At the Klingenstein Center, we want to build our community's capacity to employ evidence-informed strategies to bring about a desired educational future to life across the independent and international school ecosystem. To do so, we engage in timely, critical, forward thinking research that is dedicated to informing, impacting, and transforming independent and international school teaching, learning, leading, and governing practices, as well as our schools' cultures, structures, and policies.
Current Projects
- Independent School Archival History Toolkit
What aspects of your school’s history - known or unknown - may be hindering your work as an educational institution? How might your school learn about and tell the stories of former and current students, parents, teachers, and administrators of their schools? How can your school community study its own history to unearth new understandings, repair past harm, and increase equity, justice, and belonging?
The Klingenstein Center is proud to announce the launch of a new initiative: the development of an Independent School Archival History Toolkit.
Read more and participate in our research survey.
- Climate Action in the Curriculum at Independent and International Schools
Dr. Clare Sisisky is leading a study on how independent and international schools are teaching the global competencies that enable and empower students to take climate action. The study is currently recruiting participants.
The study is open to all educators, regardless of grade level or discipline, who teach the skills needed for students to act or prepare to act to mitigate climate change, to adapt to the impact of climate change, and/or to seek greater justice in relation to climate issues. Some examples of these skills might include providing students with the opportunity to learn how to communicate effectively with different audiences about climate issues, to understand multiple perspectives and needs in communities most directly impacted by climate change, to build a connection with the natural world and with people across geographic and cultural differences, to evaluate options and decipher a plan for a climate action-related project, to engage and advocate as global citizens on climate issues, to engage in critical self-reflection, etc.
- BlackAt Social Media
Dr. Nicole Furlonge and Dr. Kenny Graves, assisted by graduate students, are analyzing the content of BlackAt social media accounts that have been created over the last several years to provide teachers and leaders with a data about the range of experiences of BIPOC students in predominantly white independent and international schools.
While the research is ongoing, you can read about their current findings in The Art of Listening: Using the Black@ Instagram Archive to Improve Schools in the Spring 2022 Issue of Independent School Magazine. When the research project concludes, more resources will be shared.
- On the Lower Frequencies: Education, Civic Imagination, and the Futures of Listening
Dr. Nicole Furlonge received the Gordon Institute Transformative Research Award to conduct this research during the 2025-2026 academic year. The project will explore how listening can help us imagine more connected, just, and dynamic futures—together. If your school or organization would like to participate in listening practices and explore ways to design cultures of listening and trust, please fill out this short form.
Inaugural Dissertation Fellowship
The Klingenstein Center at Teachers College supports research and emerging scholarship concerning independent and international education. Doctoral students in departments and programs at TC make inquiry into this global and complex area of education the focus of or an element of their dissertation. To support such dissertation inquiry, the Klingenstein Center offers for the first time a $10,000 doctoral research fellowship for a Teachers College student whose dissertation focuses in whole or in part on independent and international education. The deadline to apply is May 31. Learn More.
Research in Partner Schools
- Student Practicum Projects: Applied research is a participatory, emergent, inquiry, systems thinking process that drives organizational change. Klingenstein Center Full-Year program graduate students conduct applied research and consulting in partner schools under the supervision of Teachers College professors in their Practicum coursework.
If your school is interested in being a partner school in the 2024-2025 school year, please review the Practicum Program Information and the submit a design brief for consideration. Design proposals are due by September 6, 2024. The opportunity is open to all independent and international schools regardless of location as students can engage in this work remotely.
Publications and Resources
Teachers College Record—“Minding the Gap in Education Discourse: Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in Independent and International Schools”—aims to bring attention to independent and international private schools through the lenses of equity, inclusion, and belonging.
Edited by Dr. Nicole Furlonge, Dr. Kenny Graves, Dr. Thu-Nga Morris, and Dr. Sarah Odell, this special issue includes 22 articles in which scholars and practitioners address gaps in education and education leadership discourse regarding considerations of equity, inclusion, and belonging.
The desire and intention informing this special issue is to recognize the urgent need to shift and activate discourse, share ideas, cultivate dialogue, curate towards thought-partnership, and to raise up some of the work that is happening in this robust field of inquiry.
Read the full issue and individual articles via Sage Journals. If you do not have access to Sage, please contact the Center to request assistance.
- Klingbrief: Published monthly during the academic year, each issue of Klingbrief cuts through the noise to offer a carefully-curated collection of books, articles, podcasts, and other resources of import to independent and international school educators.
