Policy Research with Impact

Sound ideas, independent thinking and better schools are the priorities for Schoolhouse Consulting and its research arm, Schoolhouse Institute. Our independent investigations, policy research, and recommendations do exert an impact by tackling vital and emerging policy issues.

You will see our impact in these key education policy areas:

Social Media Addiction and the Smartphone Generation

Schoolhouse Director Paul Bennett is now recognized as the leading Canadian researcher on school cellphone bans, social media addiction, and reclaiming the minds of children and teens.  His major research report, Weapons of Mass Distraction (MLI, July 2024) offered a comprehensive analysis of the problem and proposed a cross-sectoral strategy for policy-makers. Following its release, Paul published research commentaries for the Ottawa Citizen and Post Media dailies and provided insights on talk radio stations coast-to-coast

Dr. Bennett was one of the first Canada policy researchers to identify the disruptive effects of the intrusion of cellphones into classrooms.  It’s been a focus of his research and writing since the founding of Schoolhouse Institute. His best early known commentary on “Banning Cellphones” appeared in The Globe and Mail (March 19, 2019). He introduced the concept of “TikTok Brain” into the national conversation in a widely-read commentary (September 19, 2022) in The Hub Canada. The National Post featured Paul’s deep dive into “TikTok Brain” on its front page on “Broken Classrooms” (December 20, 2022). His critique was further developed in a webinar presentation on “TikTok Brain and Teens” at Cross-Canada researchED, November 4, 2023.

Pandemic Education Fallout

A major policy research paper, Pandemic Fallout: Learning Loss, Collateral Damage and Recovery in Canada’s Schools (Cardus, November 29, 2023), provided the most comprehensive analysis of the COVID pandemic school shutdown and its collateral damage in Canadian K-12education.  Our Research Director, Paul W Bennett, was a featured speaker on “Re-engineering the School System: Powerful Lessons of the Pandemic” at the World Education Summit, sponsored by TES Education, and delivered a “Paradigm Shifter” webinar on March 18, 2024.  He repeated that presentation at researchED Toronto on May 4, 2024 at University of Toronto Schools.  

Dr. Bennett was recognized for his pioneering work identifying  pandemic “learning loss” and its significant impact affecting students during and after the COVID-19 school closures from 2020 to 2022.  He was invited by CBC-TV’s The National in May 2022 to assess provincial pandemic recovery strategies and his analysis was featured in the initial June 6, 2022 “Learning Curve” national telecast.  Ever since, Dr.  Bennett provided expert analysis on that topic in a succession of news articles, commentaries, television clips and radio interviews. He summarized his findings in a featured presentation at researchED Toronto (May 4, 2024) 

School System Reform

Our latest book, The State of the System: A Reality Check on Canada’s Schools (McGill-Queen’s University Press, September 2020), synthesizes much of the education history and policy research conducted by Dr. Paul Bennett over the previous decade. His news commentaries and the February 2018 report, Re-engineering Education, identified critical flaws in local democratic governance and may have influenced the ultimate Nova Scotia decision to eliminate elected boards. He was recognized in March 2024 at the World Education Summit as one of the leading “Paradigm Shifters” in the Anglosphere.

Knowledge-Building Curriculum Reform

Our founder is nationally-recognized for his teaching excellence in Canadian history and expertise in curriculum reform, especially in the core subjects of history and social studies, literacy and mathematics. Teaching history is in his blood. His teaching excellence was twice recognized the Governor General’s Awards for Teaching in Canadian History (Ontario 1996 and Quebec 1999) and the Historica Memory Project (Montreal 2001). He initiated and guided the Historica Summer Institute for Secondary School Teachers in Montreal from 2000 to 2002.  

Improving history and social studies curriculum continues to be a priority. In December 2021, Alberta Education hired Paul to design and produce a history-anchored Social Studies Curriculum for Kindergarten to Grade 12. Most recently, he researched and authored a Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) research commentary entitled “Saving History in Canada’s Schools” building upon his own extensive knowledge and research in the field.

Teaching Standards and Professional Conduct

Our Schoolhouse Director is one of the few Canadian education scholars to tackle the sensitive and controversial issue of teacher misconduct and competence. On May 1, 2023, Dr. Paul Bennett presented a research paper, “Lifting the Veil and Closing the Loopholes” at the Canadian Association for the Practical Study of Law in Education (CAPSLE) Conference in Fredericton, NB. It generated a published article in November 2023 in Education and Law, Canada’s top journal in the field of education law. A decade earlier, his March 2014 research report, “Maintaining Spotless Records”: Professional Standards, Teacher Misconduct and the Teaching Profession, sparked much public debate in Nova Scotia and was featured in the April 2016 CBC-TV Marketplace investigation into “Teacher Discipline.” That body of research has earned Paul the reputation as a leading authority on upholding professional standards from province-to-province across Canada. 

School Closures, Shutdowns, and Remote Learning

Our founder is one of Canada’s best-known experts on permanent school closures and school shutdowns adversely affecting student learning and well-being. Over the past fifteen years, Dr. Paul Bennett has been in the forefront of research and advocacy in support of small schools and local communities. It’s all neatly summarized in the 2013 book, The Last Stand: Schools, Communities and the Future of Rural Nova Scotia, published with the Nova Scotia Small Schools Initiative. In January 2022, Paul delivered the Keynote Address at the Ontario Rural Education Symposium and served as a consultant in 2022-23 to the SDG United Counties, based in Cornwall, Ontario.  

Dr. Paul  Bennett’s research report on the state of Digital Online Learning in Canada (Springer Handbook on Digital Learning in K-12 Schools, 2017) was among the most widely read essays on the eve of the pandemic.  When the COVID-19 shuttered schools  in March 2020, he was much in demand during the initial phase of emergency home learning. In widely-read commentaries for The Conversation and The Globe and Mail, he also examined the potential long-term impact of  the great remote learning experiment.

Starting with the April 2010 report, Schools Out Again? and extending to the present, Paul has been in the forefront of advocacy for preserving learning time, school calendar reform, and the introduction of e-learning days. His latest international research study  (ARCS June 2022) compared school storm day losses in Nova Scotia with Massachusetts and recommended policy changes.

Inclusion and Reclaiming High Risk Students

Three research reports conducted for the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (March 2012, June 2012 and May 2015) established Dr. Paul Bennett as one of the leading authorities on inclusion, class composition and multi-tiered systems of support. A June 2013 study on Nova Scotia’s Schools Plus model of integrated services and its implementation raised concerns about its clarity of objectives, effectiveness and impact on the province’s most challenged and hard to reach children and teens. Those commentaries and presentations shaped much of the public policy discourse. 

Closing the Education Inequality Achievement Gap

Addressing educational inequalities has been a major focus for Schoolhouse Institute research and was best exemplified in the January 2019 AIMS report, Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap, comparing student results, school-by-school in the Halifax public school system. It was also featured in a four part “Postal Code Education” series in The Chronicle Herald (November 2018). The initial study evolved into an academic paper presented at the CSSE 2021 National Conference (June 3, 2021) and an April 2022 Canadian Sociology Association presentation in the Education and Law series, 2021-22.