Dr. Barrie Bennett is an associate professor with the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning and the Elementary Preservice Program. His research interests relate to teacher thinking, learning, and action focused on instructional practices. He seeks an understanding of how teachers acquire an instructional repertoire, how they extend and integrate it and what effect this has on student learning (kindergarten to adult).
For many years, Dr. Bennett’s work has focused on long-term systemic/sustainable change in twelve districts in three countries, working to establish graduate work, graduate programmes and courses for classroom teachers. One of Dr. Bennett’s goals is to make research a normal part of what a teacher does; to create research agendas that are part of building the internal capacity to enact change rather than relying on external researchers and external research grants.
He has written a number of books related to instruction and integrating instructional methodology and has written for a number of referred conferences. His first publications are still available from Outside the Box Learning Resources, namely: Beyond Monet, Classroom Management and Cooperative Learning.
In 2007, he was nominated for the University of Toronto President’s Teaching Award by OISE.