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Harnessing Genius Hour school-wide: examining teachers' perceptions of the implementation of personalized inquiry across an international middle school

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Harnessing Genius Hour school-wide: examining teachers' perceptions of the implementation of personalized inquiry across an international middle school

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Content Running Head: HARNESSING GENIUS HOUR SCHOOL-WIDE
i

HARNESSING GENIUS HOUR SCHOOL-WIDE: EXAMINING TEACHERS’
PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PERSONALIZED INQUIRY ACROSS
AN INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE SCHOOL

by

Elizabeth Ann Hall

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

August 2018

2018 Elizabeth Ann Hall
HARNESSING GENIUS HOUR SCHOOL-WIDE

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Dedication

This work is dedicated to those teachers whose aim is not to foster student success on
standardized tests, but to nurture the habits of lifelong learning within every student, and to the
students who never stop learning as a result.

HARNESSING GENIUS HOUR SCHOOL-WIDE

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Acknowledgements
Completing one dissertation feels a lot like making one trip to the moon. You know it’s
possible, but you really don’t know how to make it happen, and you know you can’t do it alone.
This exploration in learning has led me to new heights, and my own personal mission control has
guided me from lift-off to landing. Thank you first to my flight director, Dr. Larry Picus, who
was organized, alert, and quick to respond to distress calls. He is a pro, and I am grateful for his
service. Thanks too to my assistant flight directors, Drs. Ruth Chung and Artineh Samkian, both
of whom provided invaluable adjustments to my guidance and navigation systems along the way.
Thanks to my co-pilot, Dr. Scott Oskins, who joined me on this adventure from the start and
made sure all systems were go for our entire crew. To Dr. Treena Casey, my payloads officer,
thanks for making sure the data were collected in a proper and timely manner. To our sizeable
crew, including Drs. Martha Began, Lauren Bokaer, Cris Ewell, Sarah Farris, Lauren Murphy,
Robin Pearson, Monica San Jose, Susan Shaw, Jennifer Sparrow, Dennis Steigerwald, Lisa Wan,
Anne Wenstrom, Amanda Wood, and Marianne Yong-Macdonald, thank you for serving as
boosters at every stage. To my focus group contributors, thanks for serving as an integral part of
my data processing system. Thanks too to my Russian Interface Officer, Sean Thomas, who kept
me grounded when needed. And to others on my propulsion engineering team, Scott Riley, Scott
Townley, Todd Norton, Stan Richards, Alissa Antonowicz, Rogelio Bolanos, Lauren Mehrbach,
Chris Beingessner, Chris Raymaakers, Cindy Watters, and Chip Kimball, thank you for keeping
me pointed in the right direction. Finally, to my family, Ann, Steve, Andrew, Dr. DeDe, Sydney,
and Maddie Hall, thank you for watching this entire journey from the comfort of your living
rooms, perhaps getting a little nauseated viewing all of the twists and turns from afar. Knowing
you were there made it much easier for me to focus on the mission.
HARNESSING GENIUS HOUR SCHOOL-WIDE

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Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
Table of Contents iv
List of Tables viii
Abstract ix
Chapter One: Overview of the Study 1
Statement of the Problem 5
Background of the Problem 7
Purpose of the Study 10
Theoretical Framework 11
Significance of the Study 15
Limitations 16
Definitions of Terms 18
Chapter Two: Literature Review 21
Personalized Learning 21
Historical Context of Personalized Learning 21
Individualization, Differentiation, and Personalization 24
Individualization 24
Differentiation 25
Personalization 27
Characteristics of Personalized Learning 28
Competency-Based Progressions 29
Identifying Competencies 30
Skepticism around Competency-Based Progressions 31
Customized Pathways 32
Learner Profiles 32
Feedback 33
Blended Learning 33
Project-Based Learning 35
The Reality of Customized Pathways 35
Flexible Learning Environments 36
Space 37
Time 38
Staffing 38
Additional Research Focused on Personalized Learning Needed 39
Personalized Learning Summary 41
Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning 41
Benefits of Inquiry-Based Instruction 42
Commonalities of Inquiry-Based Instruction across Disciplines 43
More Specific Approaches to Inquiry-Based Instruction 45
Guided Inquiry 45
Shared Inquiry 46
Personalized Inquiry 46
Empirical Research Findings around Inquiry-Based Learning 47
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Research Investigating How Learners Engage in Inquiry-Based
Learning 48
Research Investigating the Effects of Guidance in
Inquiry-Based Learning 49
Providing Professional Development around Inquiry-Based Teaching
and Learning 50
Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning Summary 51
Chapter Three: Research Methods 52
Participants 54
Instrument 57
Procedures 58
Focus Groups 59
What 59
Why 59
Who 60
How 62
Documentary Materials 64
Analysis 65
Focus Group Interview Analysis 66
Credibility and Trustworthiness 67
Researcher Bias 68
Ethics 69
Research Methods Summary 69
Chapter Four: Findings 71
Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour Program Pilot 71
Documentary Material Related to Genius Hour Professional
Development and Resources 72
Faculty Meetings Reached All Teachers 72
September 2016 Faculty Meeting 73
November 2016 Faculty Meeting 73
January 2017 Faculty Meeting 75
Optional Release Days Offered to All 79
Three-Day Training 79
Two-Day Training 81
One-Day Training 82
CIS Genius Hour Website 83
Focus Group Findings Related to Genius Hour Professional Development
and Resources 84
The Importance of Providing Professional Development
Opportunities 85
The Importance of the Manner in Which Professional
Development Was Delivered 86
The Importance of Providing Manageable Resources to Teachers 89
CIS Genius Hour Website 90
Focus Group Findings Related to Relationship Building through Genius
Hour 91
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The Value of Teachers Getting to Know Students Better 92
Focus Group Findings Related to Genius Hour Fulfilling Its Purpose 93
Identifying the Purpose of the Genius Hour Program Pilot 94
Identifying Ways in Which the Genius Hour Program Pilot
Fulfilled Its Purpose 95
Summary of the Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour Program Pilot 97
Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour Program Pilot 97
Focus Group Findings Related to the Use of Time during the Genius Hour
Program Pilot 98
The Challenge of Pacing Genius Hour Effectively 98
The Challenge of Losing Time in Regular Classes during Genius
Hour 100
Focus Group Findings Related to the Use of Spaces during Genius Hour 101
The Concern over Student Access to Spaces during Genius Hour 101
The Concern over Supervision of Students in Spaces during
Genius Hour 103
Focus Group Findings Related to Genius Hour Student Motivation 104
The Question of What to Do with Students Who Lack Motivation 105
The Question of How Best to Assess Student Progress 106
Summary of the Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour Program Pilot 110
Suggestions for Future Iterations of the Genius Hour Program 110
Suggestions Related to the Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour
Program Pilot 111
Suggested Next Steps Related to Professional Development and
Resources 111
Suggested Next Steps Related to Relationships 112
Suggested Next Steps Related to Purpose 113
Suggestions Related to the Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour
Program Pilot 115
Suggested Next Steps Related to the Use of Time during Genius
Hour 115
Suggested Next Steps Related to the Use of Spaces during Genius
Hour 117
Suggested Next Steps Related to Student Motivation during
Genius Hour 118
Summary of Suggestions for Future Iterations of the Genius Hour
Program 119
Chapter Five: Discussion 121
Summary of Findings 122
Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour Program Pilot 123
Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour Program Pilot 124
Suggestions for Future Iterations of the Genius Hour Program 125
Discussion of Findings 127
Professional Development and Resources Findings and the Literature 128
Relationships Findings and the Literature 128
Purpose Findings and the Literature 129
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Time Findings and the Literature 130
Spaces Findings and the Literature 130
Student Motivation Findings and the Literature 131
Limitations of the Study 132
Implications for Practice 133
Recommendations for Research 138
Conclusion 140
References 142
Appendix A: Focus Group Interview Protocol 154

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List of Tables
Table 1: Summary of CIS Middle School Teachers Who Participated in the Genius Hour
Program Pilot 55
Table 2: Focus Group Membership 57
Table 3: Gender Make-Up of Focus Groups 62
Table 4: Length of Each Focus Group Interview in Minutes 62
Table 5: John Couch’s Education Versus Learning Comparison 74
Table 6: Genius Hour Workflow 74
Table 7: Genius Hour Program Pilot Calendar 76
Table 8: 30-Minute Genius Hour Program Pilot Schedules 77
Table 9: 65-Minute Genius Hour Program Pilot Schedules 78
Table 10: Three-Day Genius Hour Professional Development Mini-Lessons and Stages
of Inquiry 80
Table 11: Two-Day Genius Hour Professional Development Mini-Lessons and Stages
of Inquiry 81
Table 12: One-Day Genius Hour Professional Development Mini-Lessons and Stages
of Inquiry 82
Table 13: Genius Hour Agreements 84
Table 14: Personalized Inquiry Learning Ladder Draft 106

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Abstract
While educational researchers increasingly examine the implementation of both personalized
learning and inquiry-based learning in K-12 schools, few of these studies focus on teachers’
experiences (Taylor, 2016). The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather the perceptions of
middle school teachers charged with implementing a Genius Hour program pilot at a large, pre-
K-12, private international school located in Southeast Asia in order to determine the program’s
strengths, challenges, and next steps. The Genius Hour program pilot was meant to provide
students with an opportunity to engage in personalized learning through the lens of personalized
inquiry, allowing students to pursue their own curiosities during the school day. Guided by a
constructivist theoretical framework, I gathered data through four focus groups made up of
teachers who taught either electives or grades six, seven, or eight. Focus groups followed a semi-
structured interview protocol, each interview was transcribed and coded, and codes were
organized into six emerging themes. Perceived successes that emerged were connected to the (1)
professional development and resources provided to teachers, (2) the relationships that grew
between teachers and students, and (3) fulfillment of the pilot’s purpose. Perceived challenges
that emerged included (4) the pacing of the pilot, (5) lack of access to supervised spaces, and (6)
maintaining student motivation. Implications that emerged connected to each theme included (1)
providing ongoing professional development to teachers, (2) developing mentoring opportunities
for students, (3) expanding inquiry work across classes, (4) continuing to play with time devoted
to the program, (5) expanding both space and supervision availability, and (6) developing new
opportunities for students to share their work with authentic audiences.
Keywords: free inquiry, Genius Hour, Google 20% Time, independent inquiry, inquiry,
inquiry-based learning, iTime, personalized inquiry, personalized learning
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CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
When a student steps into a teacher’s classroom, that teacher’s goal should be to nurture
that student’s abilities and interests in order for the student to become a lifelong learner, able to
pursue knowledge and skills in a self-sustainable way throughout their lifetime, whether for
work, personal development, or community engagement. In his treatise Experience and
Education, John Dewey (1938) explains:
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. If
impetus in this direction is weakened instead of being intensified, something much more
than mere lack of preparation takes place. The pupil is actually robbed of native
capacities which otherwise would enable him to cope with the circumstances that he
meets in the course of his life. (p. 48)
In other words, it is criminal to teach without concern for nurturing students’ lifelong learning
potential.
But how can we ensure our students become lifelong learners if we as teachers are always
in control of student learning, telling students what, how, and when to learn (Wolk, 2008)?
In many classrooms worldwide, students have little to no voice in their daily learning pursuits.
Robinson and Aronica (2015) describe the conventional secondary classroom this way:
Students sit at desks, facing the front, while the teacher instructs, explains, and sets
assignments. The mode of learning is predominantly verbal or mathematical; that is,
students mainly write, calculate, or discuss with the teacher. The curriculum is a body of
material to be learned. It is arranged into various subjects, usually taught by different
teachers. There are frequent tests and a lot of time spent in preparing for them. Inevitably
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students grasp some material more quickly than others, but the class is intended to get
through the material at the same rate and over the same amount of time. (p. 75)
While Robinson and Aronica’s description may lead many to flashbacks of their own secondary
days, it does little to suggest that students educated in such an environment will, indeed, develop
the knowledge and skills needed to become lifelong learners. As Dewey (1938) asks, how many
students have come “to associate the learning process with ennui and boredom?” (p. 27).
Robinson and Aronica (2015) go on to say that education is in need not of reform, but of
complete transformation. Other scholars agree, including Miliband (2006) who explains that
while business has figured out that the process of personalization is a key to business success,
from the apps on our smart phones, to the clothes we wear, to our pages on Facebook, most
educators have not yet adopted this way of thinking. Resnick (2017) agrees, stating, “Most
schools in most countries place a higher priority on teaching students to follow instructions and
rules than on helping students develop their own ideas, goals, and strategies” (p. 3).
Unfortunately, a lifelong love of learning is unlikely to grow out of simply following rules and
instructions.
More than professionals in any other field, educators must have eyes on the distant future,
or in the words of Dewey (1938), “have a long look ahead” (p.75). Rather than remaining stuck
in a twentieth century industrial educational model emphasizing the basic skills of reading,
writing, and arithmetic, with “rigorous” learning focused on memorization and practice drills,
educators must embrace the concept of personalization in order to revolutionize learning for all
(Duncan, 2013; Wagner, 2008). Today, almost any job that pays more than minimum wage
requires employees to navigate technology and analyze information that continues to grow
exponentially in order to solve not just intellectual and technical problems, but to tackle global
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crises as well, from climate change, to poverty, to ideological warfare (Wagner, 2008). This
reality demands that we develop a citizenry of thinkers, and personalized learning is one
promising practice that may help learners develop the knowledge and skills needed to become
lifelong thinkers.
One avenue into personalized learning that has garnered the attention of educators in
recent years is the concept of inquiry. Wagner and Dintersmith (2015) explain that the true aim
of education is “to engage students with their passions and growing sense of purpose, teach them
critical skills needed for career and citizenship, and inspire them to do their very best to make
their world better” (p. 44). Inquiry-based learning, when implemented effectively, engages
students in just these ways. By learning the process of inquiry, students gain traction as
questioners, investigators, creators, and reflectors. In a video entitled On Being Truly Educated,
Chomsky (2015) asserts that to be truly educated, one must become a skilled inquirer, knowing
“where to look, how to look, how to question, how to challenge, how to proceed independently,
to deal with the challenges that the world presents to you…in cooperation and solidarity with
others.” Once students are able to flex their inquiry skills both in school and beyond, both with
guidance and without, they are more likely to grow up to be lifelong learners and thinkers. In
fact, Aulls and Shore (2008) explain that inquiry is not simply another pedagogical technique,
but a curricular imperative across disciplines and “a criterion for excellent education” (p. viii).
One approach to inquiry that has gained popularity in recent years across disciplines –
and across continents – had its start at American corporation 3M in the 1930s and 1940s (Pink,
2009). William McKnight, the then president and chairman of 3M, encouraged employees to
engage in “experimental doodling” and allowed the technical staff to devote up to fifteen percent
of their time at work on projects of their choice (Pink, 2009, p. 95). While some might have
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considered this policy visionary, inside 3M it was known as the “bootlegging policy” because it
felt somehow illicit (Pink, 2009, p. 95). “Experimental doodling” worked though, even giving
birth to the ubiquitous Post-It Note (Pink, 2009, p. 95). Since then, other businesses have
embraced the idea. For example, fearful that their company might stagnate in a dynamic market,
Atlassian, an Australian software company launched in 2002, encouraged employees to devote
24 hours to pursuing problems of interest to them that weren’t actually a part of their daily jobs
(Pink, 2009). They called this day FedEx Day “because people have to deliver something
overnight” (Pink, 2009, p. 93). This special day produced a number of software fixes and new
products for Atlassian, and this led the company to quarterly FedEx Days (Pink, 2009). But that
was not enough. Eager to tap into employees’ creative work even more consistently, in 2008,
Atlassian moved from quarterly FedEx Days to allowing employees to work on independent
projects of their own design twenty percent of the time (Pink, 2009). The company most widely
known for twenty percent time, however, is Google. Out of the autonomous time Google has
offered employees has emerged Google News, Google Translate, and Gmail, just to name a few
(Pink, 2009). Pink (2009) explains that what makes this approach so successful is the autonomy
it provides employees, specifically “autonomy over four aspects of work: what people do, when
they do it, how they do it, and whom they do it with” (pp. 93-94). In fact, Pink (2009) believes
days like twenty percent days or FedEx Days are “becoming urgent in an economy that demands
nonroutine, creative, conceptual abilities” (p. 97). If an autonomous approach is working to build
employees’ nonroutine, creative, conceptual skills across businesses worldwide, where else
might such an approach work?
This autonomous approach, giving people power over what, when, how, and with whom
they work, has, in fact, bled into other domains, including both hospitals and schools. For
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example, at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., nurses have the autonomy to
conduct their own research, and the findings from those research projects have led to changes in
the hospital’s policies and programs (Pink, 2009). In schools, twenty percent time is often called
Genius Hour, iTime, or the Twenty Percent Project, and in one middle school in Vermont,
students named it “Brainado” (L. LeGeros, personal communication, November 7, 2017). West
and Roberts (2016) define Genius Hour as “a part of the day during which students’ interests
guide inquiry learning” (p.227). Spencer and Juliani (2017) describe Genius Hour as “an
innovative approach to choice” where “students can plan and manage their own independent
projects” (p. 192). They go on to explain that during Genius Hour, “Some students will work
alone, while others work collaboratively. Some of the projects begin with questions and research,
while others start with students learning how to do something creative for the first time. It’s
meant to be flexible” (p. 192). Genius Hour helps schools take a step toward helping students
develop their nonroutine, creative, conceptual abilities, just as Pink (2009) encourages.
Statement of the Problem
Bringing about change in schools is much more challenging than remaining static, doing
what you have always done because it has worked in the past. Dewey (1938) states, “The
conduct of schools, based upon a new order of conceptions, is so much more difficult than is the
management of schools which walk in beaten paths” (p. 5). So if taking a road less travelled is so
challenging in education, then how do teachers shift their pedagogy from more teacher-centered
to more student-centered instruction in order to nurture students’ creative, conceptual abilities
and cultivate lifelong learning? To make this shift, educators must rethink much of what they
thought they knew about good teaching, from their classroom roles, to grading practices, to daily
lesson planning (Bingham, 2015). Enacting transformational change in teachers’ instructional
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practices is a dynamic, evolving process mediated by a confluence of factors (Spillane, Reiser, &
Reimer, 2002). These factors include teachers’ prior experience, existing beliefs, participation in
communities of practice, and organizational context (Coburn, 2004; Ertmer, 2005; Gallucci,
2003). This sort of shift in pedagogy is fraught with challenge not only at the individual teacher
level, but at the school, district, state, and national levels as well.
With any educational reform initiative, teachers wield a great deal of power in bringing
those initiatives to life for students and communities. While a growing number of studies
examine the implementation of personalized learning and inquiry-based learning across
classrooms and across schools (highlighted in chapter two of this study), few of these studies
focus on the experiences of teachers (Taylor, 2016). As a result, more research is needed to
understand what teachers need to help both themselves and their students shift to more student-
centered instruction. If researchers can determine what teachers need to successfully implement
more student-centered approaches, then educators worldwide would be able to take one step
closer to fostering the development of students who have the knowledge and skills to become
lifelong learners.
This study examined the perceptions of middle school teachers at Causeway International
School
1
(CIS) charged with implementing personalized learning through the lens of personalized
inquiry with all middle school students through a Genius Hour program pilot. How teachers
experienced the implementation of personalized inquiry through the Genius Hour program pilot
warrants investigation because, ultimately, each teacher’s perceptions related to personalized
inquiry impacted each student’s learning experiences. By examining those perceptions closely,
searching for themes, and engaging in continuous improvement based on lessons learned, CIS

1

In order to protect the identity of the organization examined in this study, Causeway
International School is a pseudonym.
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has the potential to more effectively nurture students’ nonroutine, creative, conceptual skills so
that they may develop into lifelong learners. Therefore, the general problem of practice this study
focuses on is how best to prepare and support teachers who engage students in the personalized
inquiry process.
Background of the Problem
CIS is a large, pre-K-12, private international school located in Southeast Asia. The
mission of the school is to provide each student an exemplary education with an international
perspective (CIS website
2
). In order to achieve this mission, the school board has approved the
CIS Strategic Plan, presented to faculty in January 2016. As part of that strategic plan, by May
2020, CIS leaders hope to have developed practices and programs that allow for personalization
of learning for each student (CIS website). Up until March 2017 in the CIS middle school, the
problem was that not all students had access to personalized learning. In order to address this
lack of access to personalized learning, middle school teachers were asked to prepare for and
implement a personalized inquiry program pilot called Genius Hour. In fall 2016, CIS published
its own definition of inquiry, calling it a dynamic approach to teaching and learning that prompts
learners to question, investigate, create, and reflect, thus helping students build agency, develop
transferable skills, and make connections that help them reach deeper levels of understanding
(CIS website). Genius Hour, then, was meant to provide each middle school student time and
teacher guidance during the regular school day so that each student could pursue their own
curiosities and develop an independent investigation that might lead them to question,
investigate, create, and reflect, eventually sharing their work with an authentic audience (CIS
website).

2
In order to protect the identity of the institution examined in this study, all references to the CIS
website do not refer to the school’s actual URL.

