Innovative Solutions: Can a school redesign project support educators in becoming agents of change?

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 11:45 am
  In Poster Session: Teacher Agency, Activism, and Leadership - Div K Section 2

Abstract

Despite remarkable advances in our understandings of how children learn (Darling-Hammond, 2020), these advances have not yet consistently resulted in better outcomes for students (Kuhfield & Lewis, 2024). Rather than leading to real change, efforts to reform and improve schools instead often reproduce and further entrench the status quo (Au, 2022, Chen, 2024).
Through analysis of student work, student reflections and semi-structured interviews with a subset of the participants, this project implemented a qualitative approach to explore the impacts of engaging in a school design project on preservice educators’ (n=63) feelings of agency and on their ability to generate innovative solutions to challenges faced by schools.

Author

• Emily Anne Lyons, Springfield College