Last school year, BRS Dean of Academics Jack Warren partnered with the International Boys’ Schools Coalition (IBSC) on an Action Research Project centered on Boys and Belonging. His focus was a question close to his heart as a science teacher: Do boys at Blue Ridge School feel a sense of belonging in STEM? He believed that when boys feel they belong in STEM, they are more likely to continue in science and thrive beyond graduation.
To test this, Jack worked with his 12th-grade Anatomy & Physiology students on a hands-on, Project-Based Learning unit. Students chose their own experiments, collected data in the field, and presented their findings to a real-world audience of community experts. Jack’s thinking was that by giving students choice, guiding them through authentic scientific work, and having their efforts recognized by others in the field, they would be more likely to develop a sense of belonging in science. His background research suggested that when students begin to identify themselves as a “science person,” they are also more likely to feel belonging in the field.
The results were powerful. At the start of the project, only 3 out of 11 students identified as a “science person.” By the end, that number had more than doubled to 7. Many students reflected in their journals that presenting their work to an authentic public audience made them feel like “real scientists.”
This past summer, Jack presented his findings at the IBSC conference at Belmont Hill School in Boston. The event brought together hundreds of educators from boys’ schools across the globe—including England, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Blue Ridge School has a proud history of faculty presenting at IBSC (including current Athletic Director, Parker Kirwan), and Jack was honored to be part of that tradition. He described the experience as one of the most impactful professional learning opportunities of his career—one that not only allowed him to collaborate with talented educators worldwide but also made a tangible and lasting impact on his students.
Read more about action research here
