From Trinity to the world, and back again.
Each year, a delegation from Trinity heads to the annual International Boys’ School Coalition Conference. Held in various locations across the world – Auckland in 2023, London in 2024 and due to head to Belmont, Massachusetts in 2025 – the conference brings together boys’ educators from over 300 member schools and 20 countries to hear from innovative educators, discover best teaching and learning practices for boys and collaborate on new initiatives.
Trinity’s Headmaster, Mr Tim Bowden sits on the Board of Trustees which consists of a diverse group of global educators who are passionate about sharing ideas to build community and strengthen boys’ education around the world.
A significant element of the IBSC Conference experience is their Action Research Program and Trinity’s staff are always eager to be involved.
Taking place over the course of a year, participants first attend an IBSC conference where they workshop their research ideas, develop their projects, and form networks with their fellow researchers and educators. They are then supported to carry out their research, including by school-based mentors, like Trinity’s Director of Research, Dr Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn.
Over the 12 months of the Program, participants work on their research projects, observing, analysing, compiling results and writing the final report before preparing to present their findings at the next IBSC Conference.
There, they share their research methodologies, the challenges along the way, their findings, and how their findings impact best practices in their chosen areas.
Beginning the action research journey at Trinity is inclusive – the opportunity is open to all educators who are looking to submit an application to commence research – but the process can get competitive to be selected by the IBSC itself, with only 40 participants accepted each year from across the world.
“It’s a unique opportunity and quite a prestigious one,” Dr Pressick-Kilborn says. “It really offers teachers an opportunity to grow professionally and to explore the possibilities of research informing their own practice and then sharing that with others. Making your findings public is an important part of it.”
The action research experience is one that four educators from Trinity have experienced so far.
In 2023, Dr Rachel O’Brien presented her research – conducted over the prior 12 months – on the implementation of the portion of Trinity’s Life Skills Program she designed, ‘The Man Box’. The theme for the 2023 conference was ‘Shattering Stereotypes: Helping Boys Cultivate Healthy Masculinity’.
“I want to know if any of this works,” Dr O’Brien said at the time. “We want to design a curriculum that is relevant and connects with the boys’ real-life experiences and concerns. When I saw the IBSC theme, I knew it would be a good opportunity to explore this.”
While attending the 2023 conference where Dr O’Brien presented her findings, Ms Nadene O’Neill was inspired by the conference’s location in New Zealand and their rich culture.
“They sang, presented in the Māori language … they really had that sharing of culture,” she says.
All of this – and many years of thinking leading up to this – brought her to her central research question: How can the Indigenous practice of sharing story promote healthy masculinity in a House group of 8-10-year-old boys?
Throughout her action research, Ms O’Neill implemented practices from all over the world to help the boys to form those deeper connections – from the Māori tradition of Pepeha to the Australian Aboriginal traditions of yarning circles and deep listening.
“My aim was to show the boys that throughout history, across the world, strong men and men of character have become strong men because they connect through story,” she says. “I wanted to normalise the idea of sharing story and being vulnerable.”
After each activity, reflection and analysis showed that the students felt more connected to each other, growing in their understanding of each other and how known they felt.
Also presenting at the 2023 conference was Mrs Leah Arthur, from the Field Studies Centre (FSC).
Mrs Arthur’s research focused on servant leadership and the mentor program at Trinity’s FSC, with her final report titled: “They are honest with us here”: Using A Mentor Relationship To Develop Servant Leadership Characteristics in Year 9 Student Leaders.
“It’s one of the best professional development experiences I’ve undertaken. It reignited my passion for teaching and gave me more skills in educational research in particular,” she said of her experience, emphasising its importance for her own learning as well as Trinity’s advancement as a leader in boys’ education.
“Training like this exposes you to global best practices, it helps you to stay current, evaluate how we’re going in comparison to our global peers, and it makes sure that Trinity is in line with the best in the world. It makes you think about what you’re doing and why, so you can continue to evaluate and improve.”
Looking ahead to 2025
Mrs Melinda Bargwanna is the next educator to take on the IBSC Action Research Program, due to present in Massachusetts in June 2025.
As the Specialist Environmental Educator at Trinity’s Junior School, Mrs Bargwanna’s research question naturally centres on her environmentally-focused work with the students and developing the question has been an evolving process. The theme for the 2025 conference is ‘Boys and belonging: Facilitating inclusivity, diversity and connectedness’.
“The IBSC has developed an incredible program, breaking the research journey down into stages,” she says as she notes that her career trajectory so far had her coming to the Program without a strong research background. “The London conference progressed things incredibly. We were not to have developed a research question before we arrived as the mentors wanted to assist in narrowing our vision to target the specific area of focus.
“The journey is stretching and expanding my skills and capabilities as an educator and it’s been a thrilling experience to walk through the whole research process. As a Landscape Architect, the language of the teaching profession sometimes seems so foreign, but this project is drawing together many opportunities to explore environmental teaching practices from around the world.”
In Term 4 of 2024, she began conducting her research with the question: Can a student-led environmental project foster connectedness between Junior School boys? Now, she’s in the nitty gritty of sorting through the data.
Mrs Bargwanna says that she has benefited greatly from those who have gone before her in the Program. She was able to sit in on a session that Ms O’Neill ran as part of a training day in London where she ran through her process and shared her insights, while Mrs Arthur has shared her data organisation and coding systems to aid Mrs Bargwanna’s research.
Like her Trinity predecessors, Dr. Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn is her school-based Mentor. She also has a mentor from the IBSC, Kori Brown, based in Philadelphia and shared by nine of her peers in the IBSC Program.
“I meet with both mentors every few weeks and together they are great pillars of support,” she says.
The beneficiaries of Trinity-based research
The research undertaken through this program takes place on the grounds of Trinity – whether in the Green Patch at the Junior School, down in Woollamia at Trinity’s Field Studies Centre, or in the classroom on seemingly routine days.
Action research is particularly powerful as it accurately reflects what is really happening in real educational environments with real students.
The findings of the IBSC Action Research Program – whether compiled by Trinity educators or by educators from around the world – may be presented at an international conference, far from Trinity’s grounds with a hope that the findings will be taken on board in schools across the globe but it doesn’t mean that Trinity students don’t directly benefit from the research itself.
Each of Trinity’s past IBSC Action Research participants has seen the findings of their research implemented at Trinity. In Mrs Arthur’s case, she says her findings were confirmation they were building programs that benefited the students and now, the mentorship program is part and parcel of the Field Studies Program.
“Our students are the ultimate beneficiaries of each of our Trinity IBSC action research projects, as the teacher researchers seek to better understand and enhance how boys experience learning,” says Dr Pressick-Kilborn.
And, while the IBSC Action Research Program may be competitive, it’s not the only opportunity available at Trinity for staff to be involved in research.
“There are lots of opportunities to engage in research if staff would like to,” Dr Pressick-Kilborn says. “All of our Professional Learning Teams draw on research in some way. We also have a number of PLTs that allow staff to develop their own research processes.”