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The Genius Hour program pilot was born out of the reflections and efforts of both the
middle school administrative team and the middle school faculty through a research and
development process. During the 2013-2014 school year at CIS, approximately 20 teachers and
administrators across the middle school, including myself, formed the middle school Research
Team, visiting nearly 30 innovative schools in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand to
gather ideas as they envisioned ways to best prepare learners for the challenges they will face in
an unpredictable future. Giving students access to personalized inquiry opportunities, a concept
new to the CIS middle school, was a theme that emerged from those school visits.
During the 2014-2015 school year, six members of the former Research Team then
formed the middle school Development Team, including myself who served as a Reading
Language Arts (RLA) teacher at the time, one math teacher, the literacy coach, the technology
coach, the technology coordinator, and the principal. The Development Team met every other
day for three hours or more all year long to discuss, debate, and develop a vision for the future of
the middle school based on lessons learned from the research trips the year before. In May 2015,
the Development Team presented their recommendations to the school board and received
approval (CIS website). Genius Hour was a key component of those recommendations (CIS
website).
During the 2015-2016 school year, 12 middle school teachers, led by me, formed the
Genius Hour Task Force, meeting monthly to begin to work out the details of the Genius Hour
program pilot. Due to time constraints and other organizational barriers, the work of the task
force was incomplete in May 2016. At the end of the 2015-2016 school year, middle school
administrators determined that in order to bring the Genius Hour program pilot to life for both
teachers and students, one person would need to lead the implementation effort throughout the
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following school year and beyond. They shared a job description with the faculty, interviewed
interested candidates, and hired me to fulfill the role of instructional coach for the 2016-2017 and
2017-2018 school years. One of my primary responsibilities as the instructional coach was to
guide the middle school through the implementation of the Genius Hour program pilot.
Teachers were involved in the research, creation, and implementation of the Genius Hour
program pilot from the beginning, serving as the primary stakeholders of the program. Middle
school administrators were also stakeholders, responsible for providing the middle school faculty
and student body the support needed to implement the program. In preparation for the Genius
Hour program pilot launch, the middle school administrative team provided a variety of
opportunities to the middle school faculty to engage in professional development around inquiry.
This included multiple presentations to the full faculty around the logistics of Genius Hour and
small group professional development opportunities for teachers to opt into, from one-, to two-,
to three-day Genius Hour training. According to internal CIS documentation from the 2016-2017
school year, of 83 middle school teachers who led students through the Genius Hour program
pilot in March and April 2017, ten took part in a three-day professional development workshop
focused on Genius Hour, nine participated in a two-day workshop, and 45 participated in a one-
day workshop. The remaining 19 middle school teachers chose to rely on their own prior
knowledge and experience along with the training they received during full faculty meetings.
Through these small-group professional development days led by the instructional coach,
the teachers helped test-drive a series of lessons meant to guide students through the inquiry
process, including lessons on questioning, investigating, creating, and reflecting. These lessons
were then collated along with additional resources in the CIS Genius Hour website available to
all middle school teachers and students before, during, and after the Genius Hour program pilot.
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Further description of the professional development provided leading up to the rollout of the
Genius Hour program pilot is provided in chapter four. The goal of these professional
development efforts was for the 960 middle school student stakeholders to pursue their own
curiosities and to design their own investigations to share with an authentic audience, thus
weaving personalized inquiry into the fabric of the middle school.
The Genius Hour program was first piloted with all middle school teachers and students
for four weeks in March and April 2017, allowing the stakeholders to “test drive” the program.
By giving students and teachers the opportunity to engage in the personalized inquiry process
during the Genius Hour program pilot, the school took one important step toward fulfilling part
of its strategic plan by providing personalized learning opportunities for all students.
Purpose of the Study
The primary purpose of this study was to gather teacher perception data around both the
successes and challenges connected to the implementation of the Genius Hour program pilot at
the CIS middle school. As Clark and Estes (2008) explain, it is crucial to gather the perceptions
of those engaged in the work and to listen to them without judgment if we hope to gain clarity
around how a program might be strengthened. This study also provided insight into the
recommendations the CIS middle school faculty had moving toward future iterations of the
Genius Hour program. In fact, the study findings may provide important guideposts for the
faculty as they figure out how to make personalized inquiry not just a one-off four-week
endeavor, but an approach to learning teachers and students pursue throughout their middle
school careers – and beyond.
The three research questions that guided this study were as follows:
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1. What are teachers’ perceptions of the successes of the Genius Hour program pilot in
the middle school at Causeway International School?
2. What are teachers’ perceptions of the challenges they faced connected to the Genius
Hour program pilot in the middle school at Causeway International School?
3. What recommendations might teachers have, if any, related to future iterations of
personalized inquiry in the middle school at Causeway International School?
Theoretical Framework
A theoretical framework serves as a model of what you plan to study and of what is going
on and why (Maxwell, 2013). In other words, a theory is the lens through which a researcher
studies phenomena (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). All aspects of a study are influenced by the
theoretical framework, allowing researchers to see what they may otherwise miss and anticipate
and make sense of findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The constructivist theory frames this
study. Constructivist thinking is often associated with the work of Dewey (1916) who
emphasized the importance of learning-by-doing under authentic conditions. Merriam and
Tisdell (2016) explain that constructivism – also known as interpretivism, and the most common
form of qualitative research – “assumes that reality is socially constructed, that is, there is no
single, observable reality. Rather, there are multiple realities, or interpretations, of a single
event” (p. 9). In other words, the constructivist worldview suggests that knowledge is not
absolute, but instead, constructed by the learner, and different learners may interpret their
realities differently.
While most would classify the term knowledge as a noun, Dewey argues that, in fact,
knowledge is more appropriately interpreted as a verb (Hansen, 2007). Knowledge is what
makes it possible for people to conduct themselves intelligently as they draw upon previous
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experience in order to make connections between events and consequences (Hansen, 2007). In
Experience and Education, Dewey (1938) describes knowledge in terms of a baby near a flame:
A baby may see the brightness of the flame and be attracted thereby to reach for it. The
significance of the flame is then not its brightness but its power to burn, as the
consequence that will result from touching it. (p. 68)
While the power of observation matters, it “alone is not enough. We have to understand the
significance of what we see, hear, and touch” (Dewey, 1938, p. 68). That sense of significance
comes from prior knowledge. In Dewey’s (1938) words, “We can be aware of consequences only
because of previous experiences” (p. 68). Hansen (2007) explains that from Dewey’s
perspective, knowledge is “not fundamentally a mental concept, but rather points to a
characteristic of lived experience. Knowledge describes human conduct in the world rather than
what is stored inertly in encyclopedias, on computers, or in the head” (p. 176). Maturana and
Varela (1992) share similar sentiments, explaining, “All knowing is an action by the knower. All
knowing depends on the structure of the knower. Knowledge is brought forth in doing” (p. 34).
More recently, Kritt (2018) states, “Perhaps central to all constructivist approaches is recognition
that learning is not reception of transmitted information and internal accretion. It is transactional,
abetted by a dialectic of cognitive integration” (p. 9). In other words, knowledge is much more
than information and facts. Information and facts only become relevant “in processes of knowing
and doing” (Hansen, 2007, p. 176). Removed from a context where knowledge is transactional,
information and facts become meaningless, distracting, and in the case of the baby and flame,
even dangerous.
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Unfortunately, Dewey (1985) argues that schools often equate information and facts with
knowledge, burdening students and teachers alike with vast quantities of material they quickly
forget. In describing Dewey’s thinking, Hansen (2007) explains:
Schools do not accomplish what they could do if they focused instead on helping students
understand the nature and meaning of an intelligent course of action, whether in solving a
math problem, interpreting an historical event, undertaking a scientific experiment, or
planning a strategy to win the basketball game. Students who learn these things come to
know their way about a particular domain. They become knowledgeable people, rather
than people who have merely gone to school. (p. 177)
The goal of education, then, is to grow knowledgeable people capable of critical thinking,
collaboration, communication, and creativity, rather than programming automatons to regurgitate
forgettable minutia.
The degree to which students are responsible for their own learning falls along a
continuum of constructivist views, from one extreme where students discover through free
exploration to another extreme where the teacher sequentially isolates variables required for
understanding (Kritt, 2018). Between these extremes lies exciting territory that “has the potential
to invigorate thought about teaching and learning. But this is far from typical teacher practice”
(Kritt, 2018, p. 12). It is somewhere along this continuum that the Genius Hour program pilot
falls.
In the context of this study, a constructivist approach was fitting for a variety of reasons.
First, the nature of the Genius Hour program pilot was constructivist, demanding that students
investigate topics that held meaning and importance to them and allowing students to build their
own knowledge around that topic by seeking, doing, and/or creating. In the process of pursuing
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these independent investigations, students were also expected to build their skillsets around the
process of inquiring so that beyond school, in very different contexts, students would have a
toolkit for how to become a knowledgeable person in any circumstance. This program pilot was
not about encouraging students to learn basic information and facts, but about immersing them in
experiences meant to build their capacity to learn anything. Therefore, for each student, the
Genius Hour journey looks different and the knowledge acquired is unique.
For teachers, the connection to constructivism also made sense. While this study aimed to
gather teacher perception data on the Genius Hour program pilot, those perceptions were based
on lived experience. Teachers did not simply report out on information and facts they had
learned in isolation, but shared their experiences as learners themselves as they navigated their
way through the pilot with students in tow. In fact, a plethora of views were shared by the 27
focus group participants, and each participant’s view was influenced by his or her own
experiences leading up to, during, and after the Genius Hour program pilot. The “reality”
teachers experienced and the “knowledge” they gained through the pilot colored their
interpretations of the successes, challenges, and next steps for the program.
When engaged in constructivist research, the researcher examines “the complexity of
views rather than narrowing meanings into a few categories or ideas” (Creswell, 2014, p. 8). The
research relies on the participants’ views of the situation being examined, and as a result, the
questions are “broad and general” (Creswell, 2014, p. 8). In the case of this study, the focus
group interview protocol was both broad and general, giving participants the space to construct
their own meaning related to the Genius Hour program pilot. While constructivist researchers
recognize their own experiences influence their interpretation, their intent “is to make sense of
(or interpret) the meanings others have about the world” (Creswell, 2014, p. 8). Again, in the
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case of this study, while I had my own experiences during the Genius Hour program pilot to
draw from, in fact, the data shared here emerged from focus group transcripts alone. As Kritt
(2018) writes, “Learning is a subtle process, extending across time and performances, to yield
consolidated understandings” (p. 11). This study, undertaken with a constructivist lens, allowed
for learning to extend across time and performances, yielding consolidated understandings in the
form of data shared in chapters four and five of this study.
Significance of the Study
This study may have implications for educational practice, policy, and research. At the
educational practice level, with the implementation of the Genius Hour program, the CIS middle
school hopes to land upon an effective way to provide students access to personalized learning
through personalized inquiry. Until the school is able to provide such access consistently and
effectively to all middle school students, it will negatively affect the school’s ability to fulfill its
strategic plan. Middle school teachers, administrators, and students all have a stake in the
successful implementation of the Genius Hour program. This study’s findings will serve as a
roadmap for CIS as it moves forward in its quest to personalize learning for every student.
On a more global scale, the findings shared through this study may offer guidance to
other schools as they search for ways to build personalized learning into their own school
cultures. Specifically, the findings shared here may offer some insight into how teachers make
sense and manage the demands of personalized inquiry. It may also provide some clarity around
the knowledge and skills teachers need to personalize learning for every student. By examining
both the successes and challenges experienced by those implementing personalized inquiry on a
schoolwide scale and sharing potential next steps to further refine the Genius Hour program, this
work provides future educators, policy makers, and researchers with some idea of the range of
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issues that may surface when trying to implement personalized inquiry for all students. This is
complex work, and educators worldwide are grappling with how best to solve the puzzle of
personalized learning (Patrick, Kennedy & Powell, 2013). This study may contribute to that
conversation by sharing how one school tackled the problem of providing personalized inquiry to
every student and how teachers perceived those efforts.
Limitations
One limitation of research, whether quantitative or qualitative, is the researcher’s human
potential to make mistakes, overlook opportunities, or succumb to personal bias, because it is the
researcher who serves as “the primary instrument for data collection and analysis” (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016, p. 16). While there are numerous advantages to this kind of research, including the
responsiveness and adaptability of the researcher, the researcher’s ability to pick up on nonverbal
and verbal communication, and the researcher’s ability to check with respondents to clarify and
summarize material, there are also shortcomings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). In terms of this
study, I served as both the researcher and the instructional coach charged with implementing the
Genius Hour program pilot, and because of my position, I had a substantial influence over the
rollout of the Genius Hour program. This may be considered an advantage in some respects
because I was involved in the development of the Genius Hour program from its inception and
had access to most documentation and training connected to the program. In other words, my
role and experiences provided easy access to information and resources relevant to this study.
However, because I was also the instructional coach charged with implementing the Genius Hour
program pilot, I had greater potential to be influenced by personal bias as I collected data and
attempted to make meaning of it. To tackle this challenge and limit my personal bias, I enlisted a
data collection team that gathered data for me while keeping the identities of participants
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protected. This also allowed participants to speak more freely without fear of reprisal. Because of
this effort to mask participants’ identities, however, I was reliant upon the notes and
transcriptions of others and could not pick up on nonverbal and verbal communication myself. In
addition, I could not return to individual participants to seek clarification or confirmation of
findings. I did, however, share general findings with the entire middle school faculty at a March
2018 faculty meeting in order to give all teachers an opportunity to hear and respond to my
general findings.
Of course, as I examined the data to determine the findings, I may also have been
dismissive of data I did not agree with. In order to overcome this challenge, I reported any data
that emerged across all four focus groups. If it was important enough to discuss according to
sixth-grade, seventh-grade, eighth-grade, and electives teachers, it must be worthy of inclusion in
this study’s findings, whether I as the researcher agreed or not. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) also
suggest that it is important to identify such subjectivities and monitor them in relation to the
theoretical framework. Therefore, as this study unfolded, I tried to filter both data collection and
analysis through a constructivist framework. Guba and Lincoln (1989) explain that “data derived
from constructivist inquiry have neither special status nor legitimation; they represent simply
another construction to be taken into account in the move toward consensus” (p. 45). Basically,
findings shared here can only be understood within the context of CIS and cannot be generalized
elsewhere (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). The intention behind this work, then, follows Lichtman’s
(2013) criteria for quality qualitative research: I have tried to be explicit about my role as the
researcher and my relationship to those studied, I have tried to make a case that studying
teachers’ perceptions related to the implementation of the Genius Hour program pilot is
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important, I have tried to be clear about how the study was conducted, and I have tried to make a
convincing presentation of the study’s findings.
Definition of Terms
The definitions below provide clarity around the meanings of terms used throughout this
dissertation.
Agency: when an individual has the capacity to act with intention; possessing forethought
that informs decision-making (Bandura, 2001).
Blended learning: a learning model in which both online learning and face-to-face
instruction are used in some combination to provide students with a more personalized learning
experience (Christensen, Horn, & Staker, 2013; Pane, Steiner, Baird, & Hamilton, 2015;
Yonezawa, McClure, & Jones, 2012).
Competency-based progression: when students are placed with content appropriate to
their learning level and have the ability to work at their own pace, advancing when they have
mastered the material (Pane et al., 2015).
Customized pathways: when students are provided with flexible and varied paths toward
content mastery, giving each learner the ability to choose activities appropriate to their own
learner goals and motivations (Halverson et al., 2015; Pane et al., 2015).
Flexible learning environments: using resources such as staff, space, and time flexibly to
be responsive to student needs and to support student learning (Pane et al., 2015).
Genius Hour: providing both time and teacher guidance during the regular school day for
students to engage in personalized inquiry, pursuing their own curiosities and developing an
independent investigation that leads them to question, investigate, create, and reflect, eventually
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sharing their work with an authentic audience (CIS website; Spencer & Juliani, 2017; West &
Roberts, 2016).
Guided inquiry: sometimes called directed, structured, or controlled inquiry, this study
refers to guided inquiry when students follow the guidance of their teacher to deepen their
understanding of a topic by examining the same teacher-generated driving question, using the
same teacher-provided resources, demonstrating their understanding through the same teacher-
assigned tasks, and evaluating their work through the same teacher-generated assessment tools
(Callison, 2015; MacKenzie, 2016).
Inquiry-based learning: a dynamic, dialogic process associated with a range of
pedagogical approaches centered on learners making meaning and constructing knowledge
through active investigation that requires them to engage in problem posing, investigating,
analysis, perspective-taking, and communicating (Jennings, 2010).
Learner profile: when teacher and student use both achievement data (i.e., tests, quizzes,
projects) and non-achievement data (i.e., student attitudes, behaviors, preferences) to discuss and
understand student progress and inform goal setting (Pane et al., 2015).
Personalized inquiry: sometimes called free or independent inquiry, this study refers to
personalized inquiry when a student has the opportunity to investigate a personal curiosity,
interest, or passion over a significant period of time, while at the same time the teacher provides
guidance to the student as needed during the inquiry process (Murdoch, 2015).
Personalized learning: flexibly tailoring learning to a student’s strengths, needs, and
interests, enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when, and where they learn in order to
support mastery of the highest standards possible (Patrick et al., 2013).
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Shared inquiry: sometimes called guided or modeled inquiry, this study refers to shared
inquiry when the teacher provides the essential question(s) to be investigated while the students
consult with the teacher to select the resources they will use to conduct their research and to
determine how they will demonstrate their understanding (MacKenzie, 2016; Murdoch, 2015).

