Informing the Implementation of Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades through a School-Wide Genius Hour

Abstract

Over the past decade, personalized learning has emerged as a major aim in the contemporary education systems of many countries. This qualitative case study examined middle school educators’ perceptions of how their school’s collective experimentation with Genius Hour supported the broader implementation of personalized learning. Teachers in the study perceived Genius Hour to foster student self-direction and to engage students through relationships and choice provision. Teachers benefited from experiencing a model of personalized learning in practice and participating in its initial success, although logistical, personal, and curricular considerations kept them from integrating the practice into their classrooms more generally. Implications of the collective experiment with school-wide Genius Hour are discussed, including considerations for practice and future research.

Keywords:

• personalized learning
• genius hour
• middle school
• school change
• Vermont

Introduction

Personalized learning has emerged as a major aim in contemporary education in many countries, including Australia, Canada, Finland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Bolstad et al., 2012; Campbell et al., 2007; Peterson, 2016; Waldrip et al., 2014). While its roots can be traced back to Dewey’s (1938/1997) learner-centered philosophy in the early 20th century, personalized learning implementation has increased markedly over the past decade (Bingham et al., 2018). The premise of personalized learning is “to transform traditional education systems and provide more equitable outcomes for all learners” (Zhang et al., 2020, p. 4) as school systems attempt to address the needs of increasingly diverse student populations.

The term “personalized learning” has been applied to a range of teaching practices that aim to respond to the unique characteristics of each learner in the classroom (Bingham et al., 2018; Netcoh, 2017). Some approaches leverage the rapid integration of technology in PK–12 settings to customize the content, sequence, and pace of learning opportunities based on individual students’ needs and interests (e.g., Basham et al., 2016; Chen, 2008). Other approaches place a high value on student ownership and control (e.g., Bray & McClaskey, 2015; Kallick & Zmuda, 2017), elevating the role of student voice and choice in the design of learning opportunities that may take many forms, including Genius Hour, passion projects, inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, negotiated curriculum, and more.

Regardless of the approach, curriculum and instruction are customized to students’ needs and interests in personalized learning environments (Netcoh, 2017). In such systems, educators “[tailor] learning for each student’s strengths, needs and interests—including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when and where they learn—to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible” (Slocum, 2016).

The student-centered nature of personalized learning is a particular fit for younger adolescents, as it operationalizes many aspects of effective middle schooling. The Association for Middle Level Education’s position paper asserts in successful middle schools, educators “use a wide variety of approaches to meet the needs of diverse learners” (Bishop & Harrison, 2021, p. 35), provide curriculum that is “challenging, exploratory, integrative, and diverse” (p. 27), and “form learning partnerships with their students” (p. 25), so students can “have ongoing and meaningful input into what and how they learn” (p. 39). The National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform (2021) also includes “responsive to the developmental needs and interests of young adolescents” in its descriptors of effective middle schools (para. 2). In these ways, personalized learning is well-aligned with the principles of a successful middle level school in practice.

While research suggests that the outcomes of personalized learning are promising (Zhang et al., 2020), strategies for implementing personalized learning are inconsistent and often fall short of their transformative potential (Pane et al., 2017). No playbook exists for personalized learning that works in all contexts. Rather, as Fullan (2016) suggested, schools attempting to transform practices may benefit from a rapid prototyping approach to change, emphasizing collective experimentation, reflection, and adaptation.

Here we report one such collective experimentation: the implementation of a school-wide Genius Hour in the context of the school’s broader implementation of personalized learning. A time when students explore their own curiosities, passions, and interests for a defined period of time, Genius Hour is intended to promote personalized inquiry and foster skills to prepare learners for an unpredictable future (Hall, 2018). By analyzing the perspectives of participating middle grades educators, we explored three research questions: 1) How did teachers perceive the school-wide Genius Hour to affect student engagement and learning? 2) How did teachers describe their experience with the school-wide Genius Hour as a collective endeavor? 3) What did teachers learn from Genius Hour in relation to their pedagogy?

To understand the conceptual underpinnings of this study, we provide a discussion of related research on personalized learning and Genius Hour followed by an overview of research methods, including the four-year trajectory of data collection and analysis. In the next section we present the findings organized in relation to each of the three research questions. We conclude with a discussion of findings, considering implications for educator practice and future research.

Literature Review

This study was informed by three bodies of literature, which we present here. We begin by briefly establishing the study’s operational definition for personalized learning, distinguishing it from related practices. Next, we provide an overview of research on personalized learning that is specific to middle grades implementation. Finally, we examine the status of research on Genius Hour as a specific orientation toward promoting the aims of personalized learning.

Defining Personalized Learning

Considerable variation exists in how educators and schools define and implement personalized learning (Netcoh, 2017; Patrick et al., 2016). Some implementations of personalized learning focus predominantly on technology-supported learning. In these instances, computer algorithms, digital programs, mobile learning interventions, and other technologies play the primary role in customizing curriculum and pacing to a learner’s individual needs, interests, and abilities (Chen, 2008; Lin et al., 2013). Research on technology-supported personalized learning has revealed positive impacts on various student learning outcomes (Zhang et al., 2020), including academic outcomes (Walkington, 2013), engagement (Arroyo et al., 2014), attitudes toward learning (Hwang et al., 2012), and meta-cognitive skills (Chen, 2009). Critics of this approach point to its limited capacity to engage learners away from screens and its predominant alignment with teacher-centered instruction (Basham et al., 2015).

Another conception of personalized learning, and the one that informs this study, emphasizes the increased role of student direction and ownership in education. Kallick and Zmuda (2017) identified the four core attributes of this type of personalized learning as student voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery. In such learning environments, students assume greater responsibility for constructing goals based on their interests, needs, and aspirations; they identify and co-create learning opportunities, often collaborating as they leverage real world and out-of-school learning; and they assess their new skills and knowledge in relation to competency-based progressions (Bray & McClaskey, 2017; Zmuda et al., 2015). Demski (2012) summarized the distinction between personalized learning and other practices:

Personalized learning is not individualized learning, in which students share the same learning goals but progress through the curriculum at their own pace. Nor is it differentiated instruction, in which students also share learning goals but receive instruction that is tailored to their learning needs. (p. 32)

In contrast to individualization and differentiation, personalized learning invites students to own and co-design their learning.

Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades

Middle grades education researchers have called for greater investigation into personalized learning in the middle grades (Mertens et al., 2016, p. 16). Most existing studies have been conducted in policy environments that have supported or mandated personalized learning (e.g., Netcoh, 2017). Students’ perspectives have provided important insights into personalized learning, including its potential for promoting self-awareness in young adolescents (DeMink-Carthew et al., 2020) and students’ general appreciation of choice and control (DeMink-Carthew & Olofson, 2020). Personalized learning implementation is not without complications, however. Netcoh (2017) explored middle school students’ and teachers’ experiences of student choice within the context of a personalized learning class. He found that the two groups held different expectations for how much choice would be afforded, which contributed to struggles for power and control and underscored the need to foreground expectations. In another study of student experience, choice in a personalized learning class was found to be a source of both enjoyment and stress for middle grades students (DeMink-Carthew & Netcoh, 2019). Relatedly, research has suggested students are afforded differing degrees of autonomy for goal setting across teachers in such environments (DeMink-Carthew et al., 2017).

