting school contexts, both urban and very rural, in a historically very decentralised system.

Þórdís Jóna is Director of the Directorate of Education and School Services. The Directorate of Education and School Services, active since April 2024 and taking over from the previous Directorate of Educations, plays a key role in promoting the education system in Iceland and implementing the government’s education policy. Þórdís Jóna holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Sociology from the University of Iceland, an MBA from Vlerick Business School, and a leadership and policy implementation program from Harvard Business School.

Links:

https://island.is/s/midstod-menntunar-og-skolathjonustu

https://www.csee-etuce.org/en/item/4428:icelands-ai-pilot-in-education-what-it-really-means-for-teachershttps://island.is/en/o/directorate-of-education-and-school-services/news/a-turning-point-in-icelandic-schooling

https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-and-iceland-announce-one-of-the-world-s-first-national-ai-education-pilots