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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
This literature review will first lead readers through the historical context of personalized
learning, connecting the dots between educational thinkers from Rousseau, to Dewey, to
Parkhurst, to Skinner, to Sizer, to Leadbeater. It will then describe the characteristics of twenty-
first century personalized learning, including an examination of competency-based progressions,
customized pathways, and flexible learning environments. With each of these characteristics
carefully mapped out, this chapter will then share a summary of recent empirical research
relevant to personalized learning, including research that both supports and questions the
effectiveness of this teaching approach. Finally, this chapter will shift its focus to inquiry-based
teaching and learning, looking more closely at the different types of inquiry and the
characteristics of each, followed by an examination of recent empirical research relevant to
inquiry, both supportive and critical. It will also touch upon what is required to prepare teachers
to lead students through effective inquiry-based learning.
Personalized Learning
The concept of personalized learning has captured the attention of educators worldwide
in recent years. In an effort to respond to the disconnect between more traditional school models
and the challenges we face nearly two decades into the twenty-first century, many educators are
debating how best to reconceptualize schooling (Zmuda, Curtis, & Ullman, 2015). However, the
basic tenets of personalized learning can be traced back centuries.
Historical Context of Personalized Learning
In the 1700s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued against a singular curriculum, writing in
Emile, or On Education that schools must build on learners’ individual abilities and interests in
order to capitalize on their own motivations (Yonezawa et al., 2012). Two centuries later, John
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Dewey claimed that the future of society depended on “the widening spread and deepening hold”
of the inquisitive mind (as cited in Boydston, 1978, p. 78). Dewey preached the importance of
embracing learners’ interests and incorporating outside experiences in order to meet individual
needs and to ensure that education was both interactive and social (Dewey, 1938; Zmuda et al.,
2015). Similarly, in 1922, Helen Parkhurst published Education on the Dalton Plan in which she
stated, “Not until school machinery is reorganized and the energies of the pupils released from
the time-table and the class-tent will they begin to develop that initiative, resourcefulness, and
concentration which are indispensable preliminaries to the process of learning” (p. 151). She
went on to explain that the true purpose of school was “not to chain the pupil to preconceived
ideas, but to set him free to discover his own ideas and to help him to bring all his powers to bear
upon the problem of learning” (pp. 151-152). Skinner (1958) spoke of school machinery in a
more literal sense, demonstrating how “teaching machines” could allow learners to complete
tasks independently and at their own pace. Recurring across the decades and even centuries is the
idea that if we expect all students to learn at high levels, we must relinquish control over what,
when, how, where, and with whom they learn.
Similar descriptions of what learning should look like have bubbled up more recently as
well. In 1984, Theodore Sizer began the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), based on a series
of ten principles, including the principles of depth of material over coverage, personalization,
demonstration of mastery, and viewing students as workers and teachers as coaches (Zmuda et
al., 2015). The CES consists of more than 100 schools today still engaged in this work (Coalition
of Essential Schools, 2017).
While the tenets of personalization have been touted over centuries, the term
“personalized learning” did not become common in education until 2004 when Charles
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Leadbeater argued there was a misalignment between public services and the needs of students
across England (Campbell, Robinson, Neelands, Hewston, & Mazzoli, 2007). He first introduced
the concept in the context of public services such as health care, but he shifted his focus to
education soon after (Campbell et al., 2007). In his pamphlet Learning about Personalisation:
How Can We Put the Learner at the Heart of the Education System? Leadbeater (2004)
explained how three common suggestions for improving the education system simply don’t
work: (a) investing more money in more staff; (b) consumer choice; and (c) voice in governance.
Using a real life example of a struggling student who overcame obstacles with the help of a
network of supportive adults who worked closely with him to devise a personalized plan,
Leadbeater (2004) argued that education as it exists must be disrupted so that individuals have
greater say in how they learn, what they learn, and how they are assessed, collaborating closely
with teachers to ensure the most appropriate pathway for each student.
Campbell and colleagues (2007) examined Leadbeater’s assertions and identified the
challenges of implementing personalized learning as he described it. For example, they argued
that the degree of personalization Leadbeater promoted would be nearly impossible considering
the level of state control over the curriculum (Campbell et al., 2007). Campbell and colleagues
(2007) also noted the challenges associated with getting all educators on board with change.
Finally, they pointed out that personalization as Leadbeater viewed it was simply an unproven
theory, unsubstantiated by empirical evidence (Campbell et al., 2007).
While Rousseau, Dewey, Parkhurst, Skinner, and Sizer have provided the breadcrumbs
that lead us to Leadbeater’s concept of “personalized learning,” since the unveiling of
Leadbeater’s work, and despite the concerns raised by Campbell and colleagues (2007), little
academic literature provides additional insight into the application of personalized learning in the
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K-12 context (Basham, Hall, Carter, & Stahl, 2016). Still, that has not kept schools from
navigating the implementation of personalized learning in their own contexts.
Individualization, Differentiation, and Personalization
The concept of meeting students where they are and helping them build their capacity as
learners in a way that is inclusive of their aspirations, interests, and voices is not new, and this is
why personalized learning may sound a lot like other instructional delivery models that
customize student learning such as individualization and differentiation (Zmuda et al., 2015).
Before looking more closely at the characteristics of personalized learning, it is important to
clarify where personalization falls in relation to individualization and differentiation. Demski
(2012) explains:
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)
While individualization and differentiation are teacher-centered approaches where the teacher
provides support to students individually, in small groups, or as a whole class, personalized
learning is a student-centered approach that allows students to drive their own learning (Bray &
McClaskey, 2017).
Individualization. Individualization is “deciding what children know and need to know,
and then modifying instruction for those who struggle” (Landrum & McDuffie, 2010, p. 14). It
allows teachers to match instruction to the individually identified needs of students, whether
through one-on-one, small group, or whole-class instruction (Kauffman, Mock, Tankersley, &
Landrum, 2008; Landrum & McDuffie, 2010). Hallahan, Kauffman, and Pullen (2009) describe
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individualized instruction as that in which “the child’s characteristics, rather than prescribed
academic content, provide the basis for teaching techniques” (p. 25). The teacher uses what he or
she knows about a student to drive instruction through teacher-created lesson plans and tasks,
while allowing individual students to control the pace of their own learning, including when they
demonstrate mastery (Zmuda et al., 2015). Mialaret explains, individualization allows “everyone
to follow his own path with his personal speed; those who go faster will have to perform
complementary activities, too: more difficult exercises, additional reading opportunities,
eventually help offered to the mates in difficulty” (as cited in Caprioara & Frunza, 2013, p.
2064). Therefore, while the teacher controls the content, the student sets the pace. Through
individualization, it is the teacher who customizes instruction based on student need, the teacher
who identifies specific objectives for each student, the teacher who selects technology and other
resources to support each student, and the teacher who uses data and assessments to measure
student progress in order to determine next steps (Bray & McClaskey, 2017). A classroom
example might be the teacher assigning an online independent study using Khan Academy to a
student who is ready for a challenge, while assigning another student an intervention program
such as Reading Plus in order to fill a learning gap (Zmuda et al., 2015). While individualization
can be boiled down to first, knowing what students know and need to know, and then second,
modifying instruction for those who do not get it, these two components can be seen as vital
building blocks of differentiation (Landrum & McDuffie, 2010).
Differentiation. Differentiation adds to individualization by providing more specific
guidance for teachers who work in heterogeneous classrooms (Landrum & McDuffie, 2010).
Tomlinson (2000) defines differentiation as “the efforts of teachers to respond to variance among
learners in the classroom” (p. 2). Using differentiation, the teacher adjusts instruction to the
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learning needs of students, identifies learning objectives, and uses data and assessments to
modify instruction, often providing support to students in small groups (Bray & McClaskey,
2017).
Teachers can differentiate in at least four different ways: content, process, products,
and/or learning environment (Tomlinson, 2000). When differentiating content, a teacher may use
reading materials at different levels of readability, provide students with books on tape, present
ideas both auditorily and visually, or meet with a small group to either reteach or extend the
students’ knowledge and skills (Tomlinson, 2000). When differentiating process, a teacher might
use tiered activities where students all work toward the same learning goals but proceed with
varied levels of support, develop personal task lists for students, offer manipulatives for students
who would benefit from them, or vary the time allotted to particular tasks for particular students
(Tomlinson, 2000). When differentiating products, a teacher might allow students to demonstrate
their learning in different ways or allow students to work in small groups or independently on
particular products (Tomlinson, 2000). Finally, when differentiating the learning environment,
the teacher may make sure different spaces in the classroom satisfy different learners’ noise level
needs (from quiet to commotion), may provide materials that reflect the plethora of cultures
students bring to the classroom, or may allow students to move around the room as needed
(Tomlinson, 2000). Again, teachers engage in individualization when they identify what students
know and need to know, and then modify instruction for those who need additional scaffolding.
It is differentiation that explains four specific ways to do that: through content, process, product,
and/or learning environment.
When students in a school do not have access to differentiated instruction, the school
does not meet the needs of all learners and therefore puts different students at an unfair
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disadvantage. Perrenoud explains, “Differentiated pedagogy legitimates the collective character
of the school,” allowing students to avoid a “‘standard’ treatment” (as cited in Caprioara &
Frunza, 2013, p. 2064). In fact, without differentiation, Minder believes a school may “specialize
undemocratically, involving students’ social segregation” and creating an “elitist and selective”
environment (as cited in Caprioara & Frunza, 2013, p. 2064). In order to avoid such unjust
classroom practice, then, differentiation guides teachers to modify instruction as needed, through
content, process, product, and/or learning environment.
Personalization. With personalization, it is the student who connects learning to their
own interests, passions, talents, and aspirations, the student who actively pursues authentic
problems that inspire inquiry, analysis, and production of a final product, the student who
identifies individual learning goals with guidance from the teacher, and the student who
demonstrates mastery of content using competency-based progressions (Bray & McClaskey,
2017; Zmuda et al., 2015). Examples of what personalized learning might look like include the
student curating texts, experiences, and other resources to inform their work, the student
navigating through learning experiences at their own pace to demonstrate competencies in their
own way, and the student leading both teachers and parents through conferences to evaluate their
performance and determine their next steps (Zmuda et al., 2015). Personalized learning is
explained in much greater detail in the following pages.
While individualization, differentiation, and personalization all connect to the idea of
customization of learning, it is through personalization that student voice is the driving force
(Bray & McClaskey, 2017). As Dewey (1938) explains, “Plato once defined a slave as the person
who executes the purposes of another” (p.67). Dewey (1938) goes on to make a vital point:
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There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder
than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation
of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process. (p. 67)
In other words, while differentiation and individualization are still tools a teacher has in his or
her toolkit to support student needs via their zones of proximal development, it is personalization
that changes the dynamic between teacher and student (Patrick et al., 2013; Vygotsky, 1978). It
is through personalized learning that teachers systematically coach students to become self-
directed, lifelong learners capable of monitoring their own progress and reflecting on their own
learning pathways (Bray & McClaskey, 2013).
Characteristics of Personalized Learning
So how might teachers move toward implementing personalized learning in their
classrooms in order to shift the dynamic to more student-centered work? According to Miliband
(2006), there are five components of personalized learning. The first component is assessment
for learning, where teacher and student work together using both data and dialogue to identify
the student’s strengths, weaknesses, and learning needs (Miliband, 2006). The second component
is to develop the competence and confidence of each student by actively engaging students in
instructional strategies that stretch them appropriately and encourage them to take responsibility
over their own learning (Miliband, 2006). The third component is curriculum choice, giving each
student access to a breadth of study with personally relevant pathways through the system
(Miliband, 2006). The fourth component is a more “radical approach to school organization”
where the starting point for class placement is student progress and where intensive teaching
combines with flexible deployment of support staff (Miliband, 2006, p. 25). Finally, the fifth
component is education beyond the classroom, during which students use social and community
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connections to personalize their surroundings, creating their ideal environment for learning
(Miliband, 2006). It is through these components that personalized learning allows schools to
raise standards by tailoring education in a way that students can achieve the highest standards
possible, because as they learn, they are able to focus on their own aptitudes and interests
(Miliband, 2006).
While Miliband does not specifically mention the terms competency-based progressions,
customized pathways, or flexible learning environments in his five components of personalized
learning, each is hinted at in his component descriptors, and it is to these three terms that we now
turn. As more schools around the United States – and the world – begin to adopt a personalized
learning approach to instruction, the concepts of competency-based progressions, customized
pathways, and flexible learning environments can provide an entryway into this work
(Charleston County School District, 2016; The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014).
Competency-based progressions. In competency-based learning, students are not pitted
against one another or compared against an “average” (Rose, 2015). In fact, the notion of the
“average” student is irrelevant in a competency-based system (Rose, 2015). Instead,
competency-based progressions allow students to progress toward clearly defined goals at their
own pace, advancing as soon as they demonstrate mastery (Basham et al., 2016; Patrick et al.,
2013; The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014). These competency-based progressions
include specific, measurable, transferable learning objectives that empower students to identify
what they must know, be able to do, and understand in order to prove proficiency (Patrick et al.,
2013; Zmuda et al., 2015). Progressions are purposefully sequenced learning targets that build on
each other to satisfy the requirements of a standard, a unit, a course, or a school career
(Charleston County School District, 2016). Through competency-based progressions, learning
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becomes transparent because students “know what they have learned, what they are currently
learning, and what they will learn next” (Charleston County School District, 2016, p. 7). At the
same time, teachers can monitor student progress toward mastering each competency through
transparent and timely collection of formative assessment data that can guide instructional
decision-making (Basham et al., 2016).
Summative assessments are completed when students are ready and can produce
evidence to demonstrate their mastery of a competency (Charleston County School District,
2016). For each student, this demonstration of mastery may look different, as each student may
use their own combination of experiences, methods, and/or modalities to demonstrate mastery
(Basham et al., 2016; Patrick et al., 2013). If a student struggles to demonstrate mastery of a
particular competency, the teacher can provide the student with rapid interventions and supports
aimed at meeting the needs of that student in order to close any learning gaps (Patrick et al.,
2013). This way, assessments are both meaningful and positive throughout the learning process
(Bingham, 2015; Patrick et al., 2013). Ultimately, competency-based progressions help students
establish a purpose and relevance for their work, guiding them toward independent application of
their learning when they tackle new challenges both in and beyond the classroom (Zmuda et al.,
2015). It is the application and creation of knowledge that is most valued in a competency-based
system, along with the development of particular dispositions and skills (Patrick et al., 2013).
Identifying competencies. Many new and revised national standards are compatible with
personalized learning (Zmuda et al., 2015). In the United States, the accountability policies of the
past 20 years, including the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act enacted in 2002 and the Every
Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that replaced NCLB in 2015, require schools to use content
standards to organize learning (Halverson et al., 2015; U.S. Department of Education, 2017). In
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response to this call for accountability around content standards, forty-two states and the District
of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and
Mathematics (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State
School Officers, 2010). In addition, 18 states have adopted the Next Generation Science
Standards first published in 2013 (NGSS Lead States, 2013; Sawchuk, 2018). A number of states
and districts are also now using the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework, published
in 2013 by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), to serve as a guide to states in the
process of revising state social studies standards (NCSS, 2013). It is these nationally recognized
standards that may be woven through competency-based progressions, providing a consistent
level of rigor across grade levels and subject areas while simultaneously allowing students to
have more voice and choice in what, how, when, where, and with whom they will learn (Patrick
et al., 2013; Zmuda et al., 2015). Patrick et al. (2013) encourage educators to think of
internationally benchmarked standards, such as the Common Core State Standards, as the floor
of expectations for what a student must be able to know and do.
Skepticism around competency-based progressions. Miliband (2006) explains that
personalized learning is not about “abandonment of a national curriculum,” but a way “to raise
standards by focusing teaching and learning on the aptitudes and interests of pupils” (p. 24). Still,
there are those who question the feasibility of personalization in a system where schools and
teachers do not prescribe course content and pace, but governments do (Campbell et al., 2007).
In fact, Campbell and colleagues (2007) report that in the United Kingdom, the state prescribes
nearly 90 percent of the age-appropriate curriculum to students 14-years-old and under. In a
recent report published by the RAND Corporation and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation sharing promising evidence on personalized learning, 62 public charter and district
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schools pursuing a variety of personalized learning practices struggled to implement
competency-based progressions (Pane et al., 2015). Researchers found that students’ ability to
work toward mastery at their own pace was limited by a perceived need to focus on grade-level
content, and this pressure to focus on grade-level content was driven by external policy pressures
such as standardized testing (Pane et al., 2015). In fact, the report concluded that fewer schools
seemed to be implementing competency-based progressions than any other aspect of
personalized learning (Pane et al., 2015).
Customized pathways. Customized pathways are another key element in personalized
learning. While all students are held to high expectations through competency-based
progressions, each student follows their own customized pathway that is both responsive and
adaptive based on the student’s goals, motivations, and progress (The Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, 2014). Different tools at the disposal of both teachers and students eager to
customize learning pathways are learner profiles, timely feedback, blended learning, and project-
based learning.
Learner profiles. In order to make sure that each student has a customized pathway that
takes into account their strengths, needs, motivations, and goals, teacher and student might work
together to create a learner profile. A learner profile paints a portrait of each student, capturing
precise knowledge around each students’ individual skills, gaps, strengths, weaknesses, interests,
and aspirations (Patrick et al., 2013). The learner profile may include both achievement data,
such as formative and summative assessment results, projects, and standardized test scores, and
non-achievement data, such as student attitudes, behaviors, and motivations (Pane et al., 2015).
This learner profile can then be used to empower students to make choices about how to access
new information and instruction using a variety of resources and then expressing their
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understanding of that content in ways that make sense to them (Basham et al., 2016). Using
customized pathways, students are empowered to approach their work with clear intentions and
goals, able to verbalize exactly what it is they are working on and why (Basham et al., 2016). By
giving students voice and choice, teachers provide opportunities for students to build agency, an
essential ingredient for academic achievement and lifelong learning (Sturgis, 2015). Students are
no longer all forced lock-step down the same lecture-based learning pathway where their
motivation wanes and agency stagnates (Patrick et al., 2013).
Feedback. Part of nurturing student agency is providing timely feedback, because when
students must wait a week or more to receive feedback, they become dependent upon the teacher
for advancement, thereby decreasing their drive to learn and their sense of agency (Sturgis,
2015). Instead, day-to-day feedback and weekly checkpoints give students and teachers an
opportunity to discuss future learning pathways (Basham et al., 2016). Self-assessment and peer
assessment, requiring students to reflect metacognitively on their progress and the progress of
others, are also important tools to developing greater student agency (Sturgis, 2015). As Sturgis
(2015) explains, “It is unlikely that a classroom can become highly personalized if every student
has to turn to the teacher for every bit of instruction, support, and direction” (p. 28). Timely
feedback then can facilitate student and teacher efforts to customize learning pathways.
Blended learning. In order for students to be able to customize their learning pathways,
multiple paths through content must be available to each learner (Pane et al., 2015). One way to
accomplish this is through blended learning opportunities. Blended learning is an approach to
instruction for which at least part of the program is administered in a brick-and-mortar location,
and part of the program is completed online, where the student has greater control over pace,
path, place, and time (Christensen et al., 2013).
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There are a variety of ways blended learning might work. For example, it may take the
form of a flipped classroom where students work at home or at another off-site location to access
content and instruction online and then meet face-to-face with their teacher at school for guided
practice and/or project work (Christensen et al., 2013). Alternatively, blended learning might
take the form of an a la carte model of instruction where students continue to attend classes on
their school campus, but they also take one or more courses entirely online with an online
instructor (Christensen et al., 2013). Supporters of blended learning believe that this hybrid
approach to instruction can provide teachers and students with the tools to individualize learning
while simultaneously increasing student engagement and lowering costs (Yonezawa et al., 2012).
Student engagement would rise, for instance, if rather than reading an assigned textbook, a
student could download textual, video, and graphic information on a particular topic and design
their own textbook (Yonezawa et al., 2012).
Despite this and other convincing examples, however, research on the positive effects of
blended learning is inconclusive (Yonezawa et al., 2012). Some studies suggest that blended
approaches may result in greater academic gains for students than face-to-face instruction alone,
while other studies suggest no difference in the academic achievements of those engaged in
blended learning versus those who are not, while still other researchers warn that online learning
can be detrimental to some students, particularly those who are impoverished (Means, Toyama,
Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2010; Xu & Jaggars, 2011; Yonezawa et al., 2012). Yonezawa and
colleagues (2012) conclude that the newness of this body of research forces us into a “wait-and-
see” mode, particularly for those interested in how blended learning is implemented at the
secondary level as current research typically focuses on higher education (p. 20).
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Project-based learning. Another promising practice supportive of customized pathways
is project-based learning, an instructional approach that teaches students curricular concepts
through execution of a project (Bell, 2010). Project-based learning is an innovative practice that
requires students to solve real-world problems by designing their own inquiries, planning and
conducting research, collaborating with others, and presenting their findings to an authentic
audience (Bell, 2010). Pane and colleagues (2015) found that both administrators and teachers
across 62 schools identified project-based learning as one instructional approach that did
facilitate student choice based on a personalized path through course content (Pane et al., 2015).
When done effectively, project-based learning engages students in interdisciplinary projects that
span weeks or even a semester (Pane et al., 2015). While the project is grounded in standards,
students are able to choose the content and design of their deliverable (Pane et al., 2015). The
challenge with project-based learning is making sure students have the foundational knowledge
needed in order to succeed with a more independent project and filling those skills deficits as
needed (Pane et al., 2015). Still, project-based learning gives students an opportunity to learn
from the process, refining the skills they will need to become lifelong learners and productive
members of our global society (Bell, 2010).
The reality of customized pathways. In reality, there is a tension between interest-driven
and standards-driven learning (Halverson et al., 2015). Because schools are held accountable by
policy makers for the degree to which students master content standards, students typically don’t
have any say in what standards they must learn (Halverson et al., 2015). Teachers must then
create learning environments and practices that convince students learning the standards is in
their best interests (Halverson et al., 2015). In a middle school, students might have choice over
their daily activities of learning, deciding whether to work independently or in a small group,
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deciding what resources to use to master a standard, or deciding how they will sequence their
learning activities (Halverson et al., 2015). More freedom to choose might come with blended
learning, project-based learning, or even personalized inquiry projects that give students control
over a research topic, research methods, and a summative presentation (Halverson et al., 2015).
This literature review will dive more deeply into personalized inquiry under the inquiry-based
learning heading.
Customized pathways remain a work in progress in schools around the United States.
Pane et al. (2015) report that across 62 charter and district schools pursuing customized
pathways, the extent to which students were able to make choices about what, where, and when
they learned varied by course, teacher, and student maturity. Two-thirds to three-quarters of
students surveyed by Pane and colleagues (2015) reported that they chose what materials they
used or what topics they pursued only sometimes, rarely, or never. Still, personalized goals for
students were being implemented in half of schools surveyed, while two-thirds of schools
reported providing student data to students and discussing it with them (Pane et al., 2015). In
other words, teachers and students continue to explore how best to implement and manage
customized pathways and learner profiles that help give students choice and voice in their
learning.
Flexible learning environments. Dewey recognized the importance of flexible learning
environments in 1938, explaining:
A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general
principle of the shaping of actual experience by environing conditions, but that they also
recognize in the concrete what surroundings are conducive to having experiences that
lead to growth. Above all, they should know how to utilize the surroundings, physical
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and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building
up experiences that are worth while. (p. 40)
The environment, according to Dewey (1938), is “whatever conditions interact with personal
needs, desires, purposes, and capacities to create the experience which is had” (p. 44). More
recently, Pane et al. (2015) explain that a key element to personalized learning is the extent to
which the environment can adapt to meet student needs, whether through use of space, time, or
staffing (Pane et al., 2015).
Space. While in traditional schools, students typically move en masse, in a school
designed around personalization, students move independently through flexible learning
environments, selecting the space that best suits their current learning needs (Halverson et al.,
2015). In order to facilitate personalization, the physical setup of the learning space must be
dynamic with multiple learning zones that give students the power to decide where they want to
learn and with whom (Charleston County School District, 2016; Halverson et al., 2015). For
teachers, this may mean no longer occupying an assigned classroom, but instead sharing a
common space with other teachers and moving around that shared space for different purposes,
whether to teach a seminar with a small group or to work one-on-one with an individual student
(Halverson et al., 2015). Spaces are designed to support the needs of students and teachers
whether working independently, in teams, or in large groups (Basham et al., 2016).
In fact, well-designed flexible learning environments can be transformational for both
teachers and students (Basham et al., 2016). Spaces for personalized learning may also expand
beyond brick-and-mortar schools to include virtual spaces, such as those used in blended
learning environments, that allow students to learn anywhere and anytime (Charleston County
School District, 2016). Flexible learning environments may expand to the broader community as
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well, offering students access to real-world mentors, workplace internships, community-based
organizations, and even libraries, museums, and universities where students may further extend
their learning (Patrick et al., 2013; Yonezawa et al., 2012). Therefore, space can play an
important role in personalizing learning for each student.
Time. Time is another factor in a flexible learning environment. In a traditional time-
based system, students are sorted by age and schools are held accountable to ensure that each
student grows by one grade level over the course of a 180-day school year (Patrick et al., 2013).
The time-based system limits what is possible for each student as they work to fulfill their
potential (Patrick et al., 2013). When schedules can include a flexible mix of online and face-to-
face instruction, coupled with community and other opportunities, learning becomes accessible
at any time (Patrick et al., 2013). Students are no longer boxed into spending 80 minutes daily in
each of their classes, listening to a lecture or taking a test, but can use the time they have in
school more productively to work toward mastery of competencies following their own learning
pathways, taking the time they need to fully understand the material (Pane et al., 2015).
Therefore, using time more efficiently is another way to personalize learning for every student.
Staffing. Finally, staffing can be used more efficiently to meet student needs. Unlike
more traditional approaches to staffing where one teacher teaches the same group of 22 students
daily, the number of teachers and other staff members working to support student learning in a
flexible learning environment can fluctuate based on current learning needs (Pane et al., 2015).
Pane and colleagues (2015) report that across 62 schools, about one-fifth of teachers held
untraditional roles, such as job sharing, co-teaching, or coaching small groups of students under
the guidance of another teacher. Administrators report that non-credentialed instructional staff
also supported student learning by providing intervention and remediation or serving as tutors or
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instructional assistants (Pane et al., 2015). By using adults in the building and beyond to support
student learning through a variety of avenues, every student can receive individualized, intensive
attention as a way to personalize learning (Pane et al., 2015).
Additional Research Focused on Personalized Learning Needed
Penuel and Johnson (2016) state that much of the work that currently describes
personalized learning is “grey literature” produced by organizations such as the International
Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), EDUCAUSE, Marzano Research, and the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation (p. 6). Penuel and Johnson (2016) state:
These advocates of personalized learning often draw on research evidence to justify
adoption of particular strategies, such as engaging students in conversations about their
learning data and grading based on demonstration of student competency, but evidence of
efficacy related to the more ‘disruptive’ strategies that they are advocating is generally
lacking in the research literature. (p. 6)
While some believe that personalized learning has the potential to revolutionize education,
without a research-based understanding of what personalized learning is and how it operates, it
will be “haphazardly referenced, partially implemented, eventually demonized, and then viewed
as an unrealistic fad in education” (Basham et al., 2016, p. 127).
Some argue there is a need for both exploratory and descriptive research around
personalized learning, particularly in the K-12 context (Abbott et al., 2015; Basham et al., 2016).
McLoughlin and Lee (2010) worry that the process of personalization may put a large
pedagogical and procedural burden on students to make instructional decisions. It could also be
hypothesized that personalized learning environments require students to demonstrate a great
deal of self-regulation, and therefore, scaffolds and tools must be a part of the system to help
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students develop self-regulatory skills (Basham et al., 2016; Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2005; Dembo
& Eaton, 2000). Five areas needing additional research to advance personalized learning are (a)
how educators and researchers use data in personalized learning settings; (b) how technology is
used to support learners; (c) how best to provide professional development to teachers around
personalized learning; (d) how content and curriculum are developed in a personalized learning
environment; and (e) how to reflect on personalized learning outcomes beyond examining
standardized test results (Abbott et al., 2015; Basham et al., 2016).
Despite these concerns and calls for additional research, there are several promising
reports that have recently emerged that support the concept of personalized learning. While the
work of Pane et al. (2015) has been referenced throughout this literature review, it is worth
noting that their research looked at 11,000 low-income and minority students in personalized
learning environments and compared them to similar peers nationwide, finding positive effects
for both math and reading for the students in personalized learning environments. The students
immersed in personalized learning environments began below average on national assessments
and were scoring above average within three years (Pane et al., 2015). In a study of four high
schools implementing personalized learning and serving mostly low-income students of color,
the schools had higher graduation rates, greater gains on state achievement tests, higher
enrollment in college preparatory classes, and greater college persistence rates than students in
nearby traditional schools (Friedlaender, Burns, Lewis-Charp, Cook-Harvey, & Darling-
Hammond, 2014). Finally, in a study following 4,117 students across 15 schools that adopted
Teach to One: Math, a personalized learning approach to teaching math, students scored 47
percent higher than national norms by the second year of the approach (Ready, 2014). Results
such as these encourage those working to personalize learning for all students.
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Personalized Learning Summary
Personalized learning is a promising instructional practice that has emerged from a rich
historical context. Growing out of the work of Rousseau, Dewey, Parkhurst, Skinner, Sizer, and
Leadbeater, personalized learning is tailoring learning to each student’s interests, strengths, and
needs, enabling students to influence what, how, when, where, and with whom they learn.
Meanwhile, teachers provide support to each student to ensure student mastery of the highest
standards (Patrick et al., 2013). More student-centered than either individualization or
differentiation, personalization nurtures students to own their learning and to foster the skills of
lifelong learners. Competency-based progressions, customized pathways, and flexible learning
environments are three key components to bringing personalized learning to life (Pane et al.,
2015). While recent reports share promising findings regarding the effectiveness of personalized
learning, there remains a dearth of empirical research around personalized learning, particularly
at the K-12 level. Much work remains to be done to prove the effectiveness of personalized
learning.
Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning
One way to provide students an entrance into personalized learning is by allowing them
to engage in the act of inquiry. Aulls and Shore (2008) define inquiry as a rich and complex
process that serves as the “engine for independent, curiosity- and interest-driven, lifelong
learning” (p. viii). It is a process “that demands a very large succession of skills to proceed in
growth from asking and answering questions of daily life to problem solving, to doing projects
and investigations requiring substantial time commitments, to scholarly research in a specific
domain” (Aulls & Shore, 2008, p. vii). In fact, inquiry arises throughout our lives in different
forms for different purposes and can prove both invigorating and transformative, but it can also
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be heavily demanding (Aulls & Shore, 2008). Sustained inquiry demands intrinsic motivation,
high levels of self-regulation, positive self-efficacy, and perseverance (Aulls & Shore, 2008).
While these skills are not always teachable, it is possible for educators to help students become
more skilled inquirers (Aulls & Shore, 2008).
Benefits of Inquiry-Based Instruction
Inquiry-based instruction is an ambiguous, complex, challenging process based on the
principles of social constructivism and meant to engage learners inductively to build knowledge
through active investigation (Aulls & Shore, 2008; Jennings, 2010; Walker & Shore, 2015).
While in more traditional classrooms, the teacher presents information and expects students to
replicate what they have been taught, inquiry teachers guide students to investigate a problem,
challenge, or issue of interest to them, engage in research, construct and organize knowledge,
consider alternatives, analyze data, communicate findings, and reflect on their work (Buchanan,
Harlan, Bruce, & Edwards, 2016; Murdoch, 2015). Bok (2006) explains that while students in
more traditional classrooms are typically unable to recall most lecture content within fifteen
minutes following class, concepts and knowledge that students have acquired through inquiry
last longer. Other positive student outcomes such as improved academic achievement,
knowledge application, problem-solving, and attitudes toward learning have also been identified
in the context of inquiry-based learning (Saunders-Stewart, Gyles, & Shore, 2012). As several
researchers explain, students engaged in inquiry-based learning do not simply learn math,
reading, science, and social studies; they learn to work, think, and communicate like
mathematicians, readers, scientists, and social scientists (Jennings, 2010; Lazonder & Harmsen,
2016). In addition, by allowing students autonomy through their inquiry-based work, they
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develop not only knowledge and process skills, but also their own self-confidence (Buchanan et
al., 2016; Nunez & Leon, 2015).
Commonalities of Inquiry-Based Instruction across Disciplines
There has been much qualitative and quantitative research on specific approaches to
inquiry-based instruction, including “independent study, guided inquiry, project-based,
community of learners, shared learning, hands-on science, laboratory-based science, critical
citizenship, problem-solving, computer-based problem-solving, discovery learning [and]
discovery-based instruction” (Aulls & Shore, 2008, p. x). However, there are very few scholars
who have served as dominant spokespersons for inquiry-based learning and instruction because
researchers tend to focus on a particular discipline, subject, or level of schooling; therefore, one
researcher never addresses the broader picture of inquiry (Aulls & Shore, 2008). Still, there are
commonalities across disciplines when engaging in inquiry-based instruction.
Some of these commonalities include providing students with varied levels of teacher
guidance along the way, taking into account students’ prior knowledge, recognizing expectations
around standards, and considering the logistics of the inquiry. Lazonder and Harmsen (2016)
report that no matter the discipline, students engaged in inquiry-based learning benefit from
teacher guidance such as process constraints, status overviews, prompts, heuristics, scaffolds,
and explanations. Process constraints provide the least specific type of guidance and are provided
to learners already able to perform the basic inquiry process; for these students, the teacher does
not share overt directions, but instead may push students to complete the inquiry under more
demanding conditions (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). Status overviews offer slightly more
guidance, summarizing for learners what or how well they have performed, although it is up to
the learner to use that feedback to adapt their behavior (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). Prompts
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are more specific than status overviews because they are timed cues that tell a learner what to do
– although not how to do it – at appropriate times during the inquiry (Lazonder & Harmsen,
2016). Heuristics remind learners to perform a particular action and suggest possible ways to
perform that action; a full set of heuristics might be shared at the start of an inquiry in the form
of process guidelines, for example (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). Scaffolds provide even more
specific guidance, assisting learners in performing challenging activities by explaining what to
do and how to do it, basically taking over the most difficult parts of an activity; as the learner’s
skills increase, the scaffolds can be removed so that the learner can work more autonomously
(Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). The most specific type of guidance is explanation, intended for
learners who lack the basic ability to perform a particular skill required in an inquiry, and may
take the form of direct instruction (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). While the relative effectiveness
of different types of guidance within inquiry for different age groups has not been assessed, each
of these types of teacher guidance, from least to most specific, can be helpful to learners at
different times during the inquiry process (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016).
Of course, teacher guidance is not the only commonality across disciplines when teachers
engage learners in inquiry-based learning. A learner’s prior experience with either a specific
topic or the inquiry process itself matters, and when that learner’s prior knowledge is lacking,
more teacher guidance is required (Blanchard, Osborne, Wallwork, & Harris, 2013; Murdoch,
2015). Therefore, it is helpful to assess a learner’s prior knowledge leading into an inquiry
(Murdoch, 2015). Factoring in expectations around standards is also a consideration. In fact, as
rigorous standards have developed at the local, regional, national, and international levels,
inquiry has been woven into standards connected to language arts, mathematics, science, and
social studies (IRA, 2003; NCSS, 2013; NCTM, 2000; NGSS Lead States, 2013). These inquiry-
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based standards can provide teachers with greater confidence and a sense of consistency as they
bring together current learning theory and their students’ background knowledge, strengths, and
needs in order to guide learning (Jennings, 2010). Finally, logistics are important to consider
across disciplines when engaging in inquiry-based instruction, including the time allotted for the
inquiry, access to necessary resources, and the layout of the physical learning space (Blanchard
et al., 2013).
More Specific Approaches to Inquiry-Based Instruction
While the commonalities of inquiry-based instruction across disciplines are helpful to
understand, there are also a variety of approaches teachers may take to implement inquiry-based
learning, from more teacher-centric instructional approaches to more student-centered
instructional approaches. Lazonder and Harmsen (2016) point out that there appears to be no
consistent definition of what might be considered “guided,” “unguided,” or “minimally guided”
inquiry. In this study, the terms guided inquiry, shared inquiry, and personalized inquiry will
respresent a continuum of possible inquiry-based approaches to learning.
Guided inquiry. As students engage in inquiry, they learn not just content, but the
processes and procedures of a discipline (Jennings, 2010). When their prior knowledge
connected to the content, the process, or both, is lacking, teachers must serve as mentors,
providing consistent guidance in order for students to succeed (Blanchard et al., 2013; Jennings,
2010; MacKenzie, 2016; Murdoch, 2015). Callison (2015) describes guided inquiry as students
working in small groups on a topic for exploration common across the class, with each student
expected to handle the same amount of information, eventually making a presentation similar to
others and assessed using the same rubric. Kuhlthau (2010) concludes that guided inquiry “is
planned, targeted, supervised intervention throughout the inquiry process” (p. 20). At CIS,
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guided inquiry was recently defined as students following the lead of the teacher as the whole
class engages in an inquiry in unison (CIS website). As all students work to deepen their
understanding of a curricular focus using similar resources, the teacher’s aim is to help learners
strengthen their understanding of the various elements of inquiry, from developing an essential
question, to selecting strong resources, to conducting research, to communicating authentic
learning evidence (CIS website). Of the three inquiry-based instructional approaches shared here,
guided inquiry requires the most guidance from the teacher.
Shared inquiry. As a learner grows more knowledgable in a content area or in the
inquiry process, the level of teacher guidance he or she requires diminishes. Such diminishing
guidance may look like this: “The teacher further empowers student agency by providing a single
essential question for students to study, whilst the students select the resources they will use to
research their answers and choose how they will demonstrate understanding” (MacKenzie, 2016,
p. 30). While different researchers give this level of limited teacher guidance different labels,
such as modelled or guided inquiry, in the context of this study, this level of guidance will be
referred to as shared inquiry. At CIS, shared inquiry was recently defined as the teacher selecting
a curricular focus, while the students and teacher work together to develop questions, select
resources, investigate, and design the process, product, and/or solution (CIS website). In other
words, shared inquiry means the teacher and students work together to determine the course of
the inquiry.
Personalized inquiry. The highest level of independent investigation, often called free or
independent inquiry, gives students ownership over the inquiry process, from raising questions,
to accessing information, to conducting an investigation, to analyzing data, to presenting findings
(Callison, 2015; MacKenzie, 2016). Multiple researchers have found that students experience
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academic engagement when they have some choice, because when students can select work
relevant to them, they value the work more (Buchanan et al., 2016; Deci & Ryan, 2008; Guay,
Ratelle, & Chanal, 2008; Nunez & Leon, 2015). Personalized inquiry is one way teachers can
provide students access to choice. Murdoch (2015) defines personalized inquiry as arising from a
learner’s own interests or passions. As Murdoch (2015) explains, “The inquiry is personal when
the student identifies what they want or need to investigate and proceeds to plan (usually with
continued teacher guidance) a personal pathway for learning” (p. 112). At CIS, personalized
inquiry was recently defined as when a student develops agency to question, investigate, create,
and reflect based on their personal curiosities, interests, or passions, in order to demonstrate
proficiency in the Desired Student Learning Outcomes (DSLOs) (CIS website). The DSLOs
include character, collaboration, communication, content knowledge, creativity, critical thinking,
and cultural competence (CIS website). In the context of this study, the Genius Hour program
pilot falls under the personalized inquiry approach to inquiry-based instruction.
Empirical Research Findings around Inquiry-Based Learning
Dewey (1938) believed that teaching students to think was more important than teaching
them to memorize facts, and this shift in thinking about education might be considered the
beginning of inquiry-based learning (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). In the 1960s, researchers like
Piaget posited that self-guided learning approaches placed learners at the center of the learning
process, and as a result, inquiry-based learning gained greater popularity (Alfieri, Brooks,
Aldrich, & Tenenbaum, 2011). As inquiry-based learning has grown in popularity, researchers
have debated its merits. Lazonder (2014) explains that there are currently two major strands in
empirical research that examine inquiry-based learning. One strand focuses on investigating how
particular groups of learners engage in inquiry-based learning, determining what learners of a
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certain age can or cannot do on their own (Lazonder, 2014; Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). The
second strand focuses on figuring out the effects of different types of guidance on learners’
inquiry-based work (Lazonder, 2014; Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016).
Research investigating how learners engage in inquiry-based learning. While
inquiry-based instruction and learning have been around for decades, scholars have both
criticized and advocated for inquiry-based learning through the years. In one of the most recent
debates on the subject, Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) argued that inquiry-based
instruction is unlikely to be effective because it ignores the limits of working memory, the
cognitive structure responsible for conscious processing of information. They claimed that when
someone engages in the act of inquiry, the inquiry process itself is so demanding on novices
learning in structured domains that it requires most of a person’s working memory, leaving little
room for new information to be stored in long-term memory (Kirschner et al., 2006). Similarly,
Mayer (2004) concluded, “There is sufficient research evidence to make any reasonable person
skeptical about the benefits of discovery learning – practiced under the guise of cognitive
constructivism or social constructivism” (p. 14).
Various researchers have since responded, arguing that Kirschner et al. mistakenly
equated inquiry-based learning with unguided discovery learning (Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, &
Chinn, 2007; Saunders-Stewart, Gyles, Shore, & Bracewell, 2015; Schmidt, Loyens, van Gog, &
Paas, 2007). While unguided discovery learning may be more unstructured and exploratory,
taxing learners’ working memory, inquiry-based learning employs extensive teacher guidance,
reducing the cognitive load and allowing students to learn complex material (Hmelo-Silver et al.,
2007; Schmidt et al., 2007). In fact, based on a comprehensive review of relevant inquiry-based
research, Lazonder and Harmsen (2016) reported that from the age of five, children possess the
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ability to generate a hypothesis, design and conduct an experiment, and evaluate evidence,
suggesting they are able to engage in inquiry-based learning (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016).
Zimmerman (2007) echoed these findings, concluding, “Children are far more competent than
first suspected” (p. 213). The younger the learners, however, the more specific guidance must be
in order for their inquiry work to be successful (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). Therefore, the
research investigating how learners engage in inquiry-based learning is mixed, and additional
research is needed to determine how learners best engage in inquiry.
Research investigating the effects of guidance in inquiry-based learning. Alfieri et al.
(2011) found that across settings and domains, inquiry-based learning with minimal or no
guidance was less effective than direct instruction. However, when students received sufficient
guidance during inquiry work, they learned more than students taught the same content through
direct instruction (Alfieri et al., 2011). Carolan, Hutchins, Wickens, and Cummings (2014) also
found a small but significant benefit of more guided inquiry over less guided inquiry. In
synthesizing 72 empirical studies, Lazonder & Harmsen (2016) concluded that guidance is key to
successful inquiry-based learning, allowing learners to act more skillfully during the inquiry task,
more successfully obtain information for their investigation, and score higher on assessments
administered following the inquiry. Interestingly, while Lazonder and Harmsen (2016) identified
six different types of guidance in their meta-analysis, including process constraints, status
overviews, prompts, heuristics, scaffolds, and explanations, the type of guidance required for
learner success across studies did not matter, and the effectiveness of guidance applied equally to
students of all ages (Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016). Therefore, the research investigating the
effects of guidance in inquiry-based learning is encouraging and suggests learners benefit from a
variety of forms of guidance when engaged in inquiry.
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Providing Professional Development around Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning
In order to bring inquiry-based teaching and learning to life in a classroom, educators
require adequate professional development around inquiry (Jennings, 2010). Blanchard et al.
(2013) found that when teachers are provided professional development around inquiry-based
teaching and learning, they feel more comfortable moving toward inquiry-based instruction.
When inquiry is implemented as intended, teachers provide the necessary guidance, teaching
both content and process skills in concert with one another (Jennings, 2010).
Fullan (2011) suggests that when attempting to move an organization forward, research
and theory can only take you so far; eventually, you need to learn from your own experience.
While most change initiatives fail, change is possible if change leaders look inside themselves
and their practice, understand the realities others face, and foster collective capacity and identity
(Fullan, 2011). Duggan (2007) agrees, pointing out that you do not find the next creative idea
embedded in theory; instead, you develop it through reflective practice. He suggests
organizations in pursuit of change should examine their own practices and identify what might
be missing, study others who have been successful, try something in their context, and draw a
conclusion (Duggan, 2007). Pascale, Sternin, and Sternin (2010) explain, “It’s easier to act your
way into a new way of thinking, than to think your way into a new way of acting” (p. 38). In
other words, try it and let the experience help shape your thinking. Finally, Pink (2009) believes
that unless we have some autonomy in what we are doing, we don’t feel we have ownership, and
our motivation wanes. This applies not only to students, but to teachers as well. Therefore,
teachers and students must feel they have some autonomy over their work in order for intrinsic
motivation to kick in and for people to feel fully invested in the work. In order to bring inquiry-
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based teaching and learning effectively into the classroom then, professional development, along
with reflective practice, and a sense of ownership over the work may be required.
Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning Summary
Rooted in social constructivism, inquiry-based teaching and learning is associated with a
range of pedagogical approaches that center on learners making meaning and constructing
knowledge by engaging in active investigation (Jennings, 2010, p.2). The benefits for students
engaged in inquiry-based learning include greater recall of content, higher academic
achievement, greater knowledge application, better problem-solving, and increased self-
confidence. Commonalities of inquiry-based teaching across disciplines include providing
students with varied levels of teacher guidance along the way, taking into account students’ prior
knowledge, recognizing expectations around standards, and considering the logistics of the
inquiry. More specific approaches to inquiry include guided inquiry, shared inquiry, and
personalized inquiry. While different researchers call these approaches to inquiry by different
names, the point is that students require different levels of teacher support when embarking upon
inquiry-based learning depending on their prior knowledge around both content and process. The
empirical research findings around inquiry-based teaching and learning are mixed, with some
researchers who have found that inquiry-based learning does not work and others who have
found that it does. This research is primarily divided into two areas: research investigating how
learners engage in inquiry-based learning and research investigating the effects of guidance in
inquiry-based learning. Finally, in order to bring inquiry-based teaching and learning to life in a
classroom, teachers need professional development to implement it as intended.

