Background
The Tripod
The legs of the “tripod” in the Tripod Project are content, pedagogy and relationships: teachers need to understand what they are teaching (content knowledge); they need multiple effective ways of communicating the material to students (pedagogy); and they need to relate to students (relationships) in ways that motivate and enable them.
Mission
The Tripod Project aims to strengthen all three legs of the tripod in ways that raise achievement for all students, while narrowing achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups.
Background
The Tripod Project was inspired by findings from a survey of middle and high school students in the then 15 (now 25) school districts of the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN). [To learn about findings from that survey