Teachers’ experiences also inform our understanding of personalized learning in the middle grades. Research has suggested that personalized learning calls for a shift in teacher roles (Bishop et al., 2020), and teachers have attributed specific dispositions, such as flexibility and risk-taking, to the successful creation of personalized learning environments (Bishop et al., 2018). Middle grades teachers’ use of some of the core attributes of personalized learning have been found to correlate with personalized professional development and with total teacher efficacy, efficacy in instructional strategies, and efficacy in student engagement (Turk, 2020).

Several studies have examined teacher practice and perceptions in the context of transitioning to more personalized instruction. For example, Hurtienne (2017) concluded that teachers’ transitions from more traditional practices to a more personalized approach was achieved when students were at the center of the transformation. Netcoh and Bishop (2017) found, during their first year of implementing personalized learning, middle grades educators perceived stronger relationships with and among their students. Teachers in this study also reported challenges with the transition and, in particular, with strategies for transferring control of learning to students.

Taylor (2016) also explored teachers’ transition to a personalized approach and found educators’ beliefs played a critical role. In this study, teachers either adapted elements of personalized learning to align with their beliefs or rejected personalized learning and reverted to practices they believed to be more effective. Teachers were more likely to persevere with the practice when they had smaller class sizes, when they were assisted with implementation, and when they saw students succeed. The field knows little, however, of how teachers experience specific iterations or entry points into personalized practices, such as Genius Hour.

Genius Hour

Genius Hour (Spencer & Juliani, 2017) is a form of personalized learning that is rooted in the belief that students should have choice, time, and autonomy for deeper learning that leads to 21st century skills (Buchanan et al., 2016). Despite Genius Hour’s prevalence in practitioner-oriented blogs and popular press (e.g., Farber, 2017; Schneider, 2018; TeachThought Staff, 2020), empirical research on the practice is scarce. A search for the term “genius hour” and related iterations on the Educational Resources Information Center, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education, resulted in six documents, only two of which were peer reviewed. A similar search in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I database returned three dissertations, only two of which reported on research related to Genius Hour. Additionally, a search of Google Scholar and a subsequent hand search of reference lists of existing articles failed to identify any other related empirical research. While intersecting research exists on related pedagogies in fields such as student-driven inquiry, inquiry-based learning, and project-based learning, the field knows remarkably little about Genius Hour as a specific, personalized learning practice.

Notably, most of the studies that do exist are situated within middle grades education. Focusing on the student experience, McCurdy et al. (2020) studied the use of a Third Space Genius Hour with seventh graders, identifying empathy as a critical driver connecting students to authentic problems and leading them to develop real, STEM-based, solutions to those issues. Additionally, Reuer (2017) examined the influence of Genius Hour on ninth grade science students’ self-efficacy and science identity. This doctoral research demonstrated mixed findings, with qualitative methods suggesting that participation in Genius Hour helped to develop students’ science identities and quantitative measures finding no significant influence on identity. Opsahl (2018) also engaged with ninth graders in the study of an environmentally-focused Genius Hour, concluding that the practice slightly affected students’ attitudes toward the environment.

In terms of educator experience, Hall (2018) examined middle school teachers’ perceptions of a school-wide Genius Hour. Hall identified Genius Hour as an example of personalized inquiry, on the extreme student-centered end of a continuum that included more teacher-directed pedagogies such as guided inquiry and shared inquiry. Research participants perceived successes related to growth in teacher-student relationships, professional development, and teacher resources, while noting challenges regarding adequate pacing, access to space, and maintaining student motivation.

In the field of teacher preparation, Downes and Figg (2018/2019) studied how teacher candidates’ participation in Genius Hour influenced their broader course participation, as well as their perspectives on the use of the Genius Hour in teaching. Their research participants reported personal improvements in creativity and participation and an increased understanding of teaching with technology. Finally, Andrews et al. (2017) described their use of the practice in a professional development school context to develop an inquiry stance in middle grades teacher candidates and practicing teachers.

This nascent research base makes clear that Genius Hour is still in an experimental phase, both on its own and in relation to a school’s implementation of a broader personalized learning initiative. Since models are an important component in effective professional development (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017), research on Genius Hour could inform potential adoption and future implementation in classrooms, schools, and districts interested in entry points to personalization. Accordingly, this study describes one middle school’s foray into personalized learning using a school-wide Genius Hour as a collective experiment.

Methods

To examine how a school-wide genius hour might inform the implementation of personalized learning in the middle grades, we adopted an intrinsic case study approach. Qualitative methods were best suited for the descriptive and exploratory purposes of the study, as our research questions focused on perspectives as well as events (Charmaz, 2014). Case study methods are often used in education research (Stake, 2005; Vavrus & Bartlett, 2006) and are well suited for examining how situational, political, and cultural forces play out within schools. Crossley and Vulliamy (1984) describe this as “ecological validity” (p. 198), asserting that what can be known about one context cannot be assumed to be true in another. This study could be classified as intrinsic because in such cases “the researcher at least temporarily subordinates other curiosities so that the stories of those living the case will be teased out” (Stake, 2000, p. 437). Because case study methods situate local action, perspectives, and interpretation within these broader considerations, a case is typically grounded in a particular site.

Site Selection and Unit of Analysis

The site for this research was Broad Meadow Middle School (all names are pseudonyms). We identified this the study site through purposeful, intensity sampling (Patton, 2015), as the school offered an information-rich case in which the phenomenon under study was manifested intensely but not extremely (Patton, 2015). Broad Meadow Middle School (BMMS) was striving to make learning more personal through efforts related to personalized learning plans, student leadership opportunities, school climate, 1:1 computing, and proficiency-based learning. Additionally, and most pertinent to this study, BMMS launched a multi-year, school-wide implementation of Genius Hour, an open-ended, student-directed time during which students pursue their choice of projects (Krebs & Zvi, 2016). BMMS developed the program, which we call “Synergy,” within a policy context of statewide legislation mandating elements of personalized learning for students in Grades 7–12 (Flexible Pathways Initiative, 2013). We were familiar with this case as one of this study’s authors served as an external professional development consultant at the school for several years.

Located in a rural Vermont town with a population of approximately 5,000 people,¹ BMMS served almost 300 students in Grades 5–8, 94% of whom were White and 20% of whom were eligible for free or reduced lunch prices. The teaching staff of 35 teachers was predominantly White and female. BMMS featured several fundamental features of the middle school concept (Bishop & Harrison, 2021), including interdisciplinary teams, common planning time, flexible grouping and scheduling, and an advisory program.