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CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODS
The purpose of this study was to gather the perceptions of middle school teachers at
Causeway International School (CIS) charged with implementing the Genius Hour program
pilot, a personalized inquiry program aimed at allowing students to investigate topics that pique
their curiosity. Through this study, I examined teachers’ perceptions of both the strengths and
challenges associated with the Genius Hour program pilot, while also gathering data on teachers’
recommendations for future iterations of the program. When researchers conduct either basic or
applied research, they inquire into something “in a systematic manner” (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016, p. 3). The main purpose of basic research is to learn more about a phenomenon, while the
purpose of applied research is to improve the quality of a particular practice (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). This study falls under the umbrella of applied research. Again, the three research
questions that guided this study were as follows:
1. What are teachers’ perceptions of the successes of the Genius Hour program pilot in
the middle school at Causeway International School?
2. What are teachers’ perceptions of the challenges they faced connected to the Genius
Hour program pilot in the middle school at Causeway International School?
3. What recommendations might teachers have, if any, related to future iterations of
personalized inquiry in the middle school at Causeway International School?
The literature on both personalized learning and personalized inquiry is emerging.
Personalized learning is a promising instructional practice meant to enable students to influence
what, how, when, where, and with whom they learn based on their own interests, strengths, and
needs (Patrick et al., 2013). As students take ownership over their own learning, teachers provide
guidance to each individual to help students customize their learning pathways, master
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competency-based progressions, and utilize flexible learning spaces (Pane et al., 2015). While
some recent reports share findings that suggest personalized learning is effective, there remains a
dearth of empirical research around the topic, particularly at the K-12 level (Taylor, 2016). This
study may contribute to this body of literature by providing a glimpse into the workings of one
school working toward personalizing learning for every student.
One way to personalize learning for students is to personalize inquiry. Based in social
constructivism, inquiry-based teaching and learning is associated with an array of instructional
approaches that focus on students making meaning and constructing knowledge by engaging in
the act of investigation (Jennings, 2010). While there is a rich collection of research around
inquiry-based teaching and learning, some of it supportive of inquiry and some of it not, most of
that research is based in specific disciplines, most commonly science, social studies, and math
(Aulls & Shore, 2008). Across disciplines, commonalities in inquiry-based teaching and learning
include providing students with different levels of guidance, considering students’ prior
knowledge, enforcing expectations around standards, and taking into account the logistics of
inquiry (Blanchard, et al., 2013; Jennings, 2010; Lazonder & Harmsen, 2016; Murdoch, 2015).
The research around inquiry is divided into two main areas: research investigating how learners
engage in inquiry and research investigating the effects of guidance in inquiry-based instruction
(Lazonder, 2014). It is difficult to pinpoint empirical research that focuses specifically on
personalized inquiry, where teachers are charged with overseeing a number of students who have
been given the highest level of independence to pursue topics of their own interest across a
variety of disciplines. It is also difficult to find empirical research that explores how best to
prepare teachers to guide students through the personalized inquiry process. This study may
provide a window into such work.
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In order to frame the research findings that emerged from this study, Dewey’s (1916)
constructivist worldview provided a theoretical framework. Maxwell (2013) explains, “A useful
theory illuminates what you see” (p. 49). Constructivism assumes that there is no single reality,
but multiple interpretations of a single event (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Constructivists seek to
understand their experiences and their world, developing subjective meanings of both (Creswell,
2014). Because this study relies on 27 teachers who participated in the Genius Hour program
pilot, it makes sense to assume that those teachers who participated would seek their own
understanding of their experience.
This chapter includes a description of this study’s research design, including descriptions
of the participants involved, the instrument used, the data collection procedures followed, and the
data analysis applied. It also shares how credibility, trustworthiness, researcher bias, and ethics
were considered throughout the process.
Participants
In this study, convenience sampling was used. As Merriam and Tisdell (2016) explain,
convenience sampling is “based on time, money, location, availability of sites or respondents,
and so on” (p. 98). Patton (1990) warned, “Convenience sampling is neither purposeful nor
strategic” (p. 181, emphasis in original). However, Weiss (1994) took a different view,
explaining that there are situations where convenience sampling is the only way to proceed based
on factors such as time, location, and/or availability. The participants in this study were selected
from the population of 83 CIS middle school teachers who led students through the Genius Hour
program pilot in March and April 2017. Those teachers resigning from CIS in June 2017 were
not considered potential participants in the study, as they were no longer available when the
study was conducted. In addition, teachers new to CIS in August 2017 were not included in the
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study because they had not experienced the Genius Hour program pilot in March and April 2017.
See Table 1 for a summary of CIS middle school teachers who participated in the Genius Hour
program pilot.
Table 1
Summary of CIS Middle School Teachers Who Participated in the Genius Hour Program Pilot

Grade Level or Content Area
Teachers
Number of Teachers Who
Participated in Genius Hour
Program Pilot in Spring 2017
Number of Teachers Who
Participated in Genius Hour
Program Pilot and Returned
to Teach in Fall 2017
Sixth-Grade Core and Learning
Support Teachers

22

19
Seventh-Grade Core and
Learning Support Teachers

20

15
Eighth-Grade Core and
Learning Support Teachers

20

14
Electives Teachers 21 18

Total Number of Teachers 83 66

In September 2017, I contacted the 66 teachers who had participated in the Genius Hour
program pilot during the 2016-2017 school year and who also had returned to teach in the middle
school at CIS for the 2017-2018 school year with this message:
During October 2017, I would like to conduct a series of teacher focus groups meant to
evaluate last spring’s Genius Hour program pilot. Through these focus groups, teachers
will be asked to share their insights around the program's strengths and challenges.
Teachers will also have an opportunity to offer suggestions as we move forward with
Genius Hour during the 2017-2018 school year. The data gathered during each focus
group will provide data for my doctoral dissertation through the University of Southern
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California evaluating the Genius Hour program pilot. If you are willing to participate in
this study, please indicate so below by Friday, September 22. Participation is completely
voluntary. If you indicate your willingness to participate, I will reach out to you with
more information next week. If you are not interested in participating, you may delete
this email now without guilt. Each focus group will last between 60 and 80 minutes and
will take place during teachers' planning time. Appropriate food will be provided. Focus
group meeting dates have not yet been finalized.
Of the 66 teachers contacted, 32 responded favorably. Of those 32, 27 teachers actually went on
to participate in one of four focus groups. These teachers were spread across all nine core teams
in the middle school and represented varied content areas and grade levels. As a point of
clarification, at CIS, there are three teams of typically nine teachers at each grade level, and each
team of educators teaches 106 students. Teams are labeled A, B, and C. In other words, there are
three teams in sixth grade each made up of nine teachers and 106 students: 6A, 6B, and 6C.
As I built each focus group, I attempted to ensure that core and/or learning support
teachers from each team at a grade level were represented in each focus group, but based on
availability, that was not always possible. For example, while at least one core teacher from each
team did participate in the study, no learning support teacher for sixth grade was available to
contribute. For the elective focus group, I attempted to include representation from world
languages, performing arts, and technology, and that was accomplished. See Table 2 for a more
detailed look at the membership of each focus group.

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Table 2
Focus Group Membership
Sixth-Grade Core
Teacher Focus Group
Seventh-Grade Core
and Learning Support
Teacher Focus Group
Eighth-Grade Core
and Learning Support
Teacher Focus Group
Electives Teacher
Focus Group
• 6A RLA
teacher
• 6B math
teacher
• 6C math
teacher
• 6C RLA
teacher
• 6C science
teacher

• 7A RLA
teacher
• 7B PE teacher
• 7B RLA
teacher (x2)
• 7B social
studies teacher
• 7C math
teacher
• 7C RLA
teacher
• 7 strategic
learning
teacher
• 8A RLA
teacher (x2)
• 8A science
teacher
• 8B PE teacher
• 8B RLA
teacher
• 8C RLA
teacher
• 8 learning
support
teacher

• Digital media
teacher
• Drama teacher
• Music teacher
• Spanish
teacher (x2)
• Technology
teacher (x2)

While convenience sampling led to the makeup of the focus groups shared in Table 2, greater
reflection on why and how focus groups were used in this study can be found under procedures.
Instrument
The focus group moderator used a semi-structured interview protocol (see Appendix A)
to maintain consistency across focus groups while allowing for some conversational flexibility as
needed (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The protocol was structured to begin with an opening
question for all participants, meant to get everyone speaking early in the conversation, as the
longer it takes before a participant speaks, the less likely they are to contribute (Krueger &
Casey, 2009). A series of introductory questions followed, meant to introduce the topic and to
get participants to start making their own connections to the Genius Hour program pilot (Krueger
& Casey, 2009). These questions were also designed to give the researcher an idea early on in
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the interview how each participant perceived the Genius Hour program pilot (Krueger & Casey,
2009).
The next series of questions moved into the key questions of the study meant to dig more
deeply into each research question. Patton (1987) suggests that in one hour with a focus group of
eight people, it is not possible to ask more than ten key questions. In this study, participants were
asked seven key questions in order to share what they believed the purpose of the Genius Hour
program pilot was, whether it fulfilled its purpose, what teachers perceived the strengths and
challenges of the pilot were both in terms of the program’s rollout and implementation, and what
they would change in future iterations of the program. These questions were meant to reveal
participants’ opinions or what they really thought about the Genius Hour program pilot (Patton,
2002). Throughout all of these key questions, the moderator was able to pause and probe to seek
clarification or elaboration on different responses (Krueger & Casey, 2009). In addition,
participant responses to these key questions were the focus of later data analysis (Krueger &
Casey, 2009).
The focus group interview wrapped up with two final questions. One was an “all things
considered” question meant to determine the final Genius Hour program pilot position of
participants who may have shared inconsistent viewpoints during the course of the interview
(Krueger & Casey, 2009, p. 40). Finally, the last question served as insurance, asking
participants if there was anything the researcher had missed or anything the focus group should
have spoken about, but didn’t.
Procedures
In the context of this study, it was important to gather the perceptions of middle school
teachers regarding the strengths, challenges, and potential next steps for future iterations of the
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Genius Hour program pilot at CIS. One way to gather such data efficiently was to utilize focus
groups. In addition, I shared some documentary materials in this study’s findings in order to
provide greater context for readers on how the Genius Hour program pilot unfolded.
Focus Groups
What. A focus group is a type of interview in which a moderator leads a discussion with
a small group of participants to explore how the participants think and feel about a topic
(Johnson & Christensen, 2014). The moderator facilitates discussion through the use of open-
ended questions in order to gather qualitative data in the form of words shared by group
members (Johnson & Christensen, 2014). Inspired by the work of sociologist Robert K. Merton,
who worked with Marjorie Fiske and Patricia L. Kendall to publish The Focused Interviewer in
1956, market researchers began to use focus groups in the 1950s in order to better understand the
consumer decisions people make (Johnson & Christensen, 2014; Patton, 1987). What researchers
recognized was the role social context plays in consumer decision-making; in other words, when
consumers make decisions, their choices are often influenced by conversations they have had
with others (Patton, 1987). The goal of focus groups is simply to gather “high-quality data in a
social context where people can consider their own views in the context of the views of others”
(Patton, 1987, p. 135).
Why. In the context of this study, focus groups served as an efficient way to gather
multiple perspectives on the Genius Hour program pilot simultaneously, increasing the sample
size of the study significantly in comparison to conducting a series of individual interviews. In
addition, Johnson and Christensen (2014) explain that focus groups can serve a variety of
purposes, several of which are relevant to this study, including diagnosing potential problems
with new programs, generating participant impressions of programs, learning how participants
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talk about a phenomenon of interest, and stimulating new idea generation. Focus groups also
provide a built-in quality control in data collection because “participants tend to provide checks
and balances on each other which weed out false or extreme views” (Patton, 1987, p. 135).
Group dynamics also often help the participants stay focused on the most important issues, and
they make it easier to assess the extent to which there is a relatively consistent view of the
program across participants (Patton, 1987). Finally, one reason to conduct focus groups rather
than individual interviews is to avoid “key informant bias,” when a researcher relies too heavily
on a small subset of the population for a large amount of data as there is no guarantee that those
views are representative of the population as a whole (Maxwell, 2013, p. 99).
Who. For this study, members of the research team, including a moderator and a note-
taker, conducted four focus groups, one made up of sixth-grade teachers, one of seventh-grade
teachers, one of eighth-grade teachers, and one of electives teachers. See Table 2 to review focus
group membership. Depending on the expert cited, focus groups should be composed of six to
twelve people (Johnson & Christensen, 2014), five to eight people (Krueger & Casey, 2009), six
to eight people (Patton, 1987), or six to ten people (Patton, 2002). Therefore, the acceptable size
of a typical focus group ranges from five to twelve participants. In the context of this study, the
sixth-grade focus group was made up of five teachers, the seventh-grade focus group was made
up of eight teachers, the eighth-grade focus group was made up of seven teachers, and the
elective focus group was made up of seven teachers.
When determining the make-up of a focus group, homogeneous groups typically work
better than heterogeneous groups because homogeneous groups are less likely to form cliques
(Johnson & Christensen, 2014). Focus group participants are typically homogeneous with
enough variation to allow for contrasting viewpoints, although if viewpoints contrast too much,
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some participants may feel inhibited and may defer to those they feel are more knowledgeable
(Johnson & Christensen, 2014; Krueger & Casey, 2009; Patton, 1987). For this study,
homogeneity was addressed by organizing focus groups by either grade level or content area.
Core and learning support teachers, including those who teach mathematics, physical education,
Reading Language Arts (RLA), science, and social studies, were grouped by grade level because
they had experiences working with students of similar ages during the Genius Hour program
pilot. In other words, core and learning support teachers working with sixth graders may have
had significantly different experiences during the Genius Hour program pilot than those who
worked with eighth graders. In the case of electives teachers, including world language teachers,
performing arts teachers, and technology teachers, they were grouped together in focus groups
because of their unique knowledge and skill sets, access to facilities and materials, and
popularity with students across the middle school in search of mentorship or other guidance
during Genius Hour. These distinct groups of teachers had varied experiences during the Genius
Hour program pilot and therefore had viewpoints worth exploring.
Another consideration in creating focus groups was gender balance. For this study,
groups had a relatively even distribution of men and women. See Table 3 for a more detailed
look at the gender distribution of each focus group, including identifiers for each participant that
were later used to identify speakers in the findings section of this study. These identifiers
allowed me to identify speakers while simultaneously maintaining their anonymity as I shared
the study findings.

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Table 3
Gender Make-Up of Focus Groups
Focus Group Female Participants Male Participants
Sixth-Grade Teachers W1, W2, W3 M1, M2
Seventh-Grade Teachers W1, W2, W3 M1, M2, M3, M4, M5
Eighth-Grade Teachers W1, W2, W3 M1, M2, M3, M4
Electives Teachers W1, W2, W3, W4 M1, M2, M3
Total Participants by Gender 13 14

Overall, 13 women and 14 men participated across the four focus groups for this study.
How. Based on the challenges of carving out time from multiple teachers’ schedules to
conduct a series of focus group interviews, each focus group for this study was scheduled to last
approximately eighty minutes, the typical length of planning periods for teachers at CIS. Focus
group interviews typically last between one-half to two hours and may go as long as three hours
(Johnson & Christensen, 2014; Patton, 1987; Patton, 2002). Table 4 shares the length of each
focus group interview in minutes.
Table 4
Length of Each Focus Group Interview in Minutes

Focus Group Length of Focus Group Interview
in Minutes
Sixth-Grade Teachers 61
Seventh-Grade Teachers 70
Eighth-Grade Teachers 63
Electives Teachers 65
Total Number of Minutes of Focus Group Interviews 259

A total of 259 minutes, or three hours and 19 minutes, of data were collected for analysis.
The Institutional Review Board (IRB) required that each study participant receive an
information sheet including the purpose of the study, participant involvement details, a
confidentiality statement, investigator contact information, and IRB contact information prior to
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participating in a focus group. Rubin and Rubin (2012) explain that it is important participants
“understand the nature of the research, are aware of risks it poses, and are not forced either
covertly or overtly to participate” (p. 91). Each participant received this information sheet prior
to the start of the focus group. In addition, focus group moderators read an introductory
statement at the start of each focus group, reminding participants of the focus group’s purpose
and of their rights as participants. See Appendix A for the complete Focus Group Interview
Protocol.
Each focus group was conducted in a quiet conference room in the CIS middle school
counseling office where up to 12 people could sit comfortably facing one another. Because I was
the individual charged with overseeing the implementation of the Genius Hour program pilot, I
did not conduct the focus groups myself so as to avoid contaminating the feedback provided by
teachers. Instead, one middle school social studies teacher and one additional faculty member in
charge of professional development school-wide at CIS served as moderator and note-taker. Both
were EdD candidates in the USC program at the time of the focus groups and were IRB
approved. Prior to the first focus group, I briefed the moderator and note-taker on both the
interview protocol and the procedures required. During each focus group, while the moderator
followed the focus group interview protocol, the note-taker oversaw the actual recording of the
focus group interview and took hand-written notes, documenting key phrases and lists of major
points for later use (Patton, 1987).
In addition, I used a videographer to record each focus group and upload each video file
to Dropbox. As each file was shared in Dropbox, an outside transcriber accessed the file and
transcribed the content. Prior to sharing the transcriptions with me, the transcriber removed
identifying information such as names from each transcript in order to protect the identity of
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each participant. Instead, the transcriber identified each participant with a designation such as
M1 or W2, meaning “Man 1” or “Woman 2,” designations also shared in Table 2. Due to a lag in
time between focus groups and completed transcriptions, I was unable to review the transcripts
until all four focus groups had been completed. As a result, no significant changes were made to
the interview instrument over the course of data collection.
Documentary Materials
In addition to data gathered through focus group interviews, additional information was
gathered via available documentary materials. Glaser and Strauss (1967) share why documentary
materials can be valuable to researchers:
When someone stands in the library stacks, he is, metaphorically, surrounded by voices
begging to be heard. Every book, every magazine article, represents at least one person
who is equivalent to the anthropologist’s informant or the sociologist’s interviewee. In
those publications, people converse, announce positions, argue with a range of eloquence,
and describe events or scenes in ways entirely comparable to what is seen and heard
during fieldwork. (p. 163)
The documentary materials shared in the findings section of this study served not as data to be
analyzed, but simply as resources meant to shed additional light on how some aspects of the
Genius Hour program pilot unfolded. In other words, if an educator were interested in
duplicating elements of the Genius Hour program pilot at their own school, these documentary
materials might provide additional guidance not found in other parts of this study. Documentary
materials shared included information found on Google slide decks, Google documents, and
Google forms.

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Analysis
Maxwell (2013) describes qualitative research design as a “do-it-yourself” process that
involves “‘tacking’ back and forth between the different components of the design, assessing
their implications for one another” (p. 3). In conducting this study, I was able to minimally ‘tack
back and forth’ between the goal – to examine the Genius Hour program pilot by gathering
middle school teachers’ perceptions of the pilot – and different aspects of the design, from the
research questions to the focus group interview protocol to coding and sorting data as the study
unfolded. While I had intended to capture my current thinking between focus groups through
writing memos to myself about what I was learning and subsequently adjusting the focus group
interview protocol based on the quality and saturation level of responses emerging, in reality, this
was not possible given the constraints of the data flow (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The focus
groups were scheduled to take place between October 2 and October 27, 2017. This time frame
was crucial to this study as a second iteration of Genius Hour began in the CIS middle school on
November 13, 2017, and all focus groups needed to be completed before that date to avoid
confusion. Because I was also the instructional coach charged with developing the Genius Hour
program pilot and the following iterations of the program, I was not allowed to either participate
in the focus groups or listen to or view audio or visual recordings of the focus groups in order to
protect the identity of each participant. Instead, my research team provided the video and audio
files of each focus group to an outside transcriber through Dropbox, and that transcriber provided
typed transcripts of each focus group to me only after all focus groups were completed. This
timing was outside of my control as a researcher. As a result, the focus group interview protocol
remained the same across all four focus groups, and I was unable to reflect on the data as it rolled
in.
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Focus group interview analysis. Data analysis is the process of “systematically
searching and arranging the interview transcripts, fieldnotes, and other materials that you
accumulate to enable you to come up with findings” (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007, p. 159). In the
case of this study, I identified a priori codes drawn from Clark and Estes’ (2008) three critical
factors that must be in place in order for an organization to successfully reach its goals:
knowledge (K), motivation (M), and organizational barriers (OB). While this study was not a gap
analysis, early on in the research process, I was drawn to this framework and thought it might
help me sort my findings. These were the only a priori codes I identified. If I were to start over, I
would have selected a priori codes such as successes (SUC), challenges (CHA), and next steps
(NS), as they would have proven more helpful later on when it was time to analyze my data.
The act of analysis involves “working with the data, organizing them, breaking them into
manageable units, coding them, synthesizing them, and searching for patterns” (Bogdan &
Biklen, 2007, p. 159). Once all focus groups were completed and I was provided with transcripts
of each, I read each transcript carefully, engaging with each line, underlining key phrases, and
assigning codes to phrases that connected to broad subject areas under which the data might be
categorized (Harding, 2013). Merriam and Tisdell (2016) define coding as “nothing more than
assigning some sort of shorthand designation to various aspects of your data so that you can
easily retrieve specific pieces of data” (p. 199). While I began with three a priori codes in mind,
68 other open codes emerged empirically and were added to a code book developed as the
analysis unfolded (Harding, 2013). The open codes involved some interpretation based on the
context of what was said and reflected the most likely meaning of the speaker. Codes often serve
to reduce or summarize portions of the transcript while retaining the key ideas shared (Harding,
2013).
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Following the initial open coding of each transcript and the completion of the initial code
book, I reviewed the list of codes and thought through how they might be categorized. By sorting
the codes into categories through an axial coding process, sub-categories emerged that
contributed to the identification of themes (Harding, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). For
example the following codes ended up nested under the broader umbrella of successes (SUC):
professional development (PD), purpose (PU), relationships (REL), resources (RES), and
website (WEB). From there, a series of themes related to these successes emerged.
Once themes began to emerge related to professional development (PD), and I began to
develop those themes more fully through writing and analysis, it became evident that readers
would benefit from a clearer explanation of how the professional development discussed in the
focus groups unfolded in real time. As a result, I accessed documentary materials from different
professional development sessions, including Google slide decks, Google documents, and
Google forms to share with readers a glimpse into those professional development experiences
beyond the descriptions provided in the focus group transcripts. Again, these documentary
materials were included in this study’s findings in order to provide greater clarity for readers.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Qualitative research investigates “people’s constructions of reality—how they understand
the world” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 243). Wolcott (2005) points out that research is more
credible when there is a “correspondence between research and the real world” (p. 160). Intense,
long-term research, rich data that has reached saturation, respondent validation, searching for
negative cases, numbers, and triangulation are all ways to give a qualitative study credibility and
trustworthiness (Maxwell, 2013). In the case of this research study, data saturation, respondent
validation, and numbers were used to offer this work credibility and trustworthiness. Themes
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reported on in the findings section of this study were connected to topics that arose in all four
focus groups, thus suggesting those themes had reached a point of data saturation across focus
groups. While I needed to protect the anonymity of each focus group participant and could not
return to individual participants to seek respondent validation, I did share the emerging themes
with the entire middle school faculty during a March 2018 faculty meeting in order to provide an
opportunity for respondent validation where any faculty member could challenge the findings,
either during or after the faculty meeting. No teacher did so. Finally, for each theme that
emerged from focus group data, I identified the number of teachers out of the 27 focus group
participants who commented on the theme, along with the number of comments made related to
that theme in order to highlight the richness of the evidence. These methods led to internal
generalization, the generalizability of the conclusion within the setting (Maxwell, 2013).
Researcher bias. Researcher bias is another consideration when contemplating the
trustworthiness of a study. Maxwell (2013) describes researcher bias as “what you bring to the
research from your own background and identity” (p. 44). It is an influence that should be
eliminated from the design of a study (Maxwell, 2013). As the educator in charge of overseeing
the implementation of personalized inquiry in the middle school, I had a bias in favor of
personalized learning and the Genius Hour program pilot. As stated previously, in order to
manage this bias, I did not personally lead focus group discussions, nor was I present during
focus group interviews. Instead, I involved a research team with whom I could review my
findings. In addition, I did not listen to or view recordings of the focus groups. Instead, I relied
solely on the typed transcriptions of each focus group where the transcriber had redacted
identifying characteristics of each participant, identifying them only as Woman One (W1) or
Man Two (M2), for example. This was meant not only to protect the identify of participants, but
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to help me avoid bias I might have felt toward different participants based on preconceived
notions I may have had regarding particular participants. I also attempted to look for alternative
explanations to my favorite assertions.
Ethics. The respondents involved in this research pilot were all adults. In order to
conduct this research ethically, my research team shared a research information sheet with each
participant, including information on the purpose of the study, participant involvement details, a
confidentiality statement, investigator contact information, and IRB contact information. In
addition, at the start of each focus group, each respondent was reminded that their participation
in this study was voluntary and that they were free to opt out of answering any or all of the
questions asked without fear of reprisal. While informed consent does not guarantee the research
is ethical, it does give respondents a sense of empowerment (Glesne, 2011). Finally, because I
conducted this study in my place of work, I have had to be careful when disseminating my
findings in order to continuously maintain the anonymity of each focus group participant and to
remain neutral when reporting the findings, whether I personally agree with the themes that
emerged or not.
Research Methods Summary
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of middle school teachers at
CIS charged with implementing the Genius Hour program pilot in order to identify the program
pilot’s perceived successes, challenges, and next steps. A qualitative research approach was
appropriate as qualitative research allows a researcher to investigate how people understand the
world around them (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This work aligned with a constructivist
theoretical framework, as the intent of the study was to examine the complexity of views about
the Genius Hour program pilot as shared by 27 participants who each brought their own
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perspective to the table. Data was gathered through four homogeneous focus groups – sixth-
grade teachers, seventh-grade teachers, eighth-grade teachers, and electives teachers – made up
of five to eight teachers each and following a semi-structured interview protocol. Data analysis
took place following data collection. Each focus group interview was transcribed and then coded
using both a priori and open coding methods, and finally, codes were categorized in order to
identify emerging themes. Credibility and trustworthiness were addressed through data
saturation, respondent validation, and numbers. Researcher bias was addressed through
involvement of a research team that protected the identities of focus group participants and by
searching for alternative explanations to my favorite assertions. The research team addressed
ethics by sharing with each participant a research information sheet and reminding participants
of their rights orally prior to the first question being asked during each focus group. I was also
careful to protect participant identities and to remain neutral when disseminating my findings
within my workplace. Through this study, I hoped to learn more about how best to prepare and
support teachers expected to engage students in the personalized inquiry process.

