BRAD OLSEN
Senior fellow, Brookings Institution, Washington DC
Professor of education emeritus at University of California, Santa Cruz
Email: Bolsen@brookings.edu
Click for Brookings experts webpage
Click for Brad Olsen, LinkedIn
Scaling Promising Education Initiatives Locally & Around the World: A public lecture (April 2025)
Had the pleasure of visiting Brookings Mountain West/UNLV recently. Amid a busy week of discussions about education policy, scaling, and the teaching profession, I had the opportunity to give a talk, drawing from the GPE-KIX, Brookings-ROSIE research.
Check out the talk and the great Q&A here.Recent essay on why and how scaling impact can be integrated with systems transformation to improve education in locations around the world:
Olsen, B., Wyss, M., and Elliott, M. (2024). "Enacting deep change in education: Scaling and systems transformation are engaged—should they marry?" Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
2024 podcast episode: How to deliver education reform at scale with The Brookings Institution's Brad Olsen and EDT's Elizabeth Ogott and Clare Buntic. Education Development Trust
The Brookings Institution’s work across recent years has been trailblazing in what it takes to achieve this, and Brad Olsen is able to give key insights into how we deliver such reform in the Global South. Brad joins us alongside EDT’s Elizabeth Ogott and Clare Buntic, as we delve into the ingredients to transformation, teacher buy-in, and togetherness.
This episode covers:
key ingredients to successful education reform at scale
how to motivate and incentivise teachers while delivering large scale change
engaging teachers as authentic partners in reform
the imperative role of good data in delivering good adaptive change.
Most recent book: Teaching for Success (2016, 2nd ed.)
Olsen's book, Teaching for Success: Developing your Teacher Identity in Today's Classroom, 2nd edition (2016, Routledge Publishers) discuses the core concept of teacher identity. He proposes and provides a professional learning experience for prospective, new, and experienced educators on how to recognize, adjust, and maximize the many ways your personal self and professional self become integrated in your teaching work.
Will Brehm: "Today we dig into the ways in which governments in low- and middle-income countries make decisions on education. What interventions work and which should be scaled? My guest is Brad Olsen. As he shows, these questions are a lot more complex than we might think..." Find the episode here.And here's the accompanying research report: Government Decision-making on Education in Low- and Middle- Income Countries: Understanding the Fit among innovation, scaling strategy, and broader environment