As a key strategy for the school’s implementation of personalized learning, Synergy served as this study’s unit of analysis. BMMS’ stated purpose for developing Synergy was “to experiment with a schoolwide approach to open-ended, student-driven, project-based learning to see the impact on student engagement and learning” (Synergy Plan, Appendix A). The program was initially designed by the school’s leadership team, which was composed of school leaders, educators, students, and a university-based professional development consultant who is the first author. Synergy’s approach was further honed by an ad hoc committee and its implementation was supported through bi-weekly teacher team meetings with input from the Synergy Student Leadership Group.

This study was conducted from 2015 through 2019, during which time Synergy was conceived, developed, and implemented during each of those four school years. Teachers used common lesson plans for initial sessions (see Appendix A). All members of the school staff were made available to support students as mentors and/or space supervisors so that adult to student ratios were more favorable than in typical classrooms. In year one, students worked on their Synergy projects for 60–75 minutes at a time during 10 weekly sessions. In years two and three, recognizing the need for longer chunks of time, the school scheduled Synergy over five sessions of 120 minutes each, culminating with an annual public exhibition. In year four, the school scheduled Synergy every week for 45 minutes, and hosted both fall and spring exhibitions. Students could elect to work on one large project over the course of the year or to engage in multiple shorter projects during the same time frame.

Synergy had two expectations for all students: 1) to engage in a project of their own choosing and 2) to share that project with others in some form (see Table 1 for examples).

Table 1 Sample Projects* Completed During Synergy

Project	Sharing Opportunity
Learn American Sign Language	Sign a song as a performance during the final exhibition
Create dehydrated meals	Take them on a weeklong backpacking trip with family
Build a scale model of a house	Share the model at the final exhibition
Plan a soccer clinic	Host the free clinic for children in the community
Train a miniature horse	Film the process and share the video at the final exhibition
Shadow a local business person	Develop a business plan and seek feedback from mentor
Raise chickens	Show photos of the process; let visitors hold the chicks
Write and design a puppet show	Perform the show
Design stickers	Sell stickers to raise money for charity
Write to international pen pals	Present a list of pals, countries, and what was learned
Study the Toure de France	Poster about the race and a 3D model of final stage
Test different lacrosse sticks	Video and report about which stick works best and why
Advocate for threatened animals	Create a video game about endangered animals in Tinker
Baking and decorating cakes	Sell cupcakes at final exhibition to raise money for charity
Photography	Display a selection of photographs that highlight growth
Machine sewing a quilt	Gift the quilt to a grandmother
Building forts	Explore completed forts during final exhibition
Form a band	Play three songs together

*This list provides a few examples from more than 500 individual or group projects completed in the four school years of the study.

Data Collection

We collected data for this study between August 2016 and June 2019. Given the nature of the research questions and the desire for acquiring in-depth insider perspectives, our primary data source took the form of semi-structured interviews with the principal and teachers at BMMS. We first invited all eight members of the school leadership team to participate in interviews, and then we broadened the sample to ensure the inclusion of at least one teacher from each of the school’s five teams and four core subject areas. In sum, seventeen teachers and one school principal participated in interviews across four years, resulting in 31 interviews over the course of the study. Table 2 details the characteristics of the participants and the timing of their interviews.

Table 2 Interview Participants

Pseudonym	Fall 2016	Winter 2016–17	Spring 2017	Spring 2019	Primary role
Aaron		x			Math, social studies teacher, Grades 5–6
Allison^a			x		SPED teacher, Grades 5–6
Courtney			x		Science teacher, Grades 7–8
Dean		x			P.E. and health teacher, Grades 5–8
Dora^ab	x	x	x	x	Social studies teacher, Grades 7–8
Emily^a	x			x	English teacher, Grades 5–6
Eric^b			x		Technology education teacher, Grades 5–8
Helen^a	x	x	x		Librarian, Grades 5–8
Holly	x				Sustainability teacher, Grades 5–8
Laura			x		Social studies teacher, Grades 7–8
Laurel^b	x				Math teacher, Grades 5–6
Mary				x	Science teacher, Grades 7–8
Morgan		x			Social studies teacher, Grades 5–6
Patrick^ab		x			Principal, Grades 5–8
Robert^a		x		x	Science teacher, Grades 7–8
Sophia^b	x				P.E. and health teacher, Grades 5–8
Stacy^a		x			ELA, social studies teacher, Grades 5–6
Vanessa				x	ELA teacher, Grades 7–8

^aServed on the school leadership team during one or more of the four years of this study.

^bServed on the Synergy planning group during one or more of the four years of this study.

All interviews followed a semi-structured protocol (see Appendices B, C, and D) and elicited participants’ perspectives on the school-wide efforts to implement personalized learning. For triangulation purposes, we interviewed six members of the Synergy Student Leadership Group and we collected an abundance of artifacts over the span of the study. Examples of these artifacts are included in Table 3.

Table 3 Artifacts Collected During Research Process

Artifact Type	Examples
Plans	Synergy proposal and plan; Visioning document; Yearlong plan
Meeting Notes	Teacher teams; Leadership team; PLP committee; Advisory committee; Synergy planning group; Student leadership team
Presentation Material	External presentations about Synergy given by teachers and students
Curricula and Related Materials	Week-by-week plan; Internal presentations to launch Synergy; Student work
Feedback	School-generated staff and student surveys
Researcher-Generated	Field notes, research memos

Data Analysis

Our research team conducted formal and ongoing data analysis between 2018–2020. Using Dedoose (2021), an online research platform, we employed an inductive analytical approach (Miles et al., 2014). One researcher first read through the first three years of interview transcripts, identifying codes within the data, and applying those codes to segments of the transcripts (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2016). This initial process yielded 38 unique codes. Two researchers then reviewed the codes for prominence within the data and relevance to the study’s questions. At this point, codes that displayed conceptual overlap were merged while those deemed irrelevant to the research purpose were omitted. This process resulted in 12 refined codes, which were then applied to a second round of coding to all interviews. Next, all four members of our research team reviewed the codes and associated segments of the interview transcripts. We examined Dedoose’s code application and code co-occurrence counts to ascertain the conceptual coherence of the data segments marked with the same codes and to confirm if sufficient evidence existed for each code. Through this process we identified six themes that corresponded with our first two research questions, illuminating how Synergy informed the school’s broader implementation of personalized learning. To answer the third research question, we analyzed the fourth-year interviews by first applying the a priori codes from the prior analysis and then by analyzing inductively through emergent coding. This analysis resulted in our identification of six new codes and two additional themes.

Next, our lead researcher conducted ten hours of artifact review, examining the items (see Table 3) for contradictions to or affirmations of the findings. His notes regarding individual artifacts were subsequently reviewed and discussed by the research team, ultimately substantiating the findings. This process was also used to ensure the trustworthiness of our reconstruction of the four-year timeline of the key decisions and processes in relation to Synergy’s development. Further, the lead researcher conducted one round of member checking for narrative accuracy and interpretive trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), presenting findings to the school principal and two teachers who were members of both the school’s leadership team and the Synergy planning team. These participants were chosen due to the depth and breadth of their understanding of Synergy and of its relationship to the school’s broader personalized learning initiative. All three member-checking participants served on both the Synergy leadership team and the school leadership team. The process confirmed that the findings aligned with these research participants’ accounts and perspectives.

