For 18 months, 20 outstanding teachers, ambassadors of the Global Teacher Prize, will be working together to turn their classrooms into research laboratories. This initiative is possible thanks to the support of the John Templeton Foundation.
This project seeks to train teachers to collect evidence of their own success within classrooms. Through interactive sessions and the guidance of experts, we seek to identify and foster the skills of teachers as researchers, promote school projects, and develop scalable regional and global character development projects.
The program consists of a proactive methodology to develop students' skills in terms of improving school relations, behaviour management, civic education, conflict resolution and promoting service learning. Each of them will promote different character strengths that are grouped as follows based on the classification by Shields (2011):
- Improving School Relationships: Honesty and Integrity, Caring and Compassion, Gratitude (Strengths of Moral Character); equity, respect, volunteering and contribution to the common good (Strengths of civic character)
- Student Behavior Management: Self-Discipline, Responsibility, Goal Setting, Grit (Performance Character Strengths); honesty and integrity, care and compassion, gratitude, courage to take initiatives (moral character strengths)
- Civic Education: Fairness, Respect, Volunteering, and Contribution to the Common Good (civic character strengths); honesty and integrity, caring and compassion, courage to take initiatives (moral character strengths); responsibility (performance character strengths)
- Conflict resolution: Self-discipline, responsibility (performance character strengths); respect (civic character strengths); honesty and integrity, care and compassion, gratitude, courage to take initiatives (moral character strengths)
- Promoting Service Learning: Equity, Respect, Volunteerism, and Contribution to the Common Good (civic character strengths); honesty and integrity, care and compassion, gratitude, courage to take initiatives (moral character strengths); self-discipline, responsibility, goal setting, grit (performance character strengths).
Upon completing the implementation of the 20 school projects, we will produce a final comparative report to be presented at a regional event in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2023.
The 20 teachers participating in the program are:
