For the past five years, the Office of K-12 Outreach has partnered with Western Michigan University and the High Impact Leadership (HIL) for School Renewal project. The HIL initiative is a research practice partnership (RPP) that teams with local schools to help them enact the school renewal process. It uses the appreciative lens (i.e., acknowledging what schools are already doing well) and features high-leverage leadership practices (e.g., positive core, collective ownership, evidence-based decision-making, and organizational learning) to engage schools in short cycles of continuous learning and improvement. HIL facilitators work closely with school leadership teams comprised of teachers and administrators to set an appreciative vision, take stock of current conditions, align growth targets with areas of need, enact research-based practices, monitor progress, and reflect on and renew their efforts.
Directly connecting K-12 Outreach with this project, Dr. John Lane, Outreach Specialist, has worked closely with WMU researchers Dr. Pat Reeves, Dr. Jianping Shen, and Dr. Mary Ebejer to conduct a series of HIL-focused research studies. This month, the team had the chance to present some of the findings from their work at the annual University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Wednesday, November 19th, to Saturday, November 22nd. The group’s presentations included a workshop on conducting and researching large federally-funded grants geared toward school improvement and renewal; using the appreciative lens to conduct research in schools; and designing RPPs to span boundaries, engage partnering school educators in constructing new practices, and provide resources school educators can use to bridge the research-practice divide that has long prevented research from having a powerful effect on classroom instruction.
Looking to what is next for this group of researchers, the team is now in the process of writing manuscripts for publication in scholarly and practitioner journals and presenting at the annual American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference in Los Angeles, California, in April 2026. Readers interested in learning more about the HIL project or K-12 Outreach’s support for it are encouraged to connect with Dr. John Lane at lanejoh3@msu.edu. Additionally, they can review previous coverage of the HIL project in past editions of Emerging Research in July 2024, May 2023, and September 2021.