Limitations

Several limitations of this study should be noted. First, while a qualitative approach was well suited to the descriptive and analytical purposes of this research, the findings cannot be generalized to other settings or populations. For example, the case was situated at a predominantly White school in a relatively affluent community, and the school had invested considerably in teachers’ professional development. Further, the school was located in a policy environment with mandated personalized learning. These and other circumstances undoubtedly influenced the ways in which Genius Hour was enacted at this one school. Second, while the fact that one researcher served as a professional development consultant at the school provided rich opportunities to observe leadership team meetings and Synergy in action, the dual role may have complicated participants’ responses or data interpretation. To combat potential bias in the data, the research team members who were not involved with the teachers’ professional development played key roles in analyzing data and identifying findings. We also addressed potential bias by triangulating methods and sources, including reviewing artifacts, conducting observations, and interviewing students. Finally, we employed analyst triangulation to review the findings, using more than one researcher to code and analyze the data.

Findings

The school’s original, explicitly stated, purpose for Synergy was “to experiment with a schoolwide approach to open-ended, student-driven, project-based learning to examine impact on student engagement and learning.” This objective appeared at the top of the unit plan (see Appendix A) that served as the common curricular document guiding Synergy’s first year. The objective was also communicated to teachers as a means to establish initial buy-in for implementing Synergy as a whole-school endeavor. Overall, interviews with educators at the school confirmed that their perceived purposes of Synergy aligned with the original objective.

Accordingly, we sought to understand how teachers experienced Synergy in relation to this shared goal and within the context of a broader personalized learning implementation effort. Our three research questions stemmed directly from this goal statement, focusing on student engagement and learning, Synergy’s school-wide model, and teachers’ pedagogical learning. In the sections that follow, we present findings in relation to our research questions.

Student Engagement and Learning

We identified three themes related to our first research question, which focused on how the middle grades teachers in our study perceived Genius Hour to affect student engagement and learning. We found that teachers perceived the school-wide initiative to engage students through the building of relationships and through the provision of choice. The educators also described the Genius Hour as positively impacting learning through students’ development of self-direction skills.

Engagement through relationships

Teachers spoke often about the positive student engagement they observed in Synergy. Emily, a Grades 5–6 English Language Arts teacher, described her reaction after the first year of implementation:

It was really cool. And to see all these students being really proud of all their work — ranging from mystic arts, they’re reading tarot cards, to … students making homemade dog treats, and making money for the shelters … It’s really cool to see all the different talents in the school, and not just have it be your talents and strengths in a classroom.

Respondents reported deeper relationships with students due to a greater awareness of students’ interests and talents. Emily explained how she could draw upon this knowledge in her interactions with students, offering, “It allows for, again, us to know our students really well and to have those relationships with them, because when they’re bringing their choice in, then you learn more about them as a person, and can have conversations with them about their interests.”

Robert, a Grades 7–8 science teacher, echoed this idea, noting that Synergy often helped him break out of his “pre-existing opinions and biases” about students. He elaborated, “That’s shifted for me … Seeing how kids shine in multiple ways is really helping me to see them more holistically.” Similarly, many interviewees expressed a renewed respect for students and their projects as Synergy created a venue for showcasing students’ capabilities.

Emily illustrated the connections among knowing students’ interests, recognizing diverse talents, engaging students, and forming relationships, when she described a particular student:

One of the benefits, I think, from the adult role, is that we get to see the kids in a different capacity, which helps with the relationship building as well. Because I have a little guy who’s building a PVC submersible. I would have no idea that that kid has such a love of engineering, and such a competence. If he didn’t have the opportunity to do Synergy, I would have never known that. So, I see the kids in a whole different aspect. It helps me to get to know them better, for sure, and that hour, too, it’s not about me telling them what to do, or a teacher telling them what to do.

With this example, Emily also pointed to how knowing students well at times could alter some of the traditional power dynamics within the school.

Because of its school-wide nature, Synergy offered teachers the opportunity to build relationships not only with their own students but also with others in the school building. After four years of Synergy implementation, for example, Robert reported that he felt more familiar with and connected to the students who eventually entered his Grades 7–8 team after connecting through the Genius Hour experience:

There’s lots of connections. Like, a kid from the fifth grade will know that I happen to have an interest in x, y, or z and will come talk to me about it, and I get to know that kid, to see how they’re doing, get to see the end of their project. That building relationships has been huge.

In this way, respondents felt Synergy provided a vehicle for them to form relationships with students whom they might not otherwise know. It set the stage for students to view teachers as people who might have interests and talents that aligned with their own. Overall, teachers described Synergy as fostering intimate connections that transcended the relatively narrow confines of discrete disciplines and pre-formulated curriculum plans. They felt their relationships with students were deepened as a result of coming to know the wide range of interests of their students and gaining a stronger appreciation for what students were capable of when motivated.

Engagement through choice

Like relationship building, the provision of choice was identified as a critical component of students’ engagement in the school-wide Genius Hour. Laurel, a Grades 5–6 math teacher, echoed many of her colleagues as she pointed to Synergy as an opportunity to offer a degree of choice that she felt wasn’t possible in her daily classroom:

I felt like it was student choice in terms of—it was one part of their learning that they really had the sky’s the limit, and it wasn’t fake choice. … You know it’s like math, you can put out free learning decks, but it’s still a limited choice.

While Laurel reported providing students with options in math class, they were still relatively confined to a particular math topic. The “what” was often predetermined and, if a student was uninterested in the topic, Laurel felt that smaller choices such as how to approach the topic or with whom they might work with may seem secondary, superficial, or, as Laurel put it, “fake.” In contrast, Synergy represented “the sky’s the limit” by inviting students to assume control over most aspects of their projects, including the topic, the learning process, the end product, and the sharing process.

Emily reflected on how the opportunity to observe meaningful student engagement might influence teachers’ decisions about the degree of choice to enable.

When teachers see the level of engagement that you can get when you follow kids’ interests, they’ll be like, “Ohhh, I could up the engagement in my classroom if I gave kids more choice and voice? Okay!” And that kids will be more engaged in the classroom if these things happen. So, I think hopefully everybody will win in the end.

For Emily and others, Synergy provided an example of how allowing student interests to steer the curriculum could have a positive impact on student engagement.

Learning self-direction

As students assumed greater control over their learning in the school-wide Genius Hour, they also assumed greater responsibility and independence. Teachers articulated the importance of student self-direction related to that greater independence. They viewed Synergy as an opportunity to develop the skills of self-direction. They also observed the transfer of those skills to other settings.

