Teachers Network Leadership Institute

TNLI is an action research initiative involving more than 100 Met-Life Fellows from 10 nationwide affiliates of the New York-based organization Teachers Network. As the Miami affiliate, The Education Fund uses TNLI to empower teachers. It trains them to utilize ongoing research to improve instruction and use their work to influence education policy decisions.

Action research is a process teachers can use to analyze the effectiveness of their instruction. Through action research, Fellows develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions to improve teaching and learning. While immersed in the on-going systematic inquiry required of action researchers, Fellows learn to challenge existing notions about what they know regarding their students. They learn what works and what doesn't work in their classrooms and use that to make their schools true communities of learning. With "action" as the operative concept, research is put into motion as educators learn by experience which approach is most effective in any given situation.

More than anything, action research involves distilling the myriad questions a teacher may have into one encompassing, researchable question that can by analyzed and quantified with data collected by methods ranging from observation and student work to interviews and surveys. Results are then collected and documented and policy recommendations are formulated. The Fellows' findings are disseminated locally and nationally in publications, meetings and conferences.

The Education Fund's TNLI university advisor is Dr. Jill Farrell, director, Ph.D. and Ed.S. curriculum and instruction programs at Barry University. The TNLI coordinator is Jill Robert, a teacher who has been a Fellow for several years.

For more information, please contact:
Lorna Valle, Program Manager
The Education Fund
at 305-892-5099 ext. 18