Research Interests and Goals
My primary interest is how public education can improve student success in life. Through my work in the past twenty years I have explored areas from assessment to content, mindsets to structures. Throughout I have followed a similar pattern that has been packaged in different ways by others, but essentially follows a process of inquiry.
I begin the process by identifying a need or something that begs further learning and work to understand what that need or learning is. In a lot of cases it requires investigating to clarify what is involved. For example, when I received an Individual Education Plan for one of the students in our school who was identified as gifted, it was the first time I had seen one. I got curious and tried to figure out how many students in our school of 400 students in grades seven to nine were identified as gifted and found that there were more than a dozen (I recognize the statistical improbability of this, but it was a school with a French Immersion program which artificially increased the statistics). We were doing nothing to adjust deliberately the learning program for these students, which was wrong. So, the next step I took was to survey and then meet with all of the students identified as gifted to get their feedback and thoughts about their experiences in school and suggestions about ways we could do better to meet their needs.
The next step was to learn as much as I could about the concept and needs of gifted students. I reached out to specialists in our school district to learn. I used the internet to find recognized experts in the area and then read their research and thinking, in some cases I reached out to them directly. I brought together interested colleagues in our school to join me in the learning journey and we worked with students to design and implement a program to better meet their needs. We took what we learned in the first year to expand our learning for the next year. I also expanded our scope to include educators at several levels in our district and experts in other jurisdictions, including the University of Calgary.
As a small cohort of representative educators, we worked to develop a system to better meet the needs of gifted students in our secondary schools. We took the research we had been working with and used that, plus our experiences with our students, and the expertise of others to develop a multi-pronged program that provided multiple, diverse opportunities for students; increased awareness in our learning communities; and provided professional development for our colleagues. Throughout, as learners, we have reflected on what we are learning and the impact of that learning on our students, involving them whenever possible.
This pattern of “scanning, focusing, developing a hunch, learning, taking action, and then reflecting” is well laid out in the Spirals of Inquiry (Halbert & Kaser, 2013) which is an evolving structure that has informed our work with inquiry for almost two decades. I have successfully used this model to inform work in supporting gifted students, developing resilience in students, preparing our secondary schools for British Columbia’s redesigned curriculum, and for whole school reform. I also use this model, in a scaled down version, for most research I undertake.
Halbert, J., Kaser, L., 2013. Spirals of inquiry: For equity and quality. Vancouver, British Columbia: The BC Principals’ & Vice-Principals’ Association.
I begin the process by identifying a need or something that begs further learning and work to understand what that need or learning is. In a lot of cases it requires investigating to clarify what is involved. For example, when I received an Individual Education Plan for one of the students in our school who was identified as gifted, it was the first time I had seen one. I got curious and tried to figure out how many students in our school of 400 students in grades seven to nine were identified as gifted and found that there were more than a dozen (I recognize the statistical improbability of this, but it was a school with a French Immersion program which artificially increased the statistics). We were doing nothing to adjust deliberately the learning program for these students, which was wrong. So, the next step I took was to survey and then meet with all of the students identified as gifted to get their feedback and thoughts about their experiences in school and suggestions about ways we could do better to meet their needs.
The next step was to learn as much as I could about the concept and needs of gifted students. I reached out to specialists in our school district to learn. I used the internet to find recognized experts in the area and then read their research and thinking, in some cases I reached out to them directly. I brought together interested colleagues in our school to join me in the learning journey and we worked with students to design and implement a program to better meet their needs. We took what we learned in the first year to expand our learning for the next year. I also expanded our scope to include educators at several levels in our district and experts in other jurisdictions, including the University of Calgary.
As a small cohort of representative educators, we worked to develop a system to better meet the needs of gifted students in our secondary schools. We took the research we had been working with and used that, plus our experiences with our students, and the expertise of others to develop a multi-pronged program that provided multiple, diverse opportunities for students; increased awareness in our learning communities; and provided professional development for our colleagues. Throughout, as learners, we have reflected on what we are learning and the impact of that learning on our students, involving them whenever possible.
This pattern of “scanning, focusing, developing a hunch, learning, taking action, and then reflecting” is well laid out in the Spirals of Inquiry (Halbert & Kaser, 2013) which is an evolving structure that has informed our work with inquiry for almost two decades. I have successfully used this model to inform work in supporting gifted students, developing resilience in students, preparing our secondary schools for British Columbia’s redesigned curriculum, and for whole school reform. I also use this model, in a scaled down version, for most research I undertake.
Halbert, J., Kaser, L., 2013. Spirals of inquiry: For equity and quality. Vancouver, British Columbia: The BC Principals’ & Vice-Principals’ Association.