Laurel pointed to the importance of self-direction as she described one student in particular:

I think there are kids who have never been given this opportunity, even at home. I think if they’re plugged into video games nonstop, they’re not used to figuring out—sort of occupying time with learning things. It’s not a culture of learning for some of our kids and I think they really struggle when they’re not told what to do. But I think that’s such valuable learning in and of itself. I had a kid who was pretty unsuccessful [with his Synergy project] and I felt like he learned more than some of the kids who were. And my hope is next time he has more—he’s more self-directed.

Laurel was conscious that not all students were ready to succeed in such a student-directed environment and believed, even through struggle, students would develop the necessary skills for success.

Robert, a Grade 7–8 science teacher, also felt that Synergy enabled students to build capacity for this kind of independence. He emphasized one aspect of self-directed learning—resource acquisition:

But, the skill sets that we’re actually having them practice are … when the teacher is not pressing them to do something, when the guidelines haven’t been clear, but the problem is, or the challenge is. When you have something that you want to accomplish, how do you go about accessing the resources to get it done?

Robert framed Synergy as an opportunity to “practice” the skills of self-direction. He also observed how that their practice was paying off, evidenced in how students had begun exhibiting some of these skills outside of Synergy as well. He elaborated on what self-direction now looked like in his science classroom:

So, I’ve always had an open-cabinet policy, and I’m starting to see kids use that more effectively. Where they’ll just be like, “I need this, and I go and I get it, and I fill it up, and I do my thing.” So, it’s less teacher-directed with the minutiae. And this was, when I first got here, a very teacher-driven culture, I think.

Robert reported that Synergy promoted self-directed learning skills, which he felt translated to changes within his own classroom. For him, Synergy helped build student capacity in ways that made conditions more favorable for choice-based projects and personalized learning in his classroom.

Our first research question focused on teachers’ perceptions of student engagement and learning. Overall, teachers in the study perceived that Synergy promoted student engagement by deepening relationships and offering increased choice. They also felt it helped students develop self-direction. Our second research question focused on the teacher experience. It shed light on the ways teachers believed their understandings of personalized learning and relationships with colleagues were altered as a result of their collective endeavor.

Teacher Experience

Our second research question examined how teachers described their experience with the school-wide Genius Hour as a collective endeavor. We identified three main themes in relation to this question. First, teachers reported that experimenting with the school-wide, collective endeavor acted as a touchstone that provided a model of personalized learning, illustrating what could be. It also provided them with a forum through which to experience success. Finally, it promoted a sense of community through collective action.

A model of what could be

As educators at BMMS embarked upon their journey to personalize learning, they explored it in various facets of school life, including through the adoption of personalized learning plans and various student leadership opportunities. While several approaches seemed promising, many teachers expressed uncertainty about what personalization looked like in practice. The field’s relatively broad and diverse conceptions of personalized learning made it challenging to identify established models that might guide teachers’ efforts. BMMS’s principal acknowledged this, explaining, “It’s interesting to me that, in this world of personalization, there’s no model out there that’s like, ‘This is the way it works. Boom! Read this … and it’ll just roll out in your school nicely.’” The paucity of existing models contributed to teachers’ uncertainty about what personalization should look like in practice. Aaron, a math and social studies teacher, communicated some of this uncertainty:

I think there’s a gap in understanding what it’s supposed to look like. I don’t know if there is a clear vision of what this looks like, and specifically at the middle school level … There’s more flexibility at the high school … But to have that at the middle school level, what is it looking for, and what does that look like in practice?

In the first year of the study, many educators identified this “gap in understanding” in terms of concrete implementation.

Synergy responded to this challenge by serving as a visible model of personalized learning. Despite the school’s myriad personalization initiatives, most teachers pointed to Synergy first and foremost when asked at the end of the first year to identify an example of personalized learning in their schools. Laurel immediately replied, “I felt like Synergy was the personalized learning of last year.” Courtney, a science teacher, expanded on this idea:

In terms of school-wide projects, the Synergy project, where students can choose anything they’d like to learn about and pursue, and they’re given the opportunity through a flexible schedule to be able to research, or play, or dabble or learn something that’s relevant and interesting to them, and then have the opportunity to showcase their learning. So that’s a new initiative that we’ve done in terms of sheer personalized learning.

Despite the fact that the school was exploring personalized learning through various facets of its operations, Synergy was identified as the place to find “sheer personalized learning.”

A forum for initial success

Educators at BMMS largely reported positive experiences with Synergy and described it as a successful initiative. Reflecting on teachers’ overall reaction to Synergy, the principal noted:

It’s interesting because [it] is messy when you have 283 kids doing 283 different things.

And we did it last year, kind of thinking, “How’s the staff going to respond to this?” By and large, they were like, “This is amazing!” because kids were engaged.

Teachers’ commentary confirmed this sentiment through the words and terms they used to describe Synergy, such as “awesome,” “really successful,” “just the best,” “a huge success,” and “a perfect thing to be used at the middle school level to allow kids to try different things.” Dora, a social studies teacher who served on both the school’s leadership team and the Synergy planning group, described, “It’s become part of the mythology of our school, and I’m really proud of it.” Teachers were generally enthusiastic about Synergy and viewed it as a positive development within the school.

The positive experience with Synergy also helped some teachers resolve initial concerns they had about personalized learning that made them reluctant to buy into the personalized learning movement. Some teachers worried that enabling students to pursue self-selected projects would result in lots of chaos and little learning. Laurel, for example, acknowledged that, in the beginning, “there were a few things that I questioned—even safety” but that upon reflection, “it was fine … I think kids did such a variety of things and I saw a lot of excitement and I thought the variety was just amazing.” Although she initially worried about safety, with students working with various tools and resources on a diverse range of projects, her experience with Synergy helped alleviate the concern. Further, Laurel recognized that different kinds of valuable learning could result when students engaged in the types of personalized projects pursued during Synergy. She described the project variation as:

from something like the one kid that organized a student hockey game at the Ice Center— that took a lot—that’s big, right? Then you have the girls who signed the song. That was huge what they learned and … they got up there with no notes, and I thought it was pretty cool. So, there was a lot going on that I think totally served that purpose.

Laurel’s experience with Synergy helped her recognize projects that may have appeared “simple” on the surface instead contributed to “big” and “huge” learning opportunities for students, learning that may or may not be valued within more traditional classroom settings.

Synergy provided a school-wide model in which the benefits of personalized learning in terms of engagement and learning could be experienced firsthand. Although the school-wide Genius Hour did not represent a comprehensive model of personalization, nor was it integrated into the core day-to-day curriculum, it allowed all educators to experience collective success early on in the initiative.

A sense of community

Respondents in this study reported that Synergy united the various members of the school through collaborative inquiry. Robert described this sense of community as he stated, “It’s helped connect us, as teachers and students. Staff and students. Both across the staff, and between students and staff. Because we’re seeing kids sharing some of their favorite things. Their successes, and problem-solving with kids in fun ways.” Mary joined BMMS as a first-year teacher during Synergy’s fourth year. Echoing Robert, she observed Synergy’s broad impact on the school: “There’s, I think, this larger sense of community that they’re doing this big thing together.” Participants felt that Synergy’s school-wide reach allowed them to do a “big thing together,” one that connected them as an educational community.