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CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS
The primary purpose of this study was to gather teacher perception data around both the
successes and challenges connected to the implementation of the Genius Hour program pilot – a
program meant to allow students to engage in personalized learning through the lens of
personalized inquiry – in the middle school at Causeway International School (CIS). This study
was also designed to gather teacher suggestions for future iterations of the CIS middle school
Genius Hour program. This chapter reiterates each research question and shares the results for
each based on themes that emerged across all four teacher focus groups – one of sixth-grade
teachers, one of seventh-grade teachers, one of eighth-grade teachers, and one of electives
teachers, all 27 of whom led students through the Genius Hour program pilot. Findings are
organized into perceived successes, perceived challenges, and suggestions for future iterations of
the Genius Hour program. Additional information gleaned from internal CIS documentation
about Genius Hour has also been included where appropriate in order for readers to better
understand the details of the program.
Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
Research question 1 was as follows:
1. What are teachers’ perceptions of the successes of the Genius Hour program pilot in
the middle school at Causeway International School?
The purpose of this research question was to determine what CIS middle school teachers’
perceptions were regarding the successes of the Genius Hour program pilot, from program
rollout to implementation. Genius Hour program pilot successes discussed across all four teacher
focus groups included themes around professional development and resources, relationships, and
purpose. In order for readers to better understand what the professional development and
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resources looked like leading up to the launch of the pilot, I have also included some
documentary materials to provide greater context for the data shared later in the chapter.
Documentary Material Related to Genius Hour Professional Development and Resources
In preparation for the Genius Hour program pilot, teachers were presented with a menu of
professional development options meant to provide them with sufficient knowledge and
experience to later lead students through their own personalized inquiries. Dewey (1916)
explains, “In real knowledge, there is a particularizing and a generalizing function working
together. So far as a situation is confused, it has to be cleared up; it has to be resolved into
details, as sharply defined as possible” (p. 343). The professional development provided to
teachers aimed to sharply define the details teachers would need to successfully implement the
Genius Hour program pilot. According to CIS internal documentation, including Google slide
decks and other Genius Hour-related documents, between September 2016 and the launch of the
Genius Hour program pilot in March and April 2017, all middle school teachers had access to
professional development connected to Genius Hour through both faculty meetings and
additional optional professional development release days. As the launch approached, teachers
also gained access to a newly created CIS Genius Hour website. The two CIS middle school
instructional coaches led the full faculty meeting professional development together, while I led
the optional release days on my own with input from the other instructional coach. Each of these
opportunities for knowledge construction around Genius Hour is shared in more detail below.
Faculty meetings reached all teachers. All middle school teachers received some
professional development related to Genius Hour through faculty meetings in September,
November, and January of the 2016-2017 school year. At each of these faculty meetings, the two
middle school instructional coaches, including myself, led the professional development work
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while sharing a Google slide deck with teachers. It is from those slide decks that the following
descriptions of each faculty meeting were crafted.
September 2016 faculty meeting. During the September 2016 faculty meeting,
instructional coaches shared the following definition of Genius Hour with all faculty:
Genius Hour is dedicated time for middle school students to personalize their learning
and develop lifelong habits of inquiry by awakening and exploring their own curiosities –
and nurturing their own joy of learning. Similar to Google 20% Time, Genius Hour gives
students time in their busy schedules to imagine, investigate, and iterate as they pursue
topics of their own interest. Through this independent work, students hone their skills at
creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication while simultaneously
developing a growth mindset. They then share their final project reflections – including
both successes and failures – with an authentic audience. Throughout this work, teachers
serve as guides, leading students through the learning process.
Instructional coaches also used the September faculty meeting to provide teachers with both time
and idea-generating tools to imagine potential topics for their own Genius Hour investigations.
Idea-generating tools included a “Wonder Wander,” “The Bracket Challenge,” “Top Ten Lists,”
“Stop and Jot,” “T-Charts,” and “Hexagonal Thinking.” From this collection of idea-generating
tools, teachers were able to select the tool(s) that worked best for them as they brainstormed
potential topics for their own Genius Hour investigations.
November 2016 faculty meeting. During a November 2016 faculty meeting, instructional
coaches explained the “Why” for Genius Hour, sharing the following table from John Couch
(2016), the vice president of education from Apple, as part of the justification for implementing a
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program like Genius Hour. Table 5 shares Couch’s comparisons between education and learning,
with the learning column representing Couch’s ideal.
Table 5
John Couch’s Education Versus Learning Comparison
Point of Comparison Education Learning
Overall paradigm Delivery Discovery
Social structure Hierarchy Community
Context Classroom World
Environment Simulated Real
Content Fixed Open
Assignments Recipes Frameworks
Activities Consumption and repetition Construction and creation
Infrastructure Administrative focus Empowerment focus
Assessment Teacher-driven Community-driven
Process Standardized Personalized
Motivation Extrinsic Intrinsic
Expectation Grades and certification Skills and experience

During the November faculty meeting, instructional coaches also introduced school-wide
language around inquiry and walked teachers through the basic Genius Hour process. Table 6
shares the Genius Hour workflow, including both the school-wide inquiry language and the
Genius Hour process.
Table 6
Genius Hour Workflow
School-wide Inquiry
Language
Genius Hour Process
Question Brainstorm interests, passions, and wonderings.
Generate a driving question.
Develop and deliver a pitch.
Investigate Plan your steps, timeline, and resource needs.
Research!
Create Do something with your research.
Prepare to share your learning.
Present your learning to an authentic audience.
Reflect Reflect on your work throughout the process.

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Instructional coaches also used the November faculty meeting to propose several Genius
Hour schedules for teachers to vote on, to discuss potential fears teachers may have felt leading
up to Genius Hour implementation, and to guide teachers through the development of a driving
question for their own Genius Hour investigations.
January 2017 faculty meeting. During a January 2017 faculty meeting, instructional
coaches reminded faculty that teachers would spend each Genius Hour working closely with the
11 to 13 students in their own advisories. This was meant to keep the number of students each
teacher was responsible for at a manageable level. The instructional coaches also shared the
official Genius Hour pilot program calendar so that teachers could begin to visualize the nuts and
bolts of when Genius Hour would unfold. The details of this program pilot calendar are shared in
Table 7.

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Table 7
Genius Hour Program Pilot Calendar
Day Time Dedicated to Genius Hour
Friday, March 17 18-minute Genius Hour launch through advisory
Monday-Friday, March 20-24 No school – Spring Break
Monday, March 27 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Tuesday, March 28 30-minute advisory activity (no Genius Hour)
Wednesday, March 29 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Thursday, March 30 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Friday, March 31 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Monday, April 3 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Tuesday, April 4 30-minute advisory activity (no Genius Hour)
Wednesday, April 5 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Thursday, April 6 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Friday, April 7 30-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Monday, April 10 65-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Tuesday, April 11 30-minute advisory activity
35 minute Genius Hour through advisory
Wednesday, April 12 65-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Thursday, April 13 65-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Friday, April 14 No school – Good Friday
Monday, April 17 65-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Tuesday, April 18 30-minute advisory activity
35 minute Genius Hour through advisory
Wednesday, April 19 65-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Thursday, April 20 65-minute Genius Hour through advisory
Friday, April 21 65-minute Genius Hour through advisory

The calendar included a day to launch Genius Hour within advisory groups prior to
Spring Break. This was intended to give students time over Spring Break to contemplate
potential Genius Hour topics they may want to pursue. The calendar then included two weeks of
30-minute Genius Hour sessions intended to give students time to generate ideas, select a topic,
and pitch their ideas to their advisory group. The last two weeks of Genius Hour were then 65-
minute sessions, intended to give students time to research, create, iterate, and eventually share
their work with an authentic audience. On Tuesdays each week throughout the month of Genius
Hour, however, 30 minutes were devoted to students’ social-emotional wellbeing with teachers
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guiding their advisory students through lessons connected to their social-emotional learning.
These lessons were not necessarily connected to Genius Hour.
Along with the calendar, instructional coaches also shared Genius Hour daily schedules
during the January 2017 faculty meeting, including one set of schedules for 30-minute Genius
Hour days and another set of schedules for 65-minute Genius Hour days. Teachers were able to
provide feedback on these schedules at that time. Table 8 shares the timetables for 30-minute
Genius Hour days, with separate schedules provided at each grade level.
Table 8
30-Minute Genius Hour Program Pilot Schedules
Sixth Grade Seventh Grade Eighth Grade
Time Class Time Class Time Class
8:00-8:30 Genius Hour 8:00-8:30 Genius Hour 8:00-8:30 Genius Hour
8:35-9:55 Core 1 8:35-9:15 Elective 1 8:35-9:55 Core 1
9:55-10:15 Break 9:20-10:00 Elective 2 9:55-10:10 Break
10:15-11:35 Core 2 10:05-11:25 Core 1 10:10-11:30 Core 2
11:35-12:10 Lunch 11:25-11:45 Break 11:35-12:15 Elective 1
12:10-1:30 Core 3 11:45-1:05 Core 2 12:15-12:50 Lunch
1:35-2:15 Elective 1 1:05-1:40 Lunch 12:50-1:30 Elective 2
2:20-3:00 Elective 2 1:40-3:00 Core 3 1:35-3:00 Core 3
3:00 Dismissal 3:00 Dismissal 3:00 Dismissal

Table 9 shares the timetables for 65-minute Genius Hour days, with separate schedules
provided for each grade level once again.

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Table 9
65-Minute Genius Hour Program Pilot Schedules
Sixth Grade Seventh Grade Eighth Grade
Time Class Time Class Time Class
8:00-9:05 Genius Hour 8:00-9:05 Genius Hour 8:00-9:05 Genius Hour
9:10-10:20 Core 1 9:10-10:25 Elective 9:10-10:20 Core 1
10:20-10:40 Break 10:25-10:45 Break 10:20-10:40 Break
10:40-11:50 Core 2 10:45-11:55 Core 1 10:40-11:55 Elective
11:50-12:30 Lunch 12:00-1:10 Core 2 11:55-12:35 Lunch
12:30-1:40 Core 3 1:10-1:50 Lunch 12:35-1:45 Core 2
1:45-2:20 Elective 1 1:50-3:00 Core 3 1:50-3:00 Core 3
2:25-3:00 Elective 2 3:00 Dismissal 3:00 Dismissal
3:00 Dismissal

Note that during the 65-minute Genius Hour days, seventh- and eighth-grade electives classes
shift to 70-75 minute blocks where students see their electives teachers every other day.
Normally, those students see their electives teachers every day. This shift to a block is not
possible with the sixth-grade schedule due to the unique configuration of electives courses
offered in sixth-grade.
During the January faculty meeting, instructional coaches also asked teachers to organize
teaching partnerships within teams to be utilized during the Genius Hour program pilot in order
to provide support to those teachers who were feeling less secure in guiding students through
personalized inquiry. The middle school was already organized into nine teams of teachers, with
three teams at each grade level. Each team consisted of six core teachers (i.e., English (x2), math,
physical education, science, social studies) and three to four encore teachers (i.e., art, culinary
arts, digital media, drama, learning support, music, technology education, world languages), with
all core teachers on a team teaching the same group of 106 students. While these teams were a
standard organizational structure in the middle school all year long, during Genius Hour two to
three teachers on a team were asked to work closely together in partnership as the program pilot
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unfolded in order to provide support to one another related to Genius Hour lesson development
and delivery, student mentorship, and space management. Each teacher was responsible for
overseeing the work of the 11 to 13 students in their own advisory group, although through these
partnerships, they might also guide students in other advisory groups.
Finally, instructional coaches used time during the January faculty meeting to model
conferring one-on-one with students, because all teachers would be expected to confer with
individual students in their advisory groups during the Genius Hour program pilot.
Optional release days offered to all. In addition to the professional development
described above and shared during faculty meetings, teachers were also invited to participate in
optional Genius Hour professional development of one, two, or three days in length. At each of
these optional release days, in the role of middle school instructional coach, I led the professional
development work while sharing Google slide decks with teachers. It is from those slide decks
that the following descriptions of each optional release day were crafted.
Three-day training. The ten teachers who opted into three-day professional development
went first and could be considered the early adopters, already interested in inquiry and willing to
lead students – and teams – through the inquiry process. At least one teacher from each of the
nine teams in the middle school took part in the three-day training and later stepped into the role
of Genius Hour Team Lead, guiding their teammates through the program pilot. Their training
days took place over three Wednesdays in October and November 2016. I facilitated this
professional development with these early adopters to test-drive potential inquiry-based mini-
lessons teachers might later use with students once the Genius Hour program pilot was officially
underway. While I, the instructional coach, played the role of the teacher during these
professional development days, the teachers were able to experience Genius Hour from the
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perspective of students, working their way through the four stages of inquiry: question,
investigate, create, and reflect. Time was also built into each professional development day for
teachers to provide feedback regarding the mini-lessons and other resources shared. I then used
that feedback to continue fine-tuning mini-lessons, resources, and processes that would
eventually be shared with both teachers and students once the CIS Genius Hour website was
constructed. See Table 10 for a list of mini-lessons I led teachers through during each day of the
three-day Genius Hour professional development, along with the stage of inquiry each mini-
lesson was classified under.
Table 10
Three-Day Genius Hour Professional Development Mini-Lessons and Stages of Inquiry

Day Mini-Lesson Stage of Inquiry
One How might we begin?
How might we craft a driving question?
How and why might we deliver a pitch?
Question
Question
Question

Two How might we investigate?
How might we plan our investigation?
How might we find mentors?
How might we conduct better keyword searches?

Investigate
Investigate
Investigate
Investigate
Three How might we think outside the box?
How might we give our creativity a boost?
How might we think inside the box?
How might we provide meaningful feedback?
How might we be assessed?
How might we share our learning with an authentic
audience?
How might we hold one another accountable?
What might our next steps be?
Create
Create
Create
Reflect
Reflect

Reflect
Reflect
Reflect

As Genius Hour Team Leads, each of these teachers invested three days in developing
their own Genius Hour investigations while simultaneously test-driving each lesson presented.
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This was meant to give them the confidence to later lead their grade-level teams through the
launch of the Genius Hour program pilot school-wide.
Two-day training. Nine middle school teachers opted into two-day Genius Hour
professional development. These two back-to-back Wednesdays at the end of February and the
start of March 2017 were formatted similarly to the three-day training, allowing participants to
experience the inquiry cycle while developing their own Genius Hour investigations. Some of
the mini-lessons that were shared during the two-day training were refined versions of the mini-
lessons shared during the three-day training. Other mini-lessons shared were new mini-lessons
these teachers were the first to experience. I continued to seek feedback on each mini-lesson, and
further revisions were made based on that feedback. See Table 11 to review the mini-lessons and
stages of inquiry I led teachers through during the two-day training.
Table 11
Two-Day Genius Hour Professional Development Mini-Lessons and Stages of Inquiry

Day Mini-Lesson Stage of Inquiry
One How might we use the Genius Hour Toolkit?
How might we craft a driving question?
How might we use the five whys to extend our thinking?
Why and how might we deliver a pitch?
How might we plan our investigation?
How might we conduct better keyword searches?

Question
Question
Question
Question
Investigate
Investigate
Two How might we circle back in inquiry?
How might we think outside the box?
How might we think inside the box?
How might we give our creativity a boost?
How might we reflect on our growth?
What might our next steps be?
Investigate
Create
Create
Create
Reflect
Reflect

It is interesting to note that while 15 mini-lessons were shared across the three-day
training, 12 were shared across the two-day training. As I continued to refine the mini-lessons, I
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also tried to refine my delivery of them, able to get further faster as my confidence with the
resources grew.
One-day training. Forty-five teachers chose to participate in the one-day Genius Hour
professional development option. Because so many teachers stepped forward for one-day
training, I led three separate one-day sessions, one in February and two in March 2017. Of those
45 teachers, 13 made up the first one-day training, 18 made up the second, and 14 made up the
third. With the exception of the group of 18, the intention was to keep the training groups
approximately the size of an advisory group so that the teachers could observe how their
instructional coach managed 11 to 13 students simultaneously pursuing independent
investigations. See Table 12 to review the mini-lessons taught in each of these one-day
professional development opportunities.
Table 12
One-Day Genius Hour Professional Development Mini-Lessons and Stages of Inquiry

Mini-Lesson Stage of Inquiry
How might we use the Genius Hour Toolkit?
How might we craft a driving question?
How might we use the five whys to extend our thinking?
Why and how might we deliver a pitch?
How might we plan our investigation?
How might we think outside the box? (February training)
How might we think inside the box? (March trainings)
What might our next steps be?
Question
Question
Question
Question
Investigate
Create
Create
Reflect

By the time teachers experienced the one-day professional development, I had further
refined lessons and had honed in on the lessons most important to share with teachers in
preparation for the Genius Hour program pilot. This one-day training was intended to not only
give teachers an opportunity to develop their own Genius Hour investigations, but also gain
confidence in guiding students through the Genius Hour process.
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CIS Genius Hour website. In addition to the professional development opportunities
provided through both faculty meetings and optional release days, teachers were also given
access to a collection of Genius Hour materials through the CIS Genius Hour website. I
developed the CIS Genius Hour website in early 2017 and first introduced it to the faculty
members who participated in two-day training in February 2017. It was later shared with all
middle school faculty and students in preparation for the pilot program launch to serve as a
central spot where all Genius Hour resources were organized and accessible. The content of the
website consisted of all of the mini-lessons that had been vetted earlier during both faculty
meetings and optional professional development release days. With tabs organized by the stages
of inquiry – question, investigate, create, and reflect – the website also included a variety of
other resources, from new mini-lessons not yet vetted, to “shortcut” resources meant to help
students navigate the inquiry process without formal mini-lessons, to a collection of inspirational
videos, to a reading list focused on inquiry. The website also included a Home tab where the
what, why, and when of Genius Hour were explained. Also shared under the Home tab was a list
of Genius Hour Agreements generated by teachers during Genius Hour professional
development opportunities and meant to serve as guideposts for students throughout the program
pilot. The Genius Hour Agreements are shared in Table 13.

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Table 13
Genius Hour Agreements
Genius Hour Agreements
You have a voice. Use it.
You choose what you want to learn. Investigate it.
You share your idea with someone. Pitch it.
You develop a plan. Tweak it.
You provide your own materials. Find them.
You help each other. Collaborate.
You learn. Share it.
You reflect on your inquiry process. Think about it.
You may face failure. Move past it.
You may even grow as a human being. Embrace it!

