A host of increasingly existential challenges, from climate change to growing intolerance, pandemics to AI, are calling for societal shifts that can only be effected through education - by preparing students to be critical thinkers who are collaborative, conscious, and creative problem solvers. And yet all around the world, we see education systems that are inhibiting instead of fostering those qualities.
Teach For All’s collective studies of transformational classrooms around the world are revealing a powerful map of teaching and learning, one where teachers and students learn and grow together while increasing wellbeing, connectedness, awareness, agency, and mastery. To spread these promising practices with an evidence-based approach, we believe it is important to work directly with practitioners by supporting their processes to design and test new approaches to teacher development, and marry this with rigorous research to translate evidence into practice as well as practice into evidence.
Teach For All is a global network of more than 60 independent, locally led and governed partner organizations and a global organization working to accelerate the progress of the network. Its core purpose is to develop collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
Building on the foundational work of Teach For All, the Global Institute’s Research and Learning Lab is purposefully bringing together local teacher development practitioners and researchers to generate evidence about how to create classrooms and systems that develop students holistically around the world. For its first project, the Lab has partnered with Enseña por Colombia (Teach For All’s network organization in Colombia), Universidad de los Andes, and the Jacobs Foundation to design and pilot a new social and emotional learning curriculum and to pioneer new ways of measuring student holistic development. We also applied rigorous research to test program choices, and produced knowledge and global public goods for teacher development practitioners globally.
For over 15 years, through the development of a movement of 100,000 leaders in more than 60 countries, organizations across the Teach For All network have contributed to the growth in the number of classrooms, schools, and systems that exemplify a path to transforming education globally. At the classroom level, through the collective studies of more than 3000 classrooms, Teach For All synthesized global patterns in approaches to the teaching and learning of holistic outcomes through its Teaching as Collective Leadership framework. At the systems level, Teach For All has invited practitioners to critically examine communities and systems that are successfully transforming education, leading to new global insights on the importance of growing the collective leadership of diverse leaders working toward a shared purpose outlined in the report The Missing Piece: Developing Collective Leadership to Transform Education.
Teach For All believes that to spread these promising practices it is important to combine them with a rigorous approach to research and learning, so that not only is evidence translated to practice, but also practice is translated to evidence. The Global Institute and its Research and Learning Lab convene teachers and teacher developers to engage in these insights through a combination of learning experiences, workshops, and participatory research studies to expand evidence of what it takes locally and globally to develop students holistically and to transform educational systems.
To get involved with the Research and Learning Lab and engage in its research, interested parties can join our working groups, participate in learning experiences, and take part in our research studies. These offerings provide a platform for collaboration and knowledge-sharing among practitioners, researchers, and education leaders, and they contribute to the development of evidence-based practices for student holistic development. By joining the lab as a researcher or a practitioner, you can play an active role in shaping the future of education and transforming systems to ensure all children reach their full potential.