Educators described Synergy as an ongoing experiment, one that the community would learn from together. At the end of the first year, for example, Robert offered, “It might be, like with the experience with Synergy, that by nature we stumble in our implementation a little bit. We grow and we learn how this works in our community through direct experience.” The iterative nature of the experiment was also noted by Vanessa, a Grade 7–8 English language arts teacher: “I just feel like it still needs to be honed, and I know that over time teachers do that. When they’re working on something that they love, they’re going to try to get better and better.” Laurel observed that this initial feeling of experimentation persisted over the years, spurring its ongoing evolution: “Each iteration, we’re like, ‘How can we make it better? How can we evolve it?’” Dora likened the year-to-year revisions to a school-wide passion project for adults. She recalled,

I’ve often joked that our school’s Synergy project is trying to figure out how to run Synergy. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s just put it out there and see what happens and learn from it. And each year, I think we’ve tried to somewhat tighten things up, but also figure out where we can loosen the reins a little bit.

As Synergy became more fully integrated into the fabric of the school, educators were proud of what it represented. Dora talked about it as a source of pride for students as well:

I think that kids are super proud that we do Synergy. We love occasionally just to Google Synergy. And then (our school) comes up, pictures of me, pictures of them. They’re like, “We’re famous!” I’m like, “Yes, we are.” And the fact that 4th grade students know about it, they come here, and they’re like “I can’t wait to do my Synergy project!”

Dora summarized Synergy’s impact in this way: “It’s just kind of created a culture of ‘school is a cool place where you get to go and study what you want.’” For these educators, the school-wide Genius Hour was viewed as a collective learning opportunity for students and adults alike.

Our second research question explored teachers’ experiences with Synergy in relation to its school-wide nature and findings illustrated that the collective endeavor served as a successful model of personalized learning that promoted a sense of community. Our third and final research question moved us into the realm of pedagogy, as we invited teachers to describe the implications of their Synergy experience on their day-to-day practice.

Genius Hour and Teacher Pedagogy

As the first year of implementation ended, the principal described his long-term vision for Synergy’s impact:

So, our goal really is to take the concept of Synergy, which right now is a standalone kind of thing, and show teachers, show kids how much learning can happen when so much choice and time is given to a certain concept or idea or project, what have you, and say that that kind of thing can happen in Spanish and can happen in math, and happen in PE, and to get more voice and choice into the mix.

Our first two main findings suggested that Synergy showed promise for student learning and engagement, and that it was perceived as a model of personalization with a positive impact on community and culture. This third research question focused on data generated by the post partnership interviews to examine how teachers connected the “standalone” model of Synergy with their pedagogy and classroom practice.

Though teachers reflected on various shifts in their pedagogy, in general they did not attribute the changes to their experiences with Synergy. While there was a general sense that the Genius Hour represented an important form of personalized learning, respondents perceived only limited transferability to their day-to-day classroom experiences. Genius Hour largely was viewed as impractical due to the realities of the classroom, with teachers expressing the need for a more balanced approach to student voice and choice.

Classroom realities

While teachers spoke in positive terms about Synergy in general, they cited two main challenges to adopting the pedagogy in their classrooms: curriculum constraints and logistical dilemmas. The most commonly expressed challenge was a sense of curricular constraints. As Emily put it, “Because we are being held to certain standards and certain content … from a teacher perspective, I know I feel that responsibility, like ‘I’m supposed to cover this.”’ The perceived need to “cover” a common curriculum for all students amplified the need for efficiency. Mary connected these concepts when she explained:

I would love to incorporate more of Synergy’s choice and voice in the classroom, I just haven’t figured out how to do that, when there are certain things that need to be covered, and you have 20 students in a class with varying abilities and needs. And you’re differentiating already. And then to have that other piece, I don’t know how to really make that happen.

For Mary, it was unclear how and when to inject the “other piece” of student voice and choice into the curriculum.

Curriculum constraints were not always framed as external factors, however. For example, after pointing to the requirements of the science curriculum, and noting her dislike of the way standardized tests often narrowed the curriculum, Mary acknowledged: “I do believe that there is base knowledge that students need to build off of.” Similarly, Vanessa, a more veteran teacher, noted that, “Students don’t know what they don’t know.” She talked about the importance of exposing students to the classic canon of English literature, sharing stories of students who had fallen in love with Shakespeare. Whether curriculum requirements were imposed or based on teacher preference, “coverage” was perceived as an important goal that presented challenges to a more personalized approach.

Logistically, whereas Synergy’s model enabled smaller groups of students, student numbers were higher in a typical class. Emily described the challenge this way:

With the management of a full classroom, it definitely changes that. In Synergy, there’s maybe six kids in here. So, even though I run around like a nut with six kids, like, “Okay, I’ll conference with you and I’ll read your book and I’ll help you build your battery, and I’ll film you doing this.” The classroom is just different … there’s just more bodies, so there’s more structure. Although the expectations are similar, because it’s a flexible seating room. I’m still like, “No, you’re not sitting with him today, because you couldn’t handle it yesterday.”

The physical reality of “more bodies” required Emily to be strategic about where those bodies were located in the learning environment. Larger class sizes demanded more strategic management. Even in a classroom with flexible seating, at times this teacher felt she needed to dictate seating. Overall, teachers viewed the wholesale application of the Synergy model as unrealistic based on the logistics of classrooms with comparatively more students who all needed to learn the same curriculum.

The need for balance

In addition to the logistical and curricular constraints, many teachers did not believe Synergy’s high level of personalization would benefit students as a primary pedagogy. Comments such as, “It can’t be full on Synergy all the time” and “I don’t think it could ever be 24/7 Synergy” were prevalent in the data. Many teachers used the term “balance” to describe their goals for a personalized learning pedagogy.

The choices so fundamental to Genius Hour—what topic to study, how to learn about it, how to share one’s learning and to whom—arose as potential drawbacks when considered in broader pedagogical terms. These concerns were different from the pressures of curriculum “coverage” within a subject. Rather, teachers described the importance of exposing students to various ways of knowing and approaches to learning. Robert reflected:

The one thing that may be—not a concern, but something to keep an eye on, is this idea that teaching kids that their way is the way, and that’s sort of counter to the spirit of this, but — I’m strong with art, and I do an art [Synergy project], and then I want to use art to share my science learning, and “well, what about mathematics?” or other things that maybe aren’t a natural strength or preference of students. But still important.

Robert viewed an important part of schooling as exposing students to a wide array of learning possibilities. He felt students’ potential could be limited if they were allowed choice to such an extent that they weren’t pushed beyond their current interests or learning preferences.

Teachers also articulated some concern that the high level of choice within the Synergy model may have created unrealistic expectations amongst students. Mary noted that some of her students displayed “sense of entitlement” and recounted her surprise at some of the student pushback she received about group composition.

