Rediscovery School and Community is a research project funded by the Kellogg Foundation. It is a partnership in learning with the community of the Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center and the Kellogg Foundation aimed at identifying the practices, programs and systems which result in outstanding student achievement. The project was designed to answer the project questions cited below, while taking into account time and budget constraints.
Ms. Kristen Moore, in her capacity as Project Director, spent the majority of her work time in the school building. She served as the main ‘on the ground’ observer for the duration of the project. Her responsibilities focused on observing classrooms and school activities, conducting interviews, and recording data.
Ms. Maria Gajewski, as the Project Evaluator, also spent time in observation and conversation with school staff, board members, students and parents. However, the majority of her time on the project was focused on designing instruments, gathering quantitative data, and conducting analysis of the project findings. She was the arms length analyst to Ms. Moore’s field worker.
This personnel arrangement gave the project an anthropological type of design which allowed us to conduct an informed, but unbiased assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, and key elements of the Reggio Emilia model in an elementary school setting.
Ms. Erin Melcher, the Principal and Executive Director of the Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center, Sarah Cooper, Pedogogista, as well as the rest of the teachers, staff, and parents of the school were instrumental in the success of this exploration due to their willingness to be questioned, observed and actively engaged in this two year process.
It was through the project design and implementation that led to the distilled analysis of our findings. The graphic entitled, “The Ecosystem of the Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center,” found in the Final Analysis was created to best display what was found to be robustly alive and at work at the Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center.