The Genius Hour Agreements were meant to help both teachers and students hold one another
accountable during the program pilot.
In summary, according to CIS internal documentary materials, including slide decks used
during professional development sessions, documents created in support of Genius Hour, and
resources available on the CIS Genius Hour website, teachers in the middle school had multiple
opportunities to learn the basics of Genius Hour, access and use resources related to Genius
Hour, and experience Genius Hour themselves as students. With this background connected to
Genius Hour professional development opportunities in mind, the next section shares the focus
group findings related to Genius Hour professional development and resources.
Focus Group Findings Related to Genius Hour Professional Development and Resources
Dewey (1938) explains, “Every experience is a moving force. Its value can be judged
only on the ground of what it moves toward and into” (p. 38). As teachers moved toward the
Genius Hour program pilot, they experienced a variety of professional development
opportunities meant to prepare them for what they were ‘moving toward and into.’ Out of the 27
middle school teachers who participated in one of the four focus groups, 26 teachers commented
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a total of 89 times on the professional development and resources provided in preparation for the
Genius Hour program pilot. Three themes that emerged from the focus group transcripts
connected to the perceived successes of the professional development and resources provided
included the importance of providing professional development opportunities for teachers, the
importance of the manner in which professional development was delivered, and the importance
of providing manageable resources to teachers.
The importance of providing professional development opportunities. As stated
previously, between September 2016 and the launch of the Genius Hour program pilot in March
and April 2017, all CIS middle school teachers had access to professional development meant to
prepare them for the Genius Hour program pilot through both faculty meetings and optional
professional development release days. Across all four focus groups, 11 teachers commented a
total of 14 times specifically on the importance of the training opportunities provided. Seventh-
grade teacher W3 explained, “PD was given for teachers so they could get their head around it,
try it out.” Electives teacher M3 stated that he believed the training of teachers was the most
important aspect of the rollout leading up to the launch. Electives teacher W4 shared that every
teacher had the opportunity – whether they took that opportunity or not – to engage in the
professional development they needed to be ready to succeed with Genius Hour. Eighth-grade
teacher W1 stated that Genius Hour was “pretty intimidating,” and without dedicated time for
professional development, “I don’t know how I would have handled it.” Therefore, professional
development leading up to the Genius Hour program pilot was important to teachers.
Commenting on the availability of one-, two-, or three-day training, eighth-grade teacher
W3 who partook in the two-day training option said, “It was immensely helpful the training we
had.” She went on to explain, “I learned so much about [Genius Hour] in the training that I was
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like, right, I know what to do with the kids.” In other words, the training gave her the confidence
to facilitate Genius Hour with her students. Eighth-grade teacher W1 who attended two-day
training as well said, “I felt like I needed that. I needed that much time. I wondered about
teachers who felt like they didn’t have the time to do that and could only do the one-day training,
like, was that enough for them?” Eighth-grade teacher M2 responded with:
My understanding is that in many ways, those of us I think who had the three – you were
sort of guinea pigs. I think what [the instructional coach] felt was that she was then able
to fine-tune it. So in the end, she was pretty much getting through in one day, somewhat.
He went on to explain, “I don’t know if there is any different way to do it. I mean, you find
things out by doing them.” He wrapped up his thinking stating that moving forward, one-day
training would most likely be sufficient for new teachers because the training had now been
refined. Therefore, leading up to the launch of Genius Hour, different teachers engaged in
different amounts of professional development based on their self-perceived comfort levels, and
this helped ensure that all members of the faculty were prepared for the pilot with the resources
they needed. Moving forward, however, such a variety of options may no longer be needed,
particularly considering that the training and resources have now been refined and teachers
across the middle school have now experienced Genius Hour first hand.
The importance of the manner in which professional development was delivered.
Across all four focus groups, 15 teachers made 25 comments about the manner in which
instructional coaches delivered Genius Hour professional development. Sixth-grade teacher W2
explained, “We had very targeted experiences of our own in some of those staff meetings.”
Sixth-grade teacher W1 stated that through professional development opportunities, it “felt like
everything was really thought out and planned and just so well detailed.” Eighth-grade teacher
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M1 explained that both of the instructional coaches knew the faculty well and understood how to
deliver professional development “in fun sort[s] of bites that we could digest without
overwhelming us.” Electives teacher W2 commented that the professional development
instructional coaches presented at faculty meetings “was light-hearted and upbeat.” She also
stated, “If it had been clinical, it would have been terrible.” Instead, the training was done “in the
spirit of fun, which is hopefully what [Genius Hour] is.” Eighth-grade teacher M1 also
explained, “I think if someone from an outside group had come in to do what they did, it would
have been a disaster.” He concluded with, “You couldn’t hire somebody new to come in and do
what they did.” In other words, part of the reason the professional development was successful,
according to one teacher, was that it was developed and conducted in house. Therefore, the
teachers appreciated that the professional development was delivered in house in a targeted,
organized, engaging manner.
Teachers also felt the manner in which professional development was offered was
responsive to their needs. Eighth-grade teacher M3 explained that although Genius Hour was
presented as something all teachers and students would be expected to do, teachers were still able
to play a role in the development of the program through professional development opportunities
and through the responsiveness of the instructional coaches developing the program. He
concluded by saying, “With teacher buy-in, we felt like we had some say in some of the
tweakings and the workings. Because [the instructional coach] was so responsive to our input,
and that was important.” Eighth-grade teacher W1 said, “I think the training was phenomenal,
but even once we got into it, what I found was really helpful was that [the instructional coach]
was so receptive to feedback.” She went on to explain that the instructional coach would revise
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mini-lessons and adjust the website in response to teacher feedback. Thus, teachers appreciated
the responsive nature of the professional development delivered.
Finally, teachers appreciated the opportunity they were given during professional
development days to engage in their own Genius Hour investigations. By selecting a topic of
interest to them, spending some time digging into that topic, and considering where their inquiry
might take them given additional time, teachers gained the confidence they needed to later lead
students through a similar learning process once the pilot was underway. Sixth-grade teacher W3
explained, “We got to experience what the kids would be experiencing” through the professional
development opportunities provided, and this gave the teacher more confidence to roll out
Genius Hour herself. Seventh-grade teacher W2 stated similarly, “What I liked about the PD day
[was] putting myself in the students’ shoes and thinking about how I [could] better inquire and
think passionately about something.” Seventh-grade teacher M3 explained that experiencing
Genius Hour himself disrupted his thinking and changed his mindset, allowing him to see that
there are multiple approaches one might take when tackling a Genius Hour investigation. Eighth-
grade teacher W3 shared that she “learned so much” about Genius Hour through the training that
she knew what to do with kids when they struggled and could speak to students about their
investigations from her own experience. In other words, by experiencing Genius Hour
themselves, teachers felt better prepared to facilitate Genius Hour with students.
In summary, teachers reported that the professional development provided was successful
because it was delivered in house in a targeted, organized, engaging, responsive way. Teachers
also appreciated having an opportunity to engage in Genius Hour work as if they were students
themselves, as this gave them greater confidence when working with students during the
program pilot.
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The importance of providing manageable resources to teachers. Across all four focus
groups, 21 teachers made 36 comments related to the availability of resources throughout the
implementation and rollout of the Genius Hour program pilot. Thinking of resources as including
human capital, eighth-grade teacher M1 pointed out the importance of providing the bandwidth
within an organization to develop a new initiative. He explained that while stipends only go so
far, with the addition of a new faculty position meant to provide one person the time to build the
Genius Hour program, this was “the first time in a long time that I have seen a middle school
admin where they built a position and invested human capital and human resources to get ahead
of something.” Thus, with the human capital in place in the form of a new instructional coach
(this researcher), that coach could develop Genius Hour resources in support of teachers and
students as they launched the program pilot.
Teachers’ perceptions of the resources developed in support of the Genius Hour program
pilot were positive. Seventh-grade teacher W3 said of the instructional coach who led the
optional release days, “She tried to give us every possible scenario, every possible resource.” She
went on to say that she was not sure what else the instructional coach could have done to prepare
teachers, “unless the school had mandated that we try [Genius Hour] ourselves.” In other words,
the teacher felt that the only way the instructional coach could have done more to get resources
into the hands of teachers would have been to require all teachers to take part in the optional
release days. In reality, those professional development opportunities were not required.
Electives teacher W4 proclaimed, “Nobody could say that they didn’t have the resources they
need to roll this out.” Thus, teachers generally felt they had the resources they needed to launch
Genius Hour.
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CIS Genius Hour website. One of the resources I developed as the instructional coach
was the CIS Genius Hour website. Across all four focus groups, 14 teachers made 15 comments
related to the CIS Genius Hour website. Sixth-grade teacher W2 captured a common sentiment:
The instructional coach “gave us the website, which maybe some people thought was
overwhelming at first, but once you get in and realize you can pick and choose, everything you
need is right there.” She concluded with, “So that was really, really cool and appreciated by
anyone I spoke to.” Sixth-grade teacher M2 explained in relation to the website, “Whatever level
of detail I thought I needed, it was there so I could use it as generally or as specifically as I
wanted.” Electives teacher W1 was also appreciative of the website, although she felt like it was
challenging to find the time to wrap her head around the variety of resources available. She
admitted, however, “I don’t know that there is a solution to that. I just think that it is inevitable
that there is just going to be a little added anxiety of ‘oh, great, something else I need to be on
top of.’” Seventh-grade teacher M4 began his comment stating it wasn’t meant to be a criticism,
but “I do think there were maybe too many resources, which made it difficult” and that for some
people they were afraid and “didn’t know where to go to find what they needed.” Eighth-grade
teacher M1 stated, “There were lots and lots of tools, but I didn’t have the time or ability to show
the kids how to use all of them.” In discussing the website, resources, and training provided,
however, electives teacher W3 explained, “So having all those resources, all of that time, it was
just a gift. No one felt like they had to do anything. It was just like they were choosing to try
something.” Basically, providing manageable resources to teachers is important when
implementing a new program, although different teachers will interpret what is manageable
differently.
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In summary, focus group findings related to the perceived successes of Genius Hour
professional development and provided resources reveal that there are three emergent themes.
Teachers in the CIS middle school believed that it was important for the school to provide
professional development opportunities to teachers in preparation for the program pilot. They
also believed that the manner in which professional development was delivered mattered. In
addition, they believed teachers should be provided with manageable resources to more easily
facilitate their work with students and colleagues during Genius Hour. These findings align with
Jennings (2010) who explains that educators need adequate professional development in order to
bring inquiry to life for students. Blanchard et al. (2013) agree, sharing that when teachers are
provided with professional development around inquiry, they are more comfortable engaging in
inquiry work with students.
Focus Group Findings Related to Relationship Building through Genius Hour
In Experience and Education, Dewey (1938) explains, “All human experience is
ultimately social: that it involves contact and communication” (p. 38). Berger and Luckmann
(1966) echo Dewey, reminding readers that individuals “cannot exist in everyday life without
continually interacting and communicating with others” and that one’s “natural attitude to this
world corresponds to the natural attitude of others” (p. 23). In other words, humans are social
creatures, and relationships matter and can shape our attitude toward the world in which we live.
It was no surprise then that relationships between teachers and students mattered during the
Genius Hour program pilot. Out of the 27 middle school teachers who participated in one of the
four focus groups, 19 teachers commented a total of 22 times on the importance of relationship-
building through the Genius Hour program pilot. One theme emerged from these comments
around the value of teachers getting to know students better.
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The value of teachers getting to know students better. Across all four focus groups,
ten teachers made eleven comments connected to the value of teachers getting to know students
better through the Genius Hour program pilot. In other words, teachers placed value on
discovering students’ talents, skills, and interests outside of what they saw from students
traditionally in class. Seventh-grade teacher M5 explained, “I think sometimes you get stuck into
the lens through which you see your kids through your curriculum or through your context.” He
went on to explain that Genius Hour helped him reframe his perspective on the individuals in his
classroom. Seventh-grade teacher M3 said that he “learned about talents and skills and interests”
his students had. He ended with, “I had no idea.” Eighth-grade teacher W3 stated, “I got to know
[my students] even better through conversing with them about their projects and seeing what
their passions were.” Eighth-grade teacher M1 proclaimed, Genius Hour “really brought out
some of the students who are a little bit quieter.” He followed with, “I got to connect with them
for the first time in a long time.” Electives teacher W3 said, “I feel like I got to know [my
students] in that four week period better than I did all year.” Electives teacher W1 shared this
story:
I feel like it should be said that finding out that a kid knows everything there is to know
about an airplane, I didn’t know that. That is fascinating to me, and I have a lot more
connection with him now ‘cause I can say, ‘Oh, we just had a break. What did you fly
on?’ and his eyes light up.
In other words, this teacher learned about her student’s love for flying through his Genius Hour
work, and after the program pilot was over, the teacher felt she had a new way to connect to that
student, thus helping her develop a stronger relationship with him.
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In summary, focus group findings regarding relationship building through the Genius
Hour program pilot revealed that teachers recognized the value of getting to know their students’
talents, skills, and interests better through Genius Hour. This finding aligns with Pane et al.
(2015) who explain that by allowing adults to support student learning through a variety of
avenues, such as through programs like Genius Hour, students receive more individualized
attention, and thus, there is greater opportunity for student-teacher relationships to develop.
Focus Group Findings Related to Genius Hour Fulfilling Its Purpose
Dewey (1938) explains, “The formation of purposes is, then, a rather complex intellectual
operation” (pp. 68-69). In the world of education, Wagner and Dintersmith (2015) write that the
true purpose of education should be “to engage students with their passions and growing sense of
purpose, teach them critical skills needed for career and citizenship, and inspire them to do their
very best to make their world better” (p. 44). Nurturing the habits of lifelong learning may also
be seen as the main purpose of the Genius Hour program. An additional purpose of the pilot was
to encourage teachers to grow more confident in guiding students engaged in personalized
inquiry. On the subject of lifelong learning, Dewey (1938) points out:
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. If
impetus in this direction is weakened instead of being intensified, something much more
than mere lack of preparation takes place. The pupil is actually robbed of native
capacities which otherwise would enable him to cope with the circumstances that he
meets in the course of his life. (p. 48)
In other words, if Genius Hour did not fulfill its purpose, it could potentially rob students of the
ability to manage challenges in the future. Out of the 27 middle school teachers who participated
in one of the four focus groups, 25 teachers commented a total of 50 times on whether the
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Genius Hour program pilot fulfilled its purpose. Two themes emerged that might be considered
successes related to the purpose of Genius Hour. First, teachers were able to identify the purpose
of Genius Hour, and second, they were able to identify ways in which the Genius Hour program
pilot fulfilled its purpose.
Identifying the purpose of the Genius Hour program pilot. Across all four focus
groups, 14 teachers made 17 comments attempting to identify the purpose of the Genius Hour
program pilot. Some teachers chose to capture their thinking about the purpose of Genius Hour
succinctly, stating brief phrases like “creativity and passion,” “inquiry skills,” “building trust,”
and “finding something to be passionate about.” Others stretched their commentary further. For
example, sixth-grade teacher M1 explained, “I am thinking that the purpose is for children to
have authentic learning based on something they are interested in.” Sixth-grade teacher W1 built
on that purpose, adding that Genius Hour gave students a chance “to discover more about who
they are and what they like to do and what they can do, versus it being prescribed all the time.”
Adding to this purpose, this same teacher pointed out the importance of allowing students to
make mistakes along the way and to figure out their next steps, rather than an adult intervening
and directing their next steps for them. Electives teacher W4 described the purpose of Genius
Hour as “giving students the opportunity to follow a passion and explore inquiry through… a
structured process.” Electives teacher W1 explained, “I think that [Genius Hour] allows them to
take away the pressure and delve into something.” The important ideas that emerged around the
Genius Hour program pilot purpose, then, were that the program pilot was meant to give students
an opportunity to dig into their own interests or passions in an authentic, self-directed way,
allowing students to build inquiry skills through the process and learn from their mistakes. Thus,
teachers were successfully able to identify the purpose of the Genius Hour program pilot.
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Identifying ways in which the Genius Hour program pilot fulfilled its purpose.
Across all four focus groups, 11 teachers made 15 comments identifying ways in which the
Genius Hour program pilot fulfilled its purpose. Seventh-grade teacher W2 stated that she did
not believe the pilot hit the mark with most students finding a passion, but they did learn how to
inquire, so in that respect, the pilot was successful. Seventh-grade teacher M3 explained that the
pilot was a success because “we are opening the kids’ horizons as to new possibilities.” He went
on to say, “We have that balance between people getting there and maybe three or four people
not. But I think that is what we are trying to get at – that learning isn’t structured. That chaos is
part of the learning.” Therefore, some teachers felt the purpose of the pilot was fulfilled because
students gained confidence as inquirers, had an opportunity to explore new possibilities, and
gained greater understanding of what learning might look like.
While a number of teachers mentioned that not all students were successful with their
Genius Hour investigations, another purpose of the program pilot was to get teachers more
comfortable teaching personalized inquiry. Eighth-grade teacher M4 explained that “while not
every kid had like the will that we were hoping or maybe didn’t go through the processes with as
much motivation as we hoped for, I think one of the strengths is that – across the board – the
teachers were excited about it, prepared for it.” Sixth-grade teacher W1 felt the pilot was highly
successful because teachers walked through the personalized inquiry process. She explained that
many teachers were new to personalized inquiry, “So to get everybody on board and to really
kind of get them to feel successful or to feel comfortable with it, was a huge job.” Teachers then
shared a belief that one purpose of the program pilot was to get them more comfortable with
personalized inquiry, and teachers felt the program pilot was successful in this respect.
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Besides helping teachers and students get comfortable with personalized inquiry, the
Genius Hour program pilot also offered both teachers and students an opportunity to reflect on
their own work. Eighth-grade teacher M3 believed Genius Hour did fulfill its purpose, because
“not all my kids were engaged and not all my kids were successful, so it served the purpose of
being a learning experience for me about how to do [Genius Hour] better next time.” Eighth-
grade teacher M1 clarified “that student failure in terms of the project is not failure of [Genius
Hour].” He went on to state that if “we are able to harness and reflect and learn from the failure,
that is [Genius Hour] being successful.” While teachers sometimes feared that student failure
reflected poorly on them, this teacher explained the need to see it as an “opportunity to learn
through failing,” whether skill-based failure, motivational failure, or idea-generating failure.
Sixth-grade teacher M2 summed it up clearly, saying of the Genius Hour program pilot, “Once
you kind of have that baseline of a pilot, then actually conversations that we might be having
right now make it grow. So I guess for that reason, I would say that it was highly successful.”
Thus, teachers identified another purpose of Genius Hour, which was the opportunity to reflect
more deeply about teaching and learning, and they felt the program pilot allowed both teachers
and students to do just that.
In general, then, teachers felt that the Genius Hour program pilot fulfilled the purpose of
getting all students and teachers more comfortable engaging in personalized inquiry, and while
not all students were successful in their investigations, all had the opportunity to reflect on their
efforts and to learn from their mistakes, important skills for lifelong learners to adopt. These
findings resonate with Wagner and Dintersmith (2015) and their notion of the true purpose of
education. They also align with Fullan (2011) who suggests that understanding theory can only
take you so far. Eventually, you need to learn from your own experience. Both students and
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teachers were able to do just this, getting more comfortable with personalized inquiry through
the Genius Hour program pilot, thus fulfilling one of the pilot’s purposes. These findings also
connect to Sturgis (2015) who explains that requiring students to be metacognitive about their
work helps them develop greater student agency. The same might be implied for teachers. Thus,
the purpose of reflection identified by teachers also connects to the literature.
Summary of the Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
The perceived successes of the Genius Hour program pilot that emerged across all four
focus group conversations were related to professional development and resources, relationships,
and purpose. Regarding professional development and resources, teachers valued access to
professional development opportunities; delivery of professional development in house in a
targeted, organized, engaging, and responsive way; and access to manageable resources that
could more easily facilitate teachers’ work with students. Regarding relationships, teachers
valued getting to know their students’ talents, skills, and interests better through Genius Hour.
Regarding purpose, teachers were able to identify multiple purposes of the Genius Hour program
pilot and could identify multiple ways in which those purposes were fulfilled. With these
perceived successes in mind, the next section will shift readers’ attention to the challenges
teachers perceived connected to the Genius Hour program pilot.
Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
Research question 2 was as follows:
2. What are teachers’ perceptions of the challenges they faced connected to the Genius
Hour program pilot in the middle school at Causeway International School?
The purpose of this research question was to determine what CIS middle school teachers’
perceptions were regarding the challenges they faced connected to the Genius Hour program
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pilot, from program rollout to implementation. Genius Hour program pilot perceived challenges
discussed across all four teacher focus groups included themes around time, space, and student
motivation.
Focus Group Findings Related to the Use of Time during the Genius Hour Program Pilot
Berger and Luckmann (1966) explain that individuals “have only a certain amount of
time available for the realization of…projects,” and as a result, this temporal reality will impact a
person’s attitude toward said projects (p. 27). Not surprisingly, then, out of the 27 middle school
teachers who participated in one of the four focus groups, 25 teachers commented a total of 124
times on the use of time during the Genius Hour program pilot. Two themes emerged that might
be considered challenges related to the use of time during Genius Hour. First, teachers were
unsatisfied with the pacing of the Genius Hour program pilot. Second, teachers were concerned
about time lost in their regular classes during the program pilot.
The challenge of pacing Genius Hour effectively. Across all four focus groups, 12
teachers made 24 comments related to the perceived challenge of how best to pace Genius Hour.
While some teachers believed the time provided was insufficient, others felt the time devoted to
Genius Hour was too long.
Nine teachers believed that students did not have enough time to pursue their Genius
Hour work. For example, sixth-grade teacher W1 stated, “The constraint of time was difficult
because there were kids who didn’t finish. I think that was frustrating for them.” She went on to
say that it was “okay they didn’t – the expectation was that they didn’t – the expectation for us.
But for their own expectations, I think that was kind of disappointing.” Sixth-grade teacher W2
chimed in more specifically, explaining that providing students 30-minute sessions to develop
their questions during the first two weeks of the Genius Hour program pilot “wasn’t long
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enough. They are just starting to understand what they need to do for the questioning, and then
the time would be up.” Also in reference to the 30-minute sessions, electives teacher M1 worried
that as soon as students discovered something they were “super passionate about,” and they
would start to get into it, it was “pack up, time to go.” Elective teacher W3 thought that students
had “maybe like a solid 10 minutes of productivity when it was all said and done” in those 30-
minute sessions. Thus, the 30-minute Genius Hour sessions were viewed as insufficient.
While some teachers were concerned with the number of minutes devoted to each Genius
Hour session, others were concerned with the number of consecutive days devoted to the pilot.
Seven teachers felt the daily Genius Hour sessions over four weeks led students to feel a sense of
burnout. Sixth-grade teacher M1 would have preferred Genius Hour not take place every day, but
instead, take place once a week over a longer time span. In just four weeks, he stated, “That
ability to do those deeper projects was lost.” He also felt that the intensity of a daily Genius Hour
session led some students to feel “burnout by week three.” Sixth-grade teacher W1 compared
Genius Hour to doing a sport or activity after school. When students are engaged in these
activities once or twice a week for an hour at a time, “They look forward to that.” She wondered
if a similar format might work better for Genius Hour. Of the daily Genius Hour sessions, she
explained, “They weren’t always ready for it, or they just kind of needed a break.” Eighth-grade
teacher W1 described one of her challenges during Genius Hour this way: “I felt like we started
really strong, then at one point, we really started to lose momentum.” She felt the time devoted to
brainstorming, planning, and pitching ideas “got spread out too far.” In other words, the
consistent message around the time devoted to the Genius Hour program pilot was that the
pacing needed adjustment, not only in terms of number of minutes devoted on any given day, but
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the number of consecutive days devoted to the program, along with the time invested in each
stage of the inquiry process.
The challenge of losing time in regular classes during Genius Hour. Across all four
focus groups, nine teachers made 13 comments related to the perceived challenge that the Genius
Hour program pilot cut into their daily instructional time in their regular classes. Sixth-grade
teacher W2 spoke of the increased workload Genius Hour caused and the decreased time
available to do that work: “We have a little bit more to do and a little bit less time to do
everything.” Seventh-grade teacher W2 explained that Genius Hour “is taking time out of our
curriculum, and we haven’t yet cut anything really out of our curriculum.” Eighth-grade teacher
M3 shared his concern that the pilot cut into his science time, and if the Genius Hour program
expands in the future, it could take even more time from his delivery of the science curriculum.
He explained that any instructional time he loses “has an impact.” Electives teacher W4 stated
that whenever the school does Genius Hour, “we have to go back and look at cutting” parts of
the curriculum. As the school continued to forge a path toward more personalized learning,
including initiatives like Genius Hour, sixth-grade teacher W2 wanted the administration “to
keep in mind all the other things that we might be doing.” She wanted to make sure the school
“continue[s] to prioritize as we go.” Basically, as the school restructures how it uses time, with
the addition of initiatives like Genius Hour, it must help teachers prioritize curricular demands,
rather than simply expecting teachers to do it all.
In summary, the two themes that emerged around perceived challenges related to the use
of time during the Genius Hour program pilot were a concern with the pacing of the program
pilot and a concern about time lost from regular classes during the program pilot. The first
finding connects with Pane et al. (2015) who report that in a personalized learning environment,
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teachers and students must use time flexibly in order to meet student needs, suggesting that
during the pilot, time may not have been used flexibly enough. The second finding reflects the
thinking of Campbell et al. (2007) who worry about the feasibility of personalization in schools
where course content and pace are prescribed.
Focus Group Findings Related to the Use of Spaces during Genius Hour
Dewey (1938) explains that teachers “should know how to utilize the surroundings,
physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to
building up experiences that are worthwhile” (p.40). In other words, in education, learning
spaces matter. Out of the 27 middle school teachers who participated in one of the four focus
groups, 23 teachers commented 74 times on the perceived challenges related to spaces during the
Genius Hour program pilot. Two themes that emerged were a concern over student access to
different spaces on campus and a concern over proper supervision in each of those spaces.
The concern over student access to spaces during Genius Hour. Across all four focus
groups, 12 teachers made 18 comments about student access to different spaces during the
Genius Hour program pilot. Sixth-grade teacher W2 wanted to make sure it was clear what
spaces were available to students and when students were free to go to those spaces. Similarly,
electives teacher W4 stated, “People weren’t really aware of where they could go and how that
fit into choosing projects.” In other words, if students and teachers had clearer information about
what spaces were available from the very beginning of the Genius Hour pilot, that information
could have potentially influenced the choices students made about their independent
investigations. As electives teacher W4 explained, “If I know I have to do something in my
[advisory classroom] for an hour a day, and that is my only choice, that is going to influence how
I choose it.” So, knowing that you will be trapped in one classroom, rather than have access to
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spaces such as the gym, the art room, or the maker space, would limit the choices you might
make as you select a focus for your Genius Hour investigation.
Seventh-grade teacher W3 was concerned that some spaces that should have been
available to students were actually off limits during the program pilot. She shared, “It was really
frustrating for a lot of my kids to not be able to use the art room, the kitchen. There were so
many things we have at this school, but we weren’t allowed to use.” Seventh-grade teacher W2
agreed, sharing that the artistic students in her advisory group hit a roadblock, as “There wasn’t
space for them.” Because certain specialized spaces such as the art room and the culinary arts
room were not officially open to students during the Genius Hour program pilot, both students
and teachers were frustrated.
Another frustration related to spaces was student access to teachers who might be experts
in different topics. Because teachers were expected to remain in their own spaces working with
their own advisory students during the Genius Hour program pilot, they were unable to move
about or assist students from across the middle school with similar interests. Eighth-grade
teacher W1 found it challenging to accept that she was “not the expert on whatever” students
were doing, but there were “a couple of cases where I thought it is too bad they are not paired
with a teacher who does have more expertise in this.” Some teachers shared their frustration in
not being able to pair students with an appropriate teacher-mentor. On a related note, some
teachers were frustrated they were not working in spaces with kids who were pursuing topics
they could more confidently mentor. Electives teacher W2 explained, “I would feel more
successful as a guide and a mentor if I were somewhere where I at least have an interest in that
discipline a little.” Thus, student access – or lack thereof – to appropriate mentors in appropriate
spaces mattered to teachers.
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Therefore, concerns around access to spaces during the Genius Hour program pilot
included concern over lack of information regarding which spaces were available, lack of access
to some specialized spaces, and lack of access to appropriate mentors in designated spaces.
The concern over supervision of students in spaces during Genius Hour. Across all
four focus groups, 10 teachers made 15 comments regarding the supervision provided during the
Genius Hour program pilot. One supervision concern was that some spaces were overcrowded
and under-supervised. Sixth-grade teacher M1 wanted to make sure that the “very specific,
nuanced learning spaces” have “enough support to handle the kids who are all deciding they
want to do this. Because sometimes there were more bodies than there was space.” Seventh-
grade teacher W1 pointed out that during the Genius Hour program pilot, “bookings went up
112%” in the library, home of the middle school maker space, but with the “machinery and the
sewing machines, you can’t have really big groups of kids.” In other words, there were not
enough adults in the library to supervise the high number of students working in the space, and
this became a safety concern particularly in the library’s maker space. Eighth-grade teacher W3
also wondered who was supervising each space, stating if students “were out there on the soccer
pitch, I don’t know who was out there watching them.” Eighth-grade teacher W1 built on that
thinking, wondering if those who were supervising were simply supervising or interacting with
students and asking them questions about their work. So overcrowding of spaces coupled with
insufficient supervision in those spaces concerned teachers.
Another concern connected to space supervision related to teachers with their own
advisory groups who also managed specialized spaces. For example, seventh-grade teacher M5
worried that teachers who supervised “the cooking and the art and the gym spaces, for example,”
would not be able to guide their advisory students while simultaneously guiding the students
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from other advisory groups who were interested in using the specialized space. Electives teacher
M2 explained, “I had about 15 kids in my lab, and I had about five or six of my own [advisory]
kids that were just in there sort of fluffing around.” With this many students to supervise alone in
a specialized space, he concluded, “I didn’t feel like I could meet their needs.” Therefore, some
specialized spaces that were open to students pulled advisors away from their advisees, meaning
that some students were under-supervised.
Thus, the chief perceived challenges that arose during the Genius Hour program pilot
concerning spaces were a lack of awareness regarding which spaces were available and who was
supervising those spaces, a lack of access to some specialized spaces, a lack of access to
potential mentors, and overcrowding and inadequate supervision in spaces popular with students.
These findings relate to the work of Halverson et al. (2015) who explain that in order to facilitate
personalization, the physical setup of the learning environment must suit students’ learning needs
and that students should have the power to decide where they want to learn. In order to make that
happen, according to Pane and colleagues (2015), staffing must be used more efficiently with
teachers and other staff members stepping out of their traditional roles in support of student
learning.
Focus Group Findings Related to Genius Hour Student Motivation
Dewey (1938) states, “Growth depends upon the presence of difficulty to be overcome by
the exercise of intelligence” (p. 79). In order for students to experience that growth, teachers
must first recognize the capacity of their students and then arouse “in the learner an active quest
for information and for production of new ideas” (Dewey, 1938, p. 79). Thus, if students are to
grow, they must first be motivated to learn. Out of the 27 middle school teachers who
participated in one of the four focus groups, 21 teachers commented a total of 70 times on
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student motivation in relation to the Genius Hour program pilot. Two themes that emerged from
the focus group transcripts connected to motivation included the question of what to do with
students who lack motivation and the question of how best to assess student progress.
The question of what to do with students who lack motivation. Across all four focus
groups, 12 teachers made 15 comments related to managing students who lacked motivation
during the Genius Hour program pilot. Some teachers felt underprepared and under-resourced in
order to motivate the unmotivated. Seventh-grade teacher W2 stated, “Motivation is something
that we really need to work on” so that students don’t think Genius Hour is “just free time.”
Sixth-grade teacher W2 stated, “I felt it challenging when you have students who are struggling
and having trouble finding something to do.” Eighth-grade teacher M3 explained, “I disliked the
feeling of helplessness that I had with those kids who didn’t seem motivated, hadn’t bought into
[Genius Hour]. I felt like I didn’t have a toolkit that was sufficient to try to motivate them.”
Electives teacher W2 wondered what to do when she knew her students were not pursuing
projects they were passionate about. She had three students do sleep studies, tracking how many
hours they slept and how they felt the next day, while using their time in class to watch YouTube
videos about the importance of sleep. Her reaction to their investigations was, “I’m like, yeah,
okay. You are passionate about sleep. So I don’t really believe you, but what can I say? I’m not
supposed to be like, ‘You can’t do that.’” She felt these investigations were not successful. In
other words, teachers were sometimes at a loss as to how to motivate their advisory students
during Genius Hour.
Teachers also felt a sense of responsibility when their students lacked motivation.
Eighth-grade teacher M2 explained, “We want them to feel like it is not another teacher thing
with a bunch of hoops to jump through.” Electives teacher W3 shared, “We are also very
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conditioned as teachers. You want to show a product.” She explained that for some teachers, ego
gets in the way. When a student does nothing, “You feel like people are going to perceive you
are doing nothing. And it is the culture, right?” Thus, when students were not motivated to
engage fully during their Genius Hour investigations, some teachers felt helpless, resourceless,
and like the students’ failure was somehow their own failure as well.
The question of how best to assess student progress. According to CIS internal
documentation, students’ Genius Hour work was not graded. Instead, teachers and students were
provided with a “Personalized Inquiry Learning Ladder Draft” to guide discussions around
student growth in the areas of questioning, investigating, creating, and reflecting. This
assessment tool, shown in Table 14, was adapted from EdLeader21 rubrics, NGSS, and the C3
Framework.
Table 14
Personalized Inquiry Learning Ladder Draft
Question Investigate Create Reflect
Asks compelling and
supporting questions
that are refined,
prioritized, and
precisely phrased in
an effort to deepen
and spark quality
research connected to
problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Solicits input from a
mentor while using
advanced search
techniques to identify,
gather, and extract
appropriate
information from
varied, credible
sources, identifies
limitations of
research, and solves a
problem, answers an
investigation, or
overcomes a
challenge

Solicits input from a
mentor to create
unique, ethical
product or
performance that
weaves in research
findings and explains
how product or
performance solves
problems, answers
investigation, or
overcomes challenge
Reflects regularly and
deeply, demonstrating
a strong capacity for
self-critique,
identifying
deficiencies in
knowledge,
motivation, or other
factors while taking
action to correct
errors throughout
inquiry process and
communicates work
engagingly to an
authentic audience
Asks compelling and
supporting questions
connected to the
Uses advanced search
techniques to identify,
gather, and extract
Creates a unique,
ethical product or
performance that
Reflects regularly and
deeply, demonstrating
a strong capacity for
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problem,
investigation, or
challenge that require
relevant research to
answer, and refines
those questions with
follow-up questions

appropriate
information from
varied, credible
sources and moves
toward solving a
problem, answering
an investigation, or
overcoming a
challenge

weaves in research
findings and explains
how product or
performance
addresses problem,
investigation, or
challenge
self-critique,
identifying errors and
making revisions
throughout inquiry
process and
communicates work
effectively to an
authentic audience
Asks compelling and
supporting questions
connected to the
problem,
investigation, or
challenge that require
relevant research to
answer

Identifies, gathers,
and extracts
information from
varied sources
connected to problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Creates somewhat
unique product or
performance that
weaves in research
findings and addresses
problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Reflects deeply on
quality of work,
identifying errors and
making revisions
throughout inquiry
process and
communicates work
to an authentic
audience

Asks supporting
questions connected
to problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Identifies, gathers
varied sources
connected to problem,
investigation, or
challenge

Creates a product or
performance that
addresses problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Reflects periodically
on quality of work,
identifies errors
throughout inquiry
process and
communicates work
to teacher

Asks underdeveloped
questions that are
easily answered
connected to problem,
investigation, or
challenge