They kind of — they fight back, “Well, where’s my choice and voice?” And it’s like, “Well, it can’t always be that way.” There’s a reason why you don’t vote until you’re 18. You can’t always, everything can’t always be choice and voice. This is not how it is, that’s not how it is in the real world, anyways. To an extent. It’s hard. It’s a hard balance.

Dora sounded a similar note when she noted the ways that students thought about choice did not always match up with the pedagogical purpose. She reflected,

There are times when I think we’ve created monsters, who expect student choice all the time. And they don’t really know what that means, and they don’t know how to handle it. Like, they think it means, “I get to choose every single thing I do,” and I think my job as a teacher is to say to them, “You might choose this, you might choose the research that you use, or you might choose the product you create, or you might choose the topic, but you might not choose everything.”

Dora expressed the need for choice to be deployed strategically by teachers. She viewed her “job as a teacher” as designing learning opportunities with choice threaded throughout, in contrast to an environment where a student gets to “choose every single thing,” an approach that was more similar to Synergy’s model.

BMMS developed Synergy to enable certain aspects of personalization to flourish. Its influence on teachers’ classroom practices outside of the Genius Hour time remained unclear. Despite the principal’s desire “to get more voice and choice into the mix” through their collective experiment, even the strongest supporters of Synergy raised fundamental questions about the role of voice and choice in their classrooms.

Discussion and Implications

This study examined educator perspectives on the implementation of a school-wide Genius Hour in the context of a broader implementation of personalized learning. Middle school staff members were clear that the experiment’s explicit objective was to “see the impact on student engagement and learning.” After four years of implementation and iteration, Synergy largely was viewed as a successful experience that amplified student choice, fostered student self-direction, and promoted a sense of community. Educators appreciated having a model of what successful personalized learning could look like.

A more implicit objective, voiced early on by the principal, was to elevate student voice and choice in the school’s learning opportunities more generally. To this end, teachers identified logistical and practical challenges that kept them from integrating certain aspects of the experiment into their day-to-day classroom practice. They regarded a balanced approach to student choice in the overall learning environment as critical to students’ development. Overall, this study holds implications for future research and for practice in terms of both perceived impact on student engagement and learning and for collective experimentation.

Directions for Future Research

Educators in this study perceived Synergy to be engaging to students and to foster skills in self-direction. These findings are promising, particularly given the relative paucity of empirical research on Genius Hour, and they suggest several avenues for future study. First, while students confirmed their engagement in our triangulation interviews, future research on the student experience in Genius Hour, particularly that which positions learners as primary research participants, would help us understand how different aspects of the practice may or may not be culturally or developmentally responsive.

Second, the skills of self-direction are important to success in personalized learning environments and are also a potential outcome of such an environment (Netcoh et al., 2019). That teachers observed students’ growth in this area suggests that Genius Hour may provide an environment in which such skills can be scaffolded. Research into how to teach self-direction effectively within personalized learning settings generally, including content-focused classrooms, and in Genius Hour specifically, would benefit educators who wish to integrate more student choice into their daily pedagogy.

Third, the field would also benefit from a detailed examination of the ways that pedagogy implemented in Genius Hour settings may or may not transfer to classroom teaching. For example, researchers could identify teacher moves involved in Genius Hour and trace them through intensive classroom observations. Further, multiple cases in which Genius Hour and personalized learning initiatives coincide would enable an examination of whether Genius Hour can serve as a steppingstone to classroom-based personalization.

While this study offered a glimpse into one school’s approach to collective experimentation and school change, many potentially fruitful questions about the connection between these two aims remain unanswered. The field would benefit from more research examining the characteristics of effective collective experiences for school change initiatives. Is it important that an experiment is perceived as successful in order to inform complex initiatives? What kinds of time, resources, and professional learning experiences are most effective for translating collective experiences into more consistent pedagogical shifts? Could a collective experience be leveraged in other professional learning settings, such as teacher preparation programs?

This study’s findings also raise important questions about the promise of school-wide experimentations for educators’ collective efficacy (Bandura, 1997). Research has shown that student achievement increases as shared successes strengthen educators’ confidence in their teams’ abilities to make a difference (Adams & Forsyth, 2006; Eells, 2011). Additionally, “when efficacy is present in a school culture, educators’ efforts are enhanced—especially when they are faced with difficult challenges. Because expectations for success are high, teachers and leaders approach their work with an intensified persistence and strong resolve” (Donohoo et al., 2018, p. 41). The ways in which educators in this study described Synergy’s outcomes suggested considerable pride and confidence. Future research examining how collective experimentation such as the Synergy project may influence collective efficacy in a school would be beneficial.

A Collective Experience with Personalized Learning

Schools face increasing expectations of transformative change, as more districts and states adopt personalized learning environments (Bingham et al., 2018). This study’s findings suggest that purposeful and collective experimentation may hold promise as a basis for school change initiatives. Insofar as the Synergy experiment helped educators see success and glimpse the promise of personalized learning strategies, such as a positive and productive response to having greater choice by some students (including those who had been chronically disengaged), it allowed educators to anchor the theoretical possibilities of personalized learning. This may be particularly the case in the middle grades, where personalized learning soundly echoes responsive practices for young adolescents (Bishop & Harrison, 2021).

The idea of a collective experiment may be especially useful when applied to a pedagogy as broad and complex as personalized learning. In the case of this study, a school-wide Genius Hour provided educators and students with a concrete example, a common terminology, and a shared experience from which to draw. As educators grapple with vague, complex, and largely untested approaches like personalized learning, they may benefit from opportunities to apply their emerging understandings. A school-wide experience provides a platform for application while establishing a common frame of reference for all stakeholders in the change effort.

Conclusion

In sum, Synergy’s role in the school’s personalized learning initiative in many ways paralleled its role in students’ learning experiences. As the Genius Hour served as a collective experiment for educators to learn about their own change process, it concomitantly provided an opportunity for students to learn about themselves. In this sense, it is possible that the early stages of shifting toward personalization placed the adults in a similar state as the young adolescents, many of whom are focused on identity development and exploring their future selves. For students and educators alike, there may be utility in an open-ended, low-stakes, inquiry experience, like Genius Hour, that can generate momentum while providing fodder for reflection and analysis. A school-wide Genius Hour sustained over multiple years may serve as an anchor experience that parallels the rapid prototyping approach advocated by Fullan (2016) and others. As successful middle schools are those in which both adults and students are continually learning and growing (Bishop & Harrison, 2021), such collective experiences may provide a promising framework for educators to explore and transform their practices alongside young adolescents exploring and developing their identities.

Ethics statement

This study was conducted with approval of the Institutional Review Board of the University of Vermont. Each participant signed a consent form.

Acknowledgments

The Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education is thankful for the philanthropic gift from The Tarrant Foundation that made this work possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ All demographics in this manuscript have been rounded to support confidentiality.

Appendix A

Synergy Plan (Year One)

Student objective: To follow an interest/passion to create something that the learner can share.

Educator objective: To experiment with a schoolwide approach to open-ended, student-driven, project-based learning to examine impact on student engagement and learning.

Overview: In ten sessions on core teams, each student will devise and complete a project by the end of the school year. Students will share the final project with one or more people and can participate in an optional school-wide exhibition.

Table

Session	Objective	Learning Tasks and Opportunities
1.	Launch Synergy	Intro project and get started! Brainstorm project ideas.
	Lesson plan Ask students what they know/have heard about Synergy (5 minutes) Go through Prezi developed by Synergy planning team (30 minutes) Brainstorm ideas for Synergy topics/projects (20 minutes) Option 1: Generate list in small group, share out to class and record on board or poster paper, possibly with sticky notes Option 2: Capture digitally using Padlet or Google Doc Option 3: Ask students to fill out student brainstorm worksheet Wrap up - aim for next session is to pick an idea
2.	Choose topic	What is a good project/question/topic? Show examples from slides. Collect topics via Google Form by end of class.
	Lesson plan Watch “creativity explodes when there are no right answers” video. (2 minutes) Review what makes a good project idea. (5 minutes) Students begin planning and prepare to share. (20 minutes) Students share project plan with each other. (30 minutes) Fill out Google Form when ready. (10 minutes)
3.	Work, document, consult	Teachers provide support and consultation.
	Lesson plan Watch OK Go Rube Goldberg Machine video. (5 minutes) SYNERGY WORK SESSION ROUTINE Students share plans for day (5 minutes) in pairs, then as a whole group. Students work on projects, leave Core as appropriate. (50 minutes) Students reconvene on Core to wrap up. (15 minutes) Share progress from the day Document and reflect Start planning for next session
4.	Work, document, consult	Teachers provide support and consultation
	Lesson plan Watch video of student’s Genius Hour. Synergy work session routine. (see Session 3) After session, introduce students to documentation process (blog and/or Google folder).
5.	Work, document, consult	Synergy work session routine
	Lesson plan Show video OR ask one student to present progress Linked Video: This student presents research about chocolate in a fun way, and how to make chocolate sauce (2:30) Linked Video: This student provides info about stop-motion, via stop-motion, and then shows a movie (too long for whole thing) (6 minutes) Synergy work session routine (see Session 3)
6.	Work, document, consult Discuss Exhibition	Introduce Exhibition Synergy work session routine
	Some good options for opening videos in remaining sessions Meet a Metal Thrasher Turned Watch Virtuoso Paper Airplanes with World Record Holder Local News Story: HS Student Invents Hearing Aid
7.	Work, document, consult	Students sign up for Exhibition Synergy work session routine
8.	Finish project, prepare to share	Show students draft Exhibition map Synergy work session routine
9.	Finalize sharing	Teachers provide support and consultation. Students who changed minds can sign up for Exhibition.
10.	Exhibition!	Students present or participate; Share and celebrate.
Afterward: Get feedback from students and staff.

Appendix B

August 2016 Teacher Interview Protocol

1. What is your subject area specialization?

2. How many years have you taught middle school?

3. How many years have you taught at this school?

4. Please reflect on last year and the many changes at your school. From your perspective, what change had the largest impact on the school?

5. How was that change successful?

6. What challenges emerged from that change?

7. What lessons have you, as a school, learned from last year that you think will be applied this coming year?

8. As a middle school teacher, what are your feelings about personalized learning plans (PLPs) at your school?

9. What has gone well with PLPs at your school?

10. What needs to be improved about PLPs at your school?

11. How useful have PLPs been to students and teachers at your school?

12. What excites you most about PLPs at your school moving forward?

13. What do you think will be most challenging with PLPs at your school moving forward?

14. Let’s talk more about your school-wide personalized learning project. How were you involved?

15. Where did the idea for the project come from?

16. What purpose did it serve, or what problem did it address?

17. How well did it end up serving that purpose or solving that problem?

18. What changes do you think need to be made to the school-wide personalized learning project?

19. How would you like to see the project evolve?

20. What excites you about the project moving forward?

21. What do you think will be the most challenging thing with the project moving forward?

22. How do you see these personalization programs influencing classroom teaching practices in this school?

23. Thinking about personalization, what is the focus at your school this year?

24. What are you most excited for in the coming school year?

25. What are you most apprehensive about in the coming school year?

26. Is there anything else about personalized education at your school that we should know?

Appendix C

February and June 2017 Teacher Interview Protocol

Introduction: As you know, Act 77 requires school systems to implement several aspects of personalized learning, including Personal Learning Plans for all students above Grade 6, proficiency-based graduation policies, and flexible pathways to allow students to earn credit for learning outside of traditional classrooms. Please keep these things in mind when answering the following questions.

1. Since the beginning of last year, what are the major things that you and other teachers have been doing to implement Act 77?

2. What has been the school-wide focus this year?

3. How do you think the educational philosophy of teachers at your school aligns with the requirements of Act 77? Why do you think that?

4. What are some examples of education philosophy aligning with Act 77, or not aligning?

5. What kind of obstacles to implementation do you see in the Act 77 requirements themselves?

6. What kind of obstacles to implementation have you encountered in terms of local mandates at the school or supervisory union level?

7. Are there any other challenges/obstacles that you’d like to mention, or anything else to add?

8. What have been the most valuable supports that have helped you implement Act 77?

9. How has the partnership, including team meetings and consultations, supported this work?

10. How has school-based experiences and resources, such as collaboration with colleagues, (Synergy), student input, or professional inquiry, supported this work?

11. How have supervisory union resources, documents, and inservice days supported this work?

12. What else might you like to add about what has been helpful in navigating this change process?

Appendix D

May–June 2019 Teacher Interview Protocol

Introduction: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I am interested in learning more about your role as a teacher in various learning environments and your perspective on the topics of student engagement, the (Synergy) model, and student voice & choice in the classroom. I have a few questions prepared, but if you think of any related topic as we talk, please feel free to address it. Also, please feel free to ask any questions you may have along the way. It is ok for me to record our interview and take notes about what you say?

1. Can you describe your experience with the (Synergy) model? What are the benefits and challenges for you as a teacher? What are the benefits to students?

2. How would you describe your role as a teacher during (Synergy)?

3. How does this role in (Synergy) compare to your role as a teacher in your regular classroom?

4. How, if at all, have your perspectives on teaching changed based on your experiences with (Synergy)?

5. How, if at all, have your teaching practices changed based on your experiences with (Synergy)?

6. Have you implemented elements of (Synergy) (personalized projects, student voice & choice, student-directed curriculum) into your regular classroom environment?

7. What is the value of bringing this type of student-directed personalized learning into your regular classroom environment?

8. What are the barriers/challenges in bringing personalized learning into your classroom?

9. Have you noticed any school-wide changes in culture or climate at BMMS as a result of (Synergy)?

10. Is there anything else you think is important to discuss about (Synergy)?