CCBE
Research Report 2019-2020 crescentschool.org/ccbe @CSBoysResearch
The Crescent Centre for Boys’ Education
Discovering How Boys Learn Best
CCBE
CCBE
ON THE HORIZON The Crescent Centre for Boys’ Education
Discovering How Boys Learn Best
School Participatory Action Research Collaborative (SPARC) Crescent School is thrilled to announce that we are the first Canadian independent school to be a member of this collaborative. Beginning Fall 2020, Crescent and SPARC will bring research and student agency together with the intent on making a marked difference in the lives of the boys at Crescent. SPARC’s mission:
The Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives (CSBGL) partners with independent schools to support their educational missions. Based at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, our graduate students and faculty train teams of students and teachers from member schools in research methods, motivated by a belief in the power of evidence to improve school life. Over the course of a dozen years and more than 100 projects, the Center has helped schools to address a host of issues, from unconscious racism and gender inequality to enhancing leadership opportunities and curtailing bullying. In our youth participatory action research model (YPAR), the knowledge and experience of students guides rigorous inquiry into pressing school questions and helps to generate ideas for improvement. It is useful, however, to think of the Center as also having a broader mission that takes our work beyond the important role of training and education.
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On a fundamental level the Center is committed to the human development of the young people participating on our school teams. Questions like ‘What kind of lives can students imagine?’ and ‘What can students be and do?’ underlie our Center’s very existence and reflect a deeply felt commitment to the quality of young people’s lives. What is called the Human Development Approach recognizes that youth realize their potential in the context of opportunities and supports they find in their homes, communities and schools. The approach considers the conditions boys and girls find in these social contexts — both those that enable human flourishing and those that lead to what might be seen as “capability failures. ” Michael Reichert, Ph.D., Executive Director We are fortunate to be working with our Research Advisor, Joseph Nelson, a Senior Research Fellow with SPARC and Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, who will be guiding us through this profound process. Trish Cislak will serve as the Research Coordinator at Crescent the two adults will be the facilitators as the boys themselves will be leading the research in their own ways.
