CoLab

List of 3 news stories.

• 2023 International Association of Laboratory Schools (IALS) Annual Conference

  5/26/2023
  Amy Allison, English Language Arts Teacher and Cycle I Coordinator at Trafalgar School for Girls; Christianne Loupelle, Science Teacher and Department Head in Science at Trafalgar School for Girls; Adriana Ruffini, Mathematics Teacher at Trafalgar School for Girls

  This year’s IALS (International Association of Laboratory Schools) conference was held this past April 26th-28th and hosted in Toronto by the Jackman Institute of Child Studies (JICS) in collaboration with several other Toronto area Lab Schools. Many different educators, researchers, and administrators from Lab Schools around the world were in attendance. This was Trafalgar’s first year attending, and we are the newest members of IALS.
  
  We had two presentations at this conference. The first presentation was a workshop titled Designing Inquiry-Based Learning Experiences Through Cross-Curricular Collaboration in Middle School. Its purpose was to inform the audience about Trafalgar’s innovative inquiry projects that emphasize collaboration within departments and explain how educators can go about implementing similar work within their own classrooms and at their respective schools.
  
  
  IALS Presentation: Designing Inquiry-Based Learning Experiences that Foster Collaboration in Middle School by Amy Allison, Christianne Loupelle, and Adriana Ruffini
  Read More

• Innovation in Independent Schools

  4/28/2023
  Stephanie Leite, Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University
  Students today face a series of challenges—and with them, opportunities—unknown to previous generations. Quality education is continually identified as key to addressing those challenges, which range from ecological destruction and social injustices to ethical development of artificial intelligence. While these are all global issues, they play out at local levels, and therefore it is up to individual communities to find solutions that are relevant and locally-contextualized. Schools are well-positioned to serve as hubs for developing innovative, community-driven solutions to global issues. 

  
  

  In particular, independent schools have more flexibility to try out new approaches to teaching and learning that are urgently needed in our rapidly changing world. Because independent schools are set up to have more local control over decision-making, they are more readily able to be responsive to community needs and concerns. Independent schools are managed by an elected board of directors or governors and therefore operate according to multiple layers of accountability, being supervised by both the Ministry of Education and the dedicated board.
  Read More

• Student Inquiry and the Value of Student Voice

  3/31/2023
  Vanessa Gold & Ellen MacCannell, Doctoral Candidates in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University
  What do you think of when you hear “student voice”? You might think of a student talking out loud and you wouldn’t be wrong, but it is also a broad research term used to describe “an assortment of activities through which students can influence decisions that affect their lives”¹. In other words, research that actively involves students in decision-making processes. These decision-making processes might be related to policy, school change or many other structures that affect the everyday lives of students.  
   
  In research, trying to understand what student involvement means is a complex task. This is because different contexts, relationships between people in schools, and institutionalized decision-making processes all influence what student involvement can look like. Researchers, therefore, use different typologies to understand what involvement might mean. These typologies include but are not limited to: the student voice pyramid², discrete categories of student involvement^3, a matrix of student engagement⁴, a ladder of methodologies⁵, and a pathway of student leadership divided into stages⁶.
  Read More