Identifies, gathers
basic sources
connected to problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Creates basic product
or performance that
vaguely addresses
problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Reflects minimally on
quality of work
throughout inquiry
process and
communicates work
to teacher
Asks unclear
questions connected
to the problem,
investigation, or
challenge

Identifies, gathers
sources not connected
to problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Creates a product or
performance that does
not address problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Reflects minimally on
quality of work at end
of inquiry process
Asks no questions
connected to problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Identifies, gathers no
sources connected to
problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Creates nothing
connected to problem,
investigation, or
challenge
Reflects on no part of
the inquiry process
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Notice that each row of the Personalized Inquiry Learning Ladder Draft represents a rung on a
ladder. Therefore, the bottom of the table represents the first rungs or the earliest stages of
questioning, investigating, creating, and reflecting, while the top row represents what highly
skilled inquirers might do when questioning, investigating, creating, and reflecting. Also, as a
draft assessment tool, teachers and students recognized that this tool was a work in progress and
would most likely be modified in future iterations of Genius Hour.
Across all four focus groups, 13 teachers made 21 comments related to how best to assess
student progress during Genius Hour. There were mixed perceptions about the Genius Hour “no
grade” policy, with some teachers embracing the policy, while others felt that without grades,
students lacked motivation to do their best work during Genius Hour. Speaking positively about
the “no grade” policy, sixth-grade teacher W2 explained, “I liked that it wasn’t graded and the
freedom that gave the kids.” She went on to explain how the “no grade” policy gave students the
freedom to make mistakes and try new things without fear. Seventh-grade teacher M5 believed
the Personalized Inquiry Learning Ladder Draft gave “instant credibility for the whole process.”
Eighth-grade teacher W3 appreciated that Genius Hour was “not high stakes,” giving students
the “freedom to fail.” Electives teacher W1 called Genius Hour a “no-pressure zone” in an
environment where there is almost always an expectation for students to develop a product to be
graded. She explained, “I think that [Genius Hour] allows them to take away the pressure and
delve into something.” She felt it was valuable for students to be allowed to tackle projects they
might not finish by the final day for someone else to judge.
Not everyone agreed with the “no grade” policy, however. For example, eighth-grade
teacher M1 described the attitudes of two students in his advisory as simply going through the
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motions: “I’m just going to do enough to fill my slides, to do my piece, to check the box.”
Because this work was not graded, the teacher believed the students were “just going to cruise.”
Similarly, seventh-grade teacher W3 explained, “Once they knew there was no grade, there was
no motivating them at all, even though they were choosing something they were supposed to be
interested in.” She also believed that the criteria that were provided via the ladder were not
strictly adhered to across all advisories. Electives teacher W4 described the negative impact the
“no grade” policy had on her advisory, sharing, “As soon as they figured out it didn’t count, it
was like, ok, what is the least amount I can do? Like what can I do that I’m doing anyway, that is
not going to waste my time.” She ended with “it was pulling teeth.” How best to assess student
progress during Genius Hour, then, was an area of disagreement among middle school faculty.
In summary, during the Genius Hour program pilot, student motivation proved
challenging for some teachers. Focus group data revealed that when students were not motivated
to engage fully during their Genius Hour investigations, some teachers felt helpless, resourceless,
and like the students’ failure was somehow their own failure. Some teachers attributed this lack
of student motivation to the fact that the Genius Hour program pilot maintained a “no grade”
policy, while other teachers believed the “no grade” policy was freeing for students, allowing
them to try new things without fear of reprisal. Therefore, teachers had mixed feelings about
assessment associated with Genius Hour. These findings connect to the work of Pink (2009) who
explains that without autonomy, humans will lack a sense of ownership, and as a result, their
motivation will decrease. It also relates to Pane et al. (2015) who report that a student’s ability to
work at his or her own pace may be limited by a perceived need to focus on grade-level content.
Since Genius Hour was not graded, it may have taken precious time away from students who
perceived a need to focus on the grade-level content they would be graded on.
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Summary of the Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
The perceived challenges of the Genius Hour program pilot that emerged across all four
focus group conversations were related to time, space, and motivation. The two themes that
emerged around challenges related to the use of time were a concern with the pacing of the
program pilot and a concern about time lost from regular classes during the program pilot. No
consistent message emerged from the focus group data regarding teachers’ preferred pacing or
preferred time taken from regular classes for Genius Hour. Regarding the use of spaces during
the Genius Hour program pilot, teachers identified challenges around a lack of awareness
regarding which spaces were available and who was supervising those spaces, a lack of access to
some specialized spaces, a lack of access to potential mentors, and overcrowding and inadequate
supervision in spaces popular with students. Finally, regarding student motivation during the
Genius Hour program pilot, teachers were generally unsure how to manage students who lacked
motivation. Teachers also had mixed perceptions around assessment of Genius Hour work, some
teachers believing the “no grade” policy was positive and gave students the freedom to fail,
while others believed the “no grade” policy was negative and led to student disengagement.
Suggestions for Future Iterations of the Genius Hour Program
Progress results when what we learn from one experience helps us deal with future
experience. As Dewey (1938) explains, what an individual “has learned in the way of knowledge
and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with
the situations which follow” (p.44). Building on that thinking, research question 3 was as
follows:
3. What recommendations might teachers have, if any, related to future iterations of
personalized inquiry in the middle school at Causeway International School?
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The purpose of this research question was to determine what recommendations, if any, middle
school teachers might have in order to improve the Genius Hour program moving forward. In
response to this question, each of the perceived successes and challenges shared earlier is
revisited in this section with an eye toward suggestions for future improvements.
Suggestions Related to the Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
The perceived successes of the Genius Hour program pilot as revealed in data that
emerged from all four focus groups included themes related to professional development and
resources, relationships, and purpose. For each of these successes, teachers also shared
suggestions with an eye toward future growth of the Genius Hour program.
Suggested next steps related to professional development and resources. Regarding
Genius Hour professional development, teachers shared concerns over how to continue making
professional development available to teachers moving forward. For example, sixth-grade
teacher W1 reminded colleagues of new teachers coming on board and to not forget to provide
them with the resources and training they will need to be successful with Genius Hour when they
experience it for the first time. Eighth-grade teacher W2 suggested that every single returning
teacher who did not go through the optional one-, two-, or three-day training originally should be
required to partake in some training prior to the second iteration of Genius Hour. Electives
teacher W3 echoed this concern, saying, “Get ahold of those old [teachers] too that avoided
[training] as long as they could.” For teachers who struggle in the moment with Genius Hour
once the program is underway with students, seventh-grade teacher M3 suggested that the middle
school instructional coaches offer drop-in sessions after school where teachers might informally
share their struggles and seek guidance from colleagues. Therefore, additional Genius Hour
professional development must be provided to all teachers who have not experienced one-, two-,
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or three-day training previously, whether those teachers are new to CIS or not, and for those who
need ongoing support, instructional coaches might offer after-school support on Genius Hour
days.
One concern that emerged regarding resources connected to Genius Hour was the need to
continuously “re-envision” those resources to keep materials fresh in the eyes of teachers and
students. Seventh-grade teacher M5 pointed out that if Genius Hour takes place more than once a
year, some of the inspirational videos, mini-lessons, and other resources may begin to feel stale.
Teachers also requested a section be added to the website in order to share out examples of
student work. As electives teacher W1 pointed out, examples of student work were missing from
the pilot but could be added for future iterations of Genius Hour “based on our experiences.”
Thus, teachers recognized a need to keep Genius Hour resources fresh for students and teachers
alike.
Suggested next steps related to relationships. Regarding Genius Hour relationships,
while teachers valued the relationships they were able to hone with their own advisory students
during Genius Hour, they also shared concerns that the middle school was overlooking one
important Genius Hour resource by not sharing teachers’ personal passions and talents with all
students in order to pair students with potential teacher mentors. For example, two seventh-grade
teachers, W3 and M4, discussed how helpful it could be to identify what each teacher’s areas of
expertise were in order to connect students with potential mentors in the building. On a related
note, seventh-grade teacher W2 shared her disappointment in not being tapped for her expertise
in non-profit work: “I worked at a non-profit for a long time, and I was hoping I would get some
students to come talk to me about development,” but as she concluded, “no one came to me.”
Two electives teachers, W2 and M3, agreed that teachers needed to do better during the next
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iteration of Genius Hour to try to match students with appropriate teachers. In order to match
students with potential teacher mentors, seventh-grade teacher M2 suggested some sort of list
where teachers could share their skills and passions and that list could then be posted on the CIS
Genius Hour website for all to see. In order to further facilitate mentorship beyond a student’s
advisory teacher, teachers suggested carving out mentorship days during Genius Hour. For
example, seventh-grade teacher M4 thought, “Maybe Monday through Wednesday you are with
your kids and Thursday, Friday, everyone is free to kind of find a possible teacher mentor in that
field.” In summary, while Genius Hour provided ample opportunity for teachers to build
relationships with their own advisory students, in future iterations of the program, students could
potentially benefit from mentorships with other teachers who might share similar interests or
passions. In order to facilitate these mentorships, specific days could be dedicated to mentor-
mentee relationship development.
Suggested next steps related to purpose. While teachers could identify multiple
purposes for the Genius Hour program pilot and generally believed that the pilot fulfilled those
purposes, teachers also believed that there was room for future growth around the purpose of
Genius Hour. For example, some teachers felt that students had not fully mastered the inquiry
process after just one iteration of the Genius Hour program. Seventh-grade teacher W3
explained, “If the idea is that [students] have these inquiry skills” that they can use “to learn
anything,” then “I don’t feel like my kids got that piece of it.” In other words, having
experienced Genius Hour only once, they may not have internalized the inquiry process
sufficiently to recognize that the process for learning something new can look similar across
multiple disciplines. Similarly, seventh-grade teacher M5 explained that some students pursued
very academic investigations that looked more like a thesis, and that the “product at the end of it
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was also just lacking a sense of person. It felt like it was just a Power Point they had done for
school.” With the program pilot under their belts, however, during future iterations of Genius
Hour, students might expand their thinking about their own investigations more broadly and
pursue topics they are more genuinely curious about. As seventh-grade teacher M3 suggested,
the Genius Hour program pilot was simply “a starting point,” and “I think a lot of those kids as
we go through it a second time” may ask each other, “What can you learn from your previous
experience?”
Some teachers also wondered if the purpose of Genius Hour might be more focused in
future iterations of the program. For example, eighth-grade teacher M4 suggested that there “is
definitely an opportunity to bridge a gap between service learning and the [Genius Hour] project
experience for kids.” He explained, “I would like to give kids models and encouragement to look
for projects that aren’t so self-serving, but more something that can solve a problem that might
impact more than just themselves.” He went on to say, “Looking at global issues and ways that
they can contribute positively to their school communities through their research, development,
and designing their project. So whether helping animals on campus or looking for ways to help
people in the community.” He wondered if service should be a required element of Genius Hour
or simply an option. Eighth-grade teacher W2 built on that thinking, suggesting that if the school
pursues more than one Genius Hour a year moving forward, then different Genius Hours could
have different foci. She explained, “So one focus could be like physical, right. Like how you are
going to make sure that you are doing something for your body.” She continued, “And another
would be service. Really go into that. And then we could choose another one could just be
inquiry…what really turns you on, what do you want to learn more about?” She also suggested
that these foci could even be spread across grade levels so that students had unique Genius Hour
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experiences throughout their middle school years. So, future iterations of the Genius Hour
program may help students grow more comfortable and confident with the inquiry process as
they pursue areas of genuine interest. Teachers may also want to consider providing students
with either required or optional foci for their Genius Hour investigations moving forward,
helping ensure that students have a wide variety of experiences during Genius Hour across their
middle school years.
Suggestions Related to the Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
The perceived challenges of the Genius Hour program pilot as revealed in data that
emerged from all four focus groups included time, space, and motivation. For each of these
challenges, teachers shared suggestions with an eye toward future growth of the Genius Hour
program.
Suggested next steps related to the use of time during Genius Hour. Teachers offered
several suggestions on how to use time more effectively in future iterations of the Genius Hour
program. First, teachers offered suggestions related to the frequency of Genius Hour days. Sixth-
grade teacher M2 believed that if Genius Hour met “less frequently, but over a longer period of
time,” for instance, that students would produce work of a higher caliber. He believed that by
stretching the time frame for Genius Hour, students would produce higher caliber work because
they would have more time to conduct long-term experiments, more time to reach out to experts,
and more time to work alongside a mentor. Three of his sixth-grade colleagues agreed with him.
Second, teachers had suggestions relating to the number of minutes devoted to Genius Hour each
day of the program. For example, elective teacher M2 wondered if it would be possible to “bring
the 65’s forward.” In other words, while the pilot started with eight 30-minute sessions, perhaps
the number of 30-minute days could be trimmed, while the number of 65-minute days could be
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expanded. That way, students could dive more deeply into their investigations more quickly. In
general, then, teachers wanted to see adjustments in both calendar and schedule. While no single
suggestion emerged consistently related to the ideal frequency of days or number of minutes,
teachers felt that the middle school should continue to experiment with time in relation to Genius
Hour in search of the most productive framework.
Another suggestion to emerge related to time was connected to time lost for teachers
during Genius Hour. Because Genius Hour layered additional work on teachers while not
removing any other responsibilities, whether curricular or extra-curricular, some teachers felt
some other responsibilities should be removed from teachers’ plates during Genius Hour. For
example, seventh-grade teacher M5 suggested that regularly scheduled meetings, such as
department or faculty meetings, be limited during Genius Hour. He stated, “The regular
meetings, if they aren’t necessary, PLC stuff, the department chairs, LCC, PLC, and the Monday
meetings. Set those aside.” By cancelling those regularly scheduled gatherings, he explained that
time would be freed for teachers to work with the instructional coaches to improve their Genius
Hour instructional practices. He suggested, “The first week, having PD on helping kids that are
stuck…you know, sitting down with [the instructional coaches] or whoever and have a chance to
really start to unpack – hey, here is a new way to re-approach that tomorrow morning.” Thus,
with fewer regularly scheduled meetings, teachers would have more time to focus on doing their
best work with students during Genius Hour.
Therefore, when considering time in relation to Genius Hour, teachers wanted to continue
experimenting with frequency of days and number of minutes devoted to Genius Hour, and they
were also in search of ways to make their workload during Genius Hour more manageable.
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Suggested next steps related to the use of spaces during Genius Hour. The two
primary perceived challenges connected to spaces during the Genius Hour program pilot were
lack of access to some spaces and lack of proper supervision in some spaces. In response to the
access issue, sixth-grade teacher W2 suggested “making sure that it is really clear what the
students have available and where and when we can go places.” So better communication
regarding spaces available to students during Genius Hour would help solve challenges with
access. In addition to better communicating what spaces are available, teachers suggested that
additional spaces be opened to students during Genius Hour in the future. For example, seventh-
grade teacher W3 explained, “It was really frustrating for a lot of my kids to not be able to use
the art room, the kitchen. There were so many things we have at this school, but we weren’t
allowed to use.” Therefore, opening more spaces to students, including spaces like the art room
and the culinary arts room, would alleviate some of these frustrations.
In order to open more spaces, more supervision would be required. This could be
accomplished by reallocating some human resources. Seventh-grade teacher W3 went on to
suggest, “If we had like those [instructional assistants] or whatever really carefully monitoring
art rooms, kitchens, gyms, I mean, this could be huge.” Teachers not only suggested moving
instructional assistants to different spaces to serve as supervisors, but also suggested giving
teachers more flexibility to work in spaces appropriate to their skills. For example, electives
teacher W2 explained, “I would feel more successful as a guide and a mentor if I were
somewhere where I at least have an interest in that discipline a little.” Seventh-grade teacher M4
suggested, “Maybe Monday through Wednesday you are with your kids, and Thursday, Friday
everyone is free to kind of find a possible teacher mentor in that field.” Electives teacher M2
suggested that students should sign up for spaces, and then teachers could be redistributed to
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high-demand areas. He also suggested that when a space filled, “you put a cap.” In order to more
effectively supervise areas, teachers also suggested providing criteria to work in different spaces.
Again, elective teacher M2 suggested students gain access to a space with “some prerequisite
that you have some sort of plan or something.” To summarize, when considering spaces in future
iterations of Genius Hour, organizers should consider the needs to provide better communication
about space availability, to increase supervision in high-traffic areas, to offer teachers greater
flexibility to work in alternative spaces, and to develop some sort of checklist and sign-up
process for students to travel to different spaces.
Suggested next steps related to student motivation during Genius Hour. Regarding
motivation, while some teachers struggled to find ways to motivate some students, other teachers
offered some techniques they used to keep student motivation levels high throughout Genius
Hour. One suggestion that surfaced was helping students see connections between their Genius
Hour pursuits and their work in other areas, whether in classes, on the sports field, or elsewhere.
Eighth-grade teacher M4 explained, “I found that my biggest moments of success and learning
were when I could help kids make those leaps between their actual [Genius Hour] project and the
learning they were doing outside of [Genius Hour].” When students could see that their work
was not isolated, but was relevant to their learning in other areas as well, their motivation
increased. Other ideas that emerged from the focus groups around maintaining student
motivation related to program pacing and project duration. Eighth-grade teacher W1 explained
that during the program pilot, students spent too much time brainstorming, planning, and
presenting their pitches, and as a result, motivation started to wane. To combat this challenge,
she asked students to adjust their timelines and shift to another stage of the inquiry process. She
pointed out that this problem “was easily fixable because we were given enough flexibility. I just
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shortened the timeline.” Eighth-grade teacher M4 suggested that when students lost steam with a
particular project, they could simply pivot to another project. He explained that by having
multiple shorter projects, students may “see that it is not so much the product in that one project,
but about the learning experience.” Therefore, teachers may be able to help students maintain
motivation throughout Genius Hour by encouraging students to search for connections between
their Genius Hour work and work beyond Genius Hour or by allowing students to reconsider the
pacing and duration of their Genius Hour investigations.
If some students remain disengaged or unmotivated even after multiple interventions,
teachers also suggested that the Genius Hour program could still be considered a success, as
there is a lot students might learn from failure. Eighth-grade teacher W3 recalled a moment from
her Genius Hour training in which an instructional coach asked, “When you do a project in class,
do 100% of the kids achieve an exemplary level, or do they achieve at different levels?” The
teacher’s takeaway from this moment during professional development was that Genius Hour
was about independence. Teachers “put it all out there, and it is for the kids to engage, then the
kids to choose in.” This included the choice not to fully engage in a meaningful Genius Hour
pursuit. As eighth-grade teacher M1 summarized, “So we are able to harness and reflect and
learn from the failure, that is [Genius Hour] being successful.” Genius Hour, then, offered
students an opportunity to learn through failure whether that failure was skill-based or related to
a student’s motivation.
Summary of Suggestions for Future Iterations of the Genius Hour Program
In summary, the perceived successes of the Genius Hour program pilot included
professional development and resources, relationships, and purpose, although in each of these
areas, teachers also shared suggestions with an eye toward future growth of the Genius Hour
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program. Suggestions related to Genius Hour successes included providing ongoing professional
development for teachers, updating resources regularly, providing greater opportunity for
students to seek teacher mentorship, providing greater opportunity for students to apply inquiry
skills across other disciplines, and considering a variety of foci for different Genius Hour
iterations. The perceived challenges of the Genius Hour program pilot included time, space, and
motivation, and teachers provided suggestions for how the program might continue to get better
in these areas as well. Suggestions related to Genius Hour challenges included continuing to
experiment with frequency of days and number of minutes devoted to Genius Hour, reducing
teacher meeting times over the duration of Genius Hour, providing clearer communication about
space availability, increasing supervision in high-traffic areas, giving teachers an opportunity to
work in alternative spaces based on their areas of interest, developing a checklist and sign-up
process for students who want to work in spaces outside of their advisory classroom,
encouraging students to search for connections between their Genius Hour work and their work
in other areas, allowing students to modify the pacing and duration of their Genius Hour
investigations as needed, and accepting that some students may end up learning from failure
rather than success through their Genius Hour pursuits.
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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION
The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to gather middle school teachers’
perceptions of the successes, challenges, and next steps related to the implementation of the
Genius Hour program pilot at Causeway International School (CIS), a large, pre-K-12, private
school located in Southeast Asia. One avenue into personalized learning, the Genius Hour
program is a personalized inquiry program meant to nurture lifelong learning in each student as
he or she selects a topic of personal interest, curiosity, or passion and then explores that topic
through the stages of inquiry, including questioning, investigating, creating, and reflecting. The
three research questions that guided this study were as follows:
1. What are teachers’ perceptions of the successes of the Genius Hour program pilot in
the middle school at Causeway International School?
2. What are teachers’ perceptions of the challenges they faced connected to the Genius
Hour program pilot in the middle school at Causeway International School?
3. What recommendations might teachers have, if any, related to future iterations of
personalized inquiry in the middle school at Causeway International School?
Data collected for this study were gathered through CIS middle school teacher focus
groups. Four homogeneous focus groups met made up of five sixth-grade teachers, eight
seventh-grade teachers, seven eighth-grade teachers, and seven electives teachers for a total of 27
participants. Each focus group followed a semi-structured interview protocol, with each
conversation later transcribed, coded, and organized into emerging themes. Credibility and
trustworthiness were addressed through data saturation, respondent validation, and numbers.
Researcher bias was addressed by having a research team work with me to protect the identities
of focus group participants and by searching for alternative explanations to my favorite
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assertions. Ethics were addressed by providing each participant with a research information sheet
and reminding each participant of their rights orally prior to the start of each focus group. When I
disseminated my findings within my workplace, I was also careful to both remain neutral and
continue protecting the identities of the participants.
This study was considered through a constructivist lens. Constructivists “offer
perspective and encourage dialogue among perspectives rather than aiming at singular truths and
linear predictions” (Patton, 2015, p. 684). In other words, constructivists capture different
realities, knowing that all learners construct their own knowledge based on their own
experiences. In the case of the Genius Hour program pilot, students had the opportunity to
construct their own knowledge around inquiry through their personal investigations, and teachers
were able to construct their own knowledge around how best to guide students through
personalized inquiry. There is no singular truth or reality that captures the Genius Hour
experience for everyone. In the case of this study, teacher-participants had the opportunity to
share their perceptions of the program pilot, including strengths, challenges, and potential next
steps, although the findings shared do not define a singular way to move forward with the Genius
Hour program. This study simply shares the perceptions of a handful of those who engaged in
the Genius Hour program pilot.
This chapter shares a summary and discussion of the study’s findings, along with
limitations, implications for practice, and recommendations for further research.
Summary of Findings
The findings that emerged from the focus group data gathered for this study were
organized into teacher-reported perceived strengths and challenges of the Genius Hour program
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pilot, along with suggestions for future iterations of the Genius Hour program. The summary of
findings will present each of these in sequence.
Perceived Successes of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
Genius Hour program pilot perceived successes that emerged from the data across all
four focus groups were connected to the professional development and resources provided
leading up to the pilot, the relationships that grew between teachers and students during the pilot,
and fulfillment of the program’s purpose. Regarding professional development, teachers valued
having access to professional development opportunities. They also shared an appreciation for
the manner in which the professional development was delivered, mentioning that it was done in
house in a targeted, organized, engaging, and responsive way. Teachers touted the importance of
access to manageable resources as well in order to support their work with students during the
pilot, although some teachers felt the number of resources provided was just right, while others
felt too many resources were provided. Regarding relationships, teachers appreciated getting to
know their students in new ways, discovering talents, skills, and interests they did not know their
students had prior to the Genius Hour program pilot. Regarding purpose, teachers recognized
that the main purpose of the Genius Hour program pilot was to give students an opportunity to
pursue their own interests or curiosities in an authentic, self-directed way, allowing students to
build inquiry skills and learn from their mistakes. Teachers also shared their varied perceptions
on whether the pilot successfully fulfilled its purpose, with some arguing that it did not fulfill its
purpose for all students, while others argued that it did, whether students succeeded or failed in
their own investigations. Most tended to agree, however, that the pilot fulfilled another purpose:
giving teachers an opportunity to guide students through personalized inquiry, many for the first
time, allowing teachers to learn from the experience alongside students. Thus, professional
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development and resources, relationships, and purpose were highlights of the Genius Hour
program pilot.
Perceived Challenges of the Genius Hour Program Pilot
Genius Hour program pilot perceived challenges that surfaced in the data across all four
focus groups revolved around the themes of time, space, and student motivation. Regarding time,
teachers were concerned with both the pacing of the program pilot and with time lost from
regular classes during the pilot. Teachers were unsatisfied with the number of minutes devoted to
Genius Hour on a daily basis with some feeling too many minutes were devoted, while others
felt too few were devoted. Teachers also shared their mixed perceptions around the number and
frequency of days devoted to Genius Hour, with some feeling too many or too few days were
spent engaging in Genius Hour and some feeling the days spent were too frequent. Teachers also
raised concern over how best to prioritize curricular demands in their regular classes with less
instructional time available due to the pilot. Regarding spaces used during the Genius Hour
program pilot, teachers perceived one challenge around a lack of awareness of space availability
and supervision provided in those spaces. Teachers did not know where they could send students
during the pilot or whether available spaces had sufficient adult supervision. Teachers were also
concerned that some specialized spaces were off limits to students during the pilot, including the
art room and the culinary arts room. A lack of student access to potential teacher mentors in
different spaces also concerned teachers, as teachers were expected to guide their own advisory
students through Genius Hour rather than guiding students with interests similar to their own in a
space appropriate to that work. Finally, teachers were concerned that some spaces popular with
students were overcrowded and had inadequate adult supervision in place. Regarding student
motivation during the Genius Hour program pilot, teachers shared different levels of comfort
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with how best to coach students who seemed to lack motivation, and some expressed a concern
that they were unprepared for how best to guide such struggling students. Teachers also had
mixed perceptions around the “no grade” policy enacted during the Genius Hour program pilot,
with some teachers in favor of the policy, believing it gave students more freedom to pursue their
interests without fear, while others felt the “no grade” policy meant some students disengaged
from the Genius Hour process because they had no motivation to do well. Thus, time, space, and
student motivation were the main challenges teachers perceived associated with the Genius Hour
program pilot.
Suggestions for Future Iterations of the Genius Hour Program
Through each focus group conversation, teachers provided suggestions for how the
school might continue to refine the Genius Hour program moving forward. These suggestions
connected back to both the perceived successes and the perceived challenges of the program
pilot. For example, although teachers perceived professional development and resources,
relationships, and purpose to be successes of the pilot, they also had suggestions in each of these
areas with an eye toward growth for future iterations of the Genius Hour program. They
suggested the school offer ongoing professional development to teachers around personalized
inquiry as needed and provide basic Genius Hour training to new teachers each year. Teachers
also suggested that resources meant to support their Genius Hour work with students be
continuously updated. In order to continue nurturing supportive relationships between students
and teachers, teachers suggested the program offer greater opportunity for students to seek
teacher mentorship in future iterations of the program. In order to more fully fulfill the purpose
of the Genius Hour program, some teachers suggested that greater effort could be made to help
students transfer inquiry skills learned during Genius Hour across other disciplines so that
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students might more effectively internalize the inquiry process and use it throughout their lives.
Some teachers also suggested providing more scaffolding to students in the form of required foci
during different iterations of Genius Hour, such as requiring students to complete a service
project during Genius Hour at some point in their middle school experience.
Suggestions also emerged around the perceived challenges of the Genius Hour program
pilot, including suggestions around time, space, and motivation. For example, teachers suggested
the school continue to experiment with number and frequency of days and number of minutes
devoted per day. No singular suggestion emerged from the data regarding ideal pacing for the
program. Due to time constraints associated with the Genius Hour program, teachers also
perceived a need to prioritize their own curricular demands more carefully in the future
considering the loss of instructional time resulting from Genius Hour. Due to perceived time
pressures resulting from Genius Hour, teachers also suggested finding other areas where teachers
might get time back, such as by reducing teacher meeting times over the duration of Genius
Hour. In relation to space, teachers suggested clearer communication be provided about what
spaces are available to students during Genius Hour and who is supervising each of those spaces.
Teachers also suggested that increased adult supervision be provided in high-traffic spaces such
as the maker spaces. One suggestion put forth to facilitate increased supervision in high-traffic
areas was to give teachers an opportunity to work in alternative spaces based on their areas of
interest rather than requiring teachers to remain with their advisory groups in their own
classrooms. Teachers also suggested developing a checklist and sign-up process for students
interested in working in a space beyond their advisory teacher’s classroom. Related to student
motivation, teachers suggested encouraging students more systematically to search for
connections between their Genius Hour work and their work in other areas. Teachers also
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suggested students have greater autonomy to modify the pacing and duration of their Genius
Hour investigations. Finally, teachers suggested that the community might need to accept that
some students may end up learning from failure rather than success through their Genius Hour
pursuits, and that should be okay. Thus, teachers had suggestions for future iterations of the
Genius Hour program around professional development and resources, relationships, purpose,
time, space, and student motivation.
Discussion of Findings
The findings summarized above share teacher perceptions of the implementation of the
Genius Hour program pilot, a foray into both personalized learning and personalized inquiry at
one private, pre-K-12 international school in Southeast Asia. While personalized learning is
gaining momentum in schools and districts across the nation, some worry that we lack a
sufficient research-based understanding of what personalized learning actually is and how it
operates in context (Basham et al., 2016). In fact, Basham et al. (2016) worry that while
personalized learning has genuine potential to revolutionize education, without a clear, research-
based understanding, personalized learning will never reach its full potential and instead may be
brushed aside as a fad. Some researchers have argued that particularly in the K-12 context, there
is a need for both descriptive and exploratory research around personalized learning (Abbott et
al., 2015; Basham et al., 2016). This study may provide one window into the worlds of both
personalized learning and personalized inquiry from the perspective of 27 middle school teachers
at one school engaged in developing elements of personalized learning and personalized inquiry
for all students.

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Professional Development and Resources Findings and the Literature
One of the areas around personalized learning that needs additional research is how best
to provide professional development and resources to teachers preparing to personalize learning
for their students (Abbott et al., 2015; Basham et al., 2016). The findings that emerged from this
study begin to provide some evidence of how a school might go about providing professional
development and resources to teachers charged with implementing elements of personalized
learning. For example, teachers in this study shared an appreciation for having access to
professional development opportunities and tools based on their levels of comfort with
personalized inquiry. They also shared an appreciation for getting to pursue their own Genius
Hour investigation prior to leading students through the same process. These experiences gave
them a chance to gain confidence with inquiry in a non-threatening environment. This confirms
the work of Blanchard et al. (2013) who found that when teachers were provided professional
development around inquiry-based teaching, they felt more comfortable pursuing inquiry-based
instruction in their own classrooms. Thus, just as McLoughlin and Lee (2010) point out that
students need scaffolding and tools to develop the self-regulatory skills necessary for success in
personalized learning environments, teachers may benefit from the same kinds of scaffolding and
tools when learning how to personalize learning and/or personalize inquiry for their students.
Relationships Findings and the Literature
One recurring theme that emerged from this study around relationships was the teachers’
hope in future iterations of Genius Hour to better connect students to potential teacher-mentors
with similar interests, curiosities, or passions. Teachers believed this was an overlooked and
underutilized resource during the program pilot that has great potential to impact student learning
moving forward. Pane et al. (2015) report that teachers in schools that embrace personalized
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learning often hold untraditional roles, such as job sharing, co-teaching, or coaching small
student groups under the guidance of another teacher. Teacher mentorship of students with
similar interests could fall under that list of untraditional teacher roles as well. Therefore, this
study’s findings align with suggestions found in the literature aimed at utilizing staffing
resources in order to best serve student needs, and potentially building new relationships between
teachers and students along the way.
Purpose Findings and the Literature
Researchers have found that academic engagement rises when students have the power to
choose work relevant to them, and when they have that power to choose, they value their work
more (Buchanan et al., 2016; Deci & Ryan, 2008; Guay et al., 2008; Nunez & Leon, 2015).
Personalized inquiry is one way teachers may provide students an opportunity to choose work
relevant to them. According to Murdoch (2015), the purpose of personalized inquiry is to provide
each student a personal pathway for learning where they get to identify what they want or need
to investigate, and then they develop their plan to get there. Teacher-participants in this study
echoed a similar purpose in relation to student involvement in the Genius Hour program pilot. In
other words, teachers shared that the pilot was meant to provide students with an opportunity to
choose personally relevant work so that they could develop their own personal pathway for
learning. However, this study expanded upon that purpose as well, recognizing the benefits
teachers gained from the experience of leading students through personalized inquiry. Therefore,
students may not be the only ones to benefit from engaging in personally relevant work.
Teachers may grow as well from guiding students through the process of personalized inquiry.

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Time Findings and the Literature
Time emerged as a perceived challenge in this study and connects clearly to the literature.
Patrick et al. (2013) explain that in a personalized learning environment, schedules are flexible
and students can use time more efficiently to meet their own learning needs, allowing learning to
become accessible at all times. In a more traditional time-based system, students are trapped, for
example, in 80-minute classes each day, unable to work more productively based on their own
needs (Pane et al., 2015). Teachers in this study shared a frustration that time devoted to the
Genius Hour program pilot was either too short or too long, with no consensus on an ideal
number of minutes or days that should be devoted to Genius Hour. This makes sense, as trying to
limit Genius Hour to a specific number of minutes per day or days per week is counter to how
time should be approached in a personalized learning environment. In fact, time needed will vary
for each individual. CIS may continue to struggle with this issue as long as it continues to follow
a more traditional schedule with 80-minute classes each day outside of Genius Hour.
Spaces Findings and the Literature
Another connection between this study’s findings and the research relates to spaces.
Halverson et al. (2015) explains that in a school designed around personalization, students must
be able to move independently through flexible learning environments and find spaces best
suited to their learning needs. Spaces proved to be a challenge for teachers in this study because
of a lack of communication around what spaces and supervision were available to students, a
lack of access to some specialized spaces, and overcrowding in some spaces. Students were not
always able to access the spaces best suited to their learning needs, and this hindered their work.
Therefore, this study’s findings help bolster Halverson and colleague’s (2015) findings: access to
flexible spaces suited to students’ learning needs matters.
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Teachers too must be more flexible, no longer anchored to one classroom, but able to
move around to different spaces for different purposes (Halverson et al., 2015). It makes sense,
then, that some teachers were frustrated when anchored to their classrooms instead of having the
flexibility to move to the space where they might be best utilized. Pane et al. (2015) explain that
in personalized learning environments, schools use adults in the building and beyond more
efficiently in order to provide students with individualized, intensive attention. Instead of one
teacher being tied to the same small group of students daily, the teachers and other staff members
working to support student learning can adapt based on current needs (Pane et al., 2015). At CIS,
then, that need for flexibility in staffing was not considered during the Genius Hour program
pilot, and a sense of frustration on the part of teachers resulted.
Student Motivation Findings and the Literature
Pink (2009) explains that unless we have some autonomy in what we are doing, we will
lack a sense of ownership, and as a result, our motivation will wane. Some teachers in this study
shared their perceptions that not all students were motivated to engage in the Genius Hour
program pilot. Some, they felt, were just going through the motions. Interestingly, those students
who were just going through the motions may have been following in the footsteps of Pascale et
al. (2010) who write, “It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than to think your
way into a new way of acting” (p. 38). Perhaps they were simply learning the inquiry process the
first time around and were not yet poised to own their work. In other words, they had to first act
like independent inquirers before they could actually see themselves as independent inquirers
invested in their own learning. It would be interesting to return to those students after they have
had multiple opportunities to engage in Genius Hour to see how, if at all, their motivation levels
change.
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Limitations of the Study
There were a variety of limitations associated with this study. This study was conducted
at a large, private, pre-K-12 international school in Southeast Asia. The 27 participants who
chose to contribute to focus group conversations made up a fraction of the middle school faculty.
Their perceptions were their own and may not reflect the perceptions of those who chose not to
participate. In addition, while this study was meant to examine the Genius Hour program pilot,
teachers were only one stakeholder in this work. In order to gain a broader view of the pilot’s
strengths, challenges, and potential next steps, gathering perceptions from other stakeholders,
such as students, administration, or parents, would be worthwhile.
Another limitation was the timing of the study. While it would have been ideal to
examine the Genius Hour program pilot within a short time after it was over, in reality, due to the
constraints of both IRB and the school calendar, I was not able to conduct focus groups until
October 2017 while the pilot ended in April 2017. Thus, participants had to reach back into their
memories six months to recall their perceptions of the strengths, challenges, and next steps
associated with the Genius Hour program pilot. In a more ideal research world, such a lag
between experience and reflection would not occur.
Another limitation of the study was the fact that I served as both the primary investigator
and the instructional coach charged with implementing the Genius Hour program pilot. While I
was not a part of the focus group interviews, teachers who participated in each focus group were
aware that I was the primary investigator. Just knowing of my involvement in the study may
have colored the perceptions of the program teachers were willing to share.
Finally, researcher bias remained a significant limitation throughout the course of this
study because of my dual role as both researcher and instructional coach. In order to overcome
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researcher bias, I enlisted a team of researchers to assist me. Through their efforts, all participant
identities were protected, allowing participants to contribute their perceptions without fear of
reprisal. The research team also served as critical friends as I developed my analysis and shared
findings. I also used data saturation as a filter to make sure I did not avoid reporting any data I
did not agree with. If a theme surfaced across all four focus groups, it was included in the
findings section of this study. While respondent validation was not possible on an individual
basis due to the importance of allowing participants to remain anonymous, results were shared
with the entire middle school faculty at a faculty meeting, giving all teachers an opportunity to
challenge the findings.
Implications for Practice
Constructivists believe that each individual builds his or her knowledge and
understanding of the world through personal experience, and that for each person, that
knowledge and understanding will be different. In other words, there is no singular reality. In
relation to this study, there is no singular reality for what the Genius Hour program should look
like at CIS or any other school. In considering the ultimate goal of this study, we might consider
Dewey (1916), who writes,
Action with a purpose is deliberate; it involves a consciously foreseen end and a mental
weighing of considerations pro and con. It also involves a conscious state of longing or
desire for the end. The deliberate choice of an aim and of a settled disposition of desire
takes time. (p. 347)
This study might be considered action with a purpose, as might the Genius Hour program pilot.
Both involved a deliberate choice of an aim, and both led to a mental weighing of pros and cons.
While we can consider the perceptions of those who contributed to this research, reaching a
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settled disposition of desire takes time and will look different for different people. However,
there are implications for practice that have emerged from these research efforts.
Since the data collection for this study ended, the CIS middle school has undertaken two
additional iterations of the Genius Hour program. With each of these iterations, lessons learned
from this study were applied to the program. Related to professional development, for example,
in the role of middle school instructional coach, I led all teachers new to CIS in the 2017-2018
school year through a one-day Genius Hour training similar to the training provided to teachers
who opted into the one-day training the year before. In addition, all returning teachers who had
not opted into one-, two-, or three-day training the year before were asked to partake in a half-
day training where I shared new lessons and resources around inquiry with them and sought their
feedback. Also, just prior to each new iteration of the Genius Hour program, one faculty meeting
was devoted to guiding all middle school faculty through new resources, procedures, and
thinking around Genius Hour. Finally, in an effort to provide ongoing support to teachers during
the most recent Genius Hour program, I offered “Troubleshooting Tuesdays” to teachers where
they could gather in a meeting area in the middle school library on Tuesday afternoons during
Genius Hour in order to share frustrations, seek guidance, and find solutions. Interestingly, no
teachers showed up to “Troubleshooting Tuesdays” despite reminders. Moving forward,
professional development will continue to take place for teachers around Genius Hour leading up
to each iteration of the program, and all new teachers will continue to receive one-day training.
Each of these adjustments reflects suggestions that emerged from this study.
Regarding relationships, developing our thinking around teacher-student mentorship is a
work in progress, with some teachers now offering their support to students with similar
interests. For example, those interested in cooking now have access to our culinary arts teacher,
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while those interested in developing their vocal talents have access to our choir teacher during
Genius Hour. While we have not yet developed a system where all teachers make their areas of
interest, curiosity, and passion public to students so that any student may reach out to them, this
remains an ultimate goal for the program. In addition, I am currently working with high school
service club leaders who have offered their time as student-to-student mentors during Genius
Hour. A list of potential high school mentors was provided to middle school students during the
most recent iteration of Genius Hour, and a number of middle school students reached out for
guidance. Building cross-divisional mentorships between high school students and middle school
students also remains a work in progress.
In relation to purpose, while the purpose of Genius Hour remains the same, what we have
seen over the two most recent iterations of Genius Hour is an expansion of inquiry across
disciplines. While one of the purposes of Genius Hour was to help students develop the inquiry
skills to become lifelong learners, that purpose has been reinforced in different pockets of the
school. For example, the language of inquiry, including questioning, investigating, creating, and
reflecting, has been used by teams guiding students through interdisciplinary work such as
developing personalized inquiry projects connected to sustainability. Across social studies,
science, and English classrooms, teachers have focused on developing students’ abilities to ask
effective questions and to identify and evaluate evidence in disciplinary contexts. These sorts of
efforts reinforce the personalized inquiry work students pursue during Genius Hour, allowing
them to make connections between experiences and internalize the inquiry process. As time
marches forward, we anticipate that the inquiry process will be woven into student work in even
more classrooms.
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On the topic of time, adjustments have been made to the Genius Hour program as well.
For example, while Genius Hour took place only once over a four-week period during the 2016-
2017 school year, during the 2017-2018 school year, there were two iterations of the program,
one each semester. While the first two iterations of Genius Hour followed the same basic number
of minutes and days, the second iteration of the 2017-2018 school year looked different,
including for the first time some 45-minute Genius Hour mornings with the program extending
over three weeks rather than four weeks. We will continue to experiment with time and pacing in
future iterations of the program.
Regarding spaces, much has been done in subsequent iterations of Genius Hour to
communicate spaces available to students more clearly through the CIS Genius Hour website,
weekly video reminders, and emails to teachers. In addition, with each iteration of the program,
more spaces have been opened for student use, including the art room, the culinary arts room, the
band room, the choir room, the dance studios, the drama room, the tech ed room, and the weight
training gym, giving students greater access to learning spaces suitable for their learning needs.
Also, in each of those spaces, at least one teacher mentor has been present to guide students
appropriately. This has meant that grade level teams have had to collaborate more closely to
support students whose advisor is one of those mentor teachers. So some students have been
shuffled around to work with teachers other than their own advisor teacher during Genius Hour.
To help control the flow of students into this variety of spaces, we also introduced a travel pass
for students to carry with them when they moved from space to space. That travel pass included
information to help the space supervisors understand what the student was working on, including
their driving question, their daily goals, materials needed, and an advisor teacher’s signature.
This also helped ensure that students had thought through their goals and needs before stepping
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into a space. To combat the supervision concerns, in the most recent iteration of Genius Hour, a
group of parent volunteers stepped forward to provide support in popular spaces. I guided these
parents through their own two-hour training before Genius Hour began to make sure they
understood the thinking behind Genius Hour and had an idea of what to expect when they
stepped into Genius Hour spaces. Those parents proved to be ambassadors for Genius Hour
within our parent community, and I invited them for coffee, croissants, and conversation once
their volunteer responsibilities had ended in order to informally seek their feedback on the
program. Finally, to combat overcrowding in some spaces, with the most recent iteration of
Genius Hour, a sign-up system was implemented putting a cap on the number of students
allowed in some spaces. While much has been done to improve access to and supervision of
spaces during Genius Hour, spaces will remain a work in progress with each iteration of the
program presenting new challenges.
Finally, in the area of motivation, the “no grade” policy for Genius Hour has remained in
place. However, with the most recent iteration of Genius Hour, students were, for the first time,
required to share their Genius Hour learning with their parents at student-led conferences. For
some students who may have felt unmotivated due to the ungraded nature of Genius Hour,
student-led conference Genius Hour presentations may have provided greater motivation. Of
course, only future research might prove or disprove this theory. Interestingly, just as teachers
were divided on the “no grade” policy, they remained divided on the student-led conference
Genius Hour presentations as well, with some teachers feeling these presentations lent greater
weight to students’ work, while others felt it would be a demotivating factor for students. Again,
finding ways to encourage motivation in all students engaged in Genius Hour remains a work in
progress.
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Crotty (1998) defines constructivism as focusing on “the meaning-making activity of the
individual mind” (p. 58). He goes on to explain, “It suggests that each one’s way of making
sense of the world is as valid and worthy of respect as any other” (Crotty, 1998, p. 58). With that
lens on this study’s implications for practice, each member of the CIS middle school community
who engages in the Genius Hour program may have different perceptions around how best to
move forward, and no one person’s perceptions are more valid than anyone else’s. Because the
Genius Hour program involves participants in the work of personalized inquiry, they have the
ability to make adjustments to their own Genius Hour work based on their previous experiences
and meaning-making. In fact, many of the adjustments that have been made to the program so far
have been based on my own meaning-making based on the data collected for this study. As
Dewey (1916) points out, “It is knowledge gained at first hand through the exigencies or
experience which affects conduct in significant ways” (p.356). Each member of our CIS middle
school community who has engaged in one or more iterations of Genius Hour has gained
knowledge through experience that will affect their conduct in significant ways in future
iterations of the program. Through this deliberate work, we may someday land upon a settled
Genius Hour disposition, but we are not there yet.
Recommendations for Research
Patton (2015) suggests that researchers who embark upon studies through a constructivist
lens must continually pay attention to their own biases and subjectivities. He suggests
researchers ask themselves,
Whom do I not see? Whom have I seen less often? Where do I not go? Where have I
gone less often? With whom do I have special relationships, and in what light would they
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interpret phenomena? What data-collecting means have I not used that could provide
additional insight? (Patton, 2015, p. 685)
In considering future research related to the examination of the CIS Genius Hour program,
personalized learning, or personalized inquiry in the context of a pre-K-12 environment, digging
more deeply into teacher experience might be worthy of investigation. While the focus groups
used in this study allowed for 27 different perspectives to be shared, individual teacher
interviews would have allowed for a deeper understanding of individual experiences. It might
make sense, for example, to embark upon a series of case studies, not only interviewing teachers
individually to gather their perceptions of the program, but then to observe them during their
Genius Hour work to gain additional insight. Such case studies might paint a richer picture for
educators who wonder what Genius Hour, personalized learning, or personalized inquiry might
look like on a daily basis.
Another perspective worthy of investigation in relation to the Genius Hour program is
that of participating students. As CIS continues to refine its Genius Hour program, it would make
sense to ask students to consider their own experiences with Genius Hour and to share their
perceptions of the program’s strengths, challenges, and potential next steps. This might be
carried out through focus groups once again, or it might be carried out through interviews and
observations or case studies. Interviews would allow the researcher to dig more deeply into
individual student experiences, while observations would again help the researcher to gain a
more complete picture of the student experience. Case studies of individual students tracked over
the length of the Genius Hour program or even across Genius Hour iterations throughout that
student’s middle school career would shed greater light on the strengths, challenges, and
potential next steps for the program and its impact on student learning and development over
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time. Just how comfortable do students get with the inquiry process after engaging in
personalized inquiry work over three years, and what evidence might we gather that shows how
these skills transfer to other disciplines and interests over time? Many research possibilities are
visible on the horizon.
Conclusion
When teachers truly work to nurture within each student a lifetime love of learning so
that students can be poised for success in a future they can only begin to predict, the work is
hard. As Dewey (1938) explains:
A coherent theory of experience, affording positive direction to selection and
organization of appropriate educational methods and materials, is required by the attempt
to give new direction to the work of the schools. The process is a slow and arduous one.
It is a matter of growth, and there are many obstacles which tend to obstruct growth and
to deflect it into wrong lines. (p. 30)
The process, however slow, does build though. Again, Dewey (1938) shares, “Every experience
both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the
quality of those which come after” (p. 35). While this study shares the perceptions of only 27
teachers at one large, pre-K-12, private international school in Southeast Asia regarding the
perceived successes, challenges, and next steps associated with the implementation of the Genius
Hour program pilot, there are lessons shared that future researchers and teachers guiding students
in personalized inquiry may build upon as they experience personalized inquiry within the
confines of their own environments.
Unfortunately, even today, some schools “are better adapted, as John Stuart Mill said, to
make disciples than inquirers” (Dewey, 1916, p. 339). At CIS, we are trying to adapt in order to
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make inquirers, not disciples. Resnick (2017) explains, “Most schools in most countries place a
higher priority on teaching students to follow instructions and rules than on helping students
develop their own ideas, goals, and strategies” (p. 3). At CIS, we are working to help students
develop their own ideas, goals, and strategies so that they can become lifelong learners. In
discussing today’s high school graduates, Robinson and Aronica (2009) explain, “Too many
graduate or leave early, unsure of their real talents and not knowing what direction to take next.
Too many feel that what they’re good at isn’t valued by schools. Too many think they’re not
good at anything” (p. 225). At CIS, we hope that students leave the middle school with a greater
sense of their own talents and that those talents have been valued and even embraced by their
learning community. In her book Now You See It, Cathy Davidson (2011) states that nearly two-
thirds of today’s elementary students will pursue careers that have not yet been invented. In order
for students to be prepared for that uncertain future, all of the concerns raised by Dewey,
Resnick, Robinson and Aronica and others must be addressed not just at CIS, but at schools
around the world. This study hopes to contribute in some small way to moving students,
teachers, teams, schools, districts, states, and even nations forward in this important work.
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Appendix A: Focus Group Interview Protocol

Introduction

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to participate in this [Genius Hour
program] pilot evaluation. This week, we are conducting a series of focus groups with middle
school teachers to learn more about teachers’ perceptions of the successes and challenges of the
[Genius Hour program] pilot last spring. We are also interested in gathering your perceptions
around what future iterations of [Genius Hour] should look like at [CIS]. This focus group
should take about eighty minutes.
With your permission, we would like to record today’s focus group so that the researcher
can make sure not to miss any of the important information you are going to share. The
researcher will only have access to the transcript of this focus group and not to the audio
recording in order to protect the identity of each participant. You are also free to skip any
question you do not want to answer. Nothing will happen to you if you decline to participate.
Your identity will also remain confidential in any written documentation. Is it all right if we get
started and record the focus group?
Focus Group Interview Question Protocol Type of Question
Let’s start by hearing briefly from each of you. Share with us
who you are and what you most enjoy doing when you aren’t at
school.

Opening
The teaching of inquiry skills through guided, shared, and
personalized inquiry is gaining momentum at [CIS]. What are
your current perceptions about the personalized inquiry approach
to teaching?

Introductory: Background
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the
term “[Genius Hour]”?

Introductory:
Background
Describe what you believe the purpose of [Genius Hour] is.

Key question: Knowledge

Describe how successfully you feel the [Genius Hour] pilot Key question:
HARNESSING GENIUS HOUR SCHOOL-WIDE
155

fulfilled its purpose.

Opinion
Based on your experience with the [Genius Hour] pilot last year,
what would you say were the strengths, if any, of the pilot?

Key question: Experiences
• What were the strengths, if any, of the professional
development leading up to [Genius Hour]?

Follow-Up
(as needed)
• What were the strengths, if any, of the resources
provided to help teachers facilitate [Genius Hour]?

Follow-Up
(as needed)
• What were the strengths, if any, of the implementation of
the [Genius Hour] pilot? You might think about the
schedule, Homebase partnerships, the [Genius Hour]
Minute videos, the use of spaces, or anything else.

Follow-Up
(as needed)
Based on your experience with the [Genius Hour] pilot, what
would you say were the challenges, if any, related to the pilot?

Key question: Experiences

• What were the challenges, if any, related to the
professional development provided leading up to [Genius
Hour]?

Follow-Up
(as needed)
• What were the challenges, if any, related to the resources
provided to help teachers facilitate [Genius Hour]?

Follow-Up
(as needed)
• What were the challenges, if any, related to the
implementation of the [Genius Hour] pilot? You might
think about the schedule, Homebase partnerships, the
[Genius Hour] Minute videos, the use of spaces, the
availability of resources, or anything else.

Follow-Up
(as needed)
What are some of the things that you like about [Genius Hour]?

Key question:
Feelings

What are some of the things that you dislike about [Genius
Hour]?
Key question: Feelings

What are the important things we need to remember as we plan
for [Genius Hour] later this semester?

Key question: Values
If you had the power to change things about [Genius Hour], what
would you do differently?
Ending:
Hypothetical

If it were up to you, what would you like to stay the same with
[Genius Hour] in the future?

Ending:
Hypothetical

HARNESSING GENIUS HOUR SCHOOL-WIDE
156

Considering all we have discussed today, what is the most
important point you want to make about [Genius Hour]?
Ending:
All things considered

What is the most important point you’d like to make about
personalized inquiry?

Ending:
All things considered
Thank you for sharing your insights about the [Genius Hour]
pilot today. Before we wrap it up, is there anything we have
missed? Is there anything that we should have talked about, but
didn’t?
Ending: Final

For additional resources - http://dissertationedd.usc.edu/
DSC contact information – rsoedsc@rossier.usc.edu or (213)740-8099

Abstract (if available)

Abstract While educational researchers increasingly examine the implementation of both personalized learning and inquiry-based learning in K-12 schools, few of these studies focus on teachers’ experiences (Taylor, 2016). The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather the perceptions of middle school teachers charged with implementing a Genius Hour program pilot at a large, pre-K-12, private international school located in Southeast Asia in order to determine the program’s strengths, challenges, and next steps. The Genius Hour program pilot was meant to provide students with an opportunity to engage in personalized learning through the lens of personalized inquiry, allowing students to pursue their own curiosities during the school day. Guided by a constructivist theoretical framework, I gathered data through four focus groups made up of teachers who taught either electives or grades six, seven, or eight. Focus groups followed a semi-structured interview protocol, each interview was transcribed and coded, and codes were organized into six emerging themes. Perceived successes that emerged were connected to the (1) professional development and resources provided to teachers, (2) the relationships that grew between teachers and students, and (3) fulfillment of the pilot’s purpose. Perceived challenges that emerged included (4) the pacing of the pilot, (5) lack of access to supervised spaces, and (6) maintaining student motivation. Implications that emerged connected to each theme included (1) providing ongoing professional development to teachers, (2) developing mentoring opportunities for students, (3) expanding inquiry work across classes, (4) continuing to play with time devoted to the program, (5) expanding both space and supervision availability, and (6) developing new opportunities for students to share their work with authentic audiences.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Hall, Elizabeth Ann (author)

Core Title Harnessing Genius Hour school-wide: examining teachers' perceptions of the implementation of personalized inquiry across an international middle school

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 07/23/2018

Defense Date 05/09/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag free inquiry,Genius Hour,Google 20% time,independent inquiry,inquiry,inquiry-based learning,iTime,OAI-PMH Harvest,personalized inquiry,personalized learning

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Picus, Lawrence (committee chair), Chung, Ruth (committee member), Samkian, Artineh (committee member)

Creator Email bhall@sas.edu.sg,elizabethannhall@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-27143

Unique identifier UC11669375

Identifier etd-HallElizab-6447.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-27143 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-HallElizab-6447.pdf

Dmrecord 27143

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Hall, Elizabeth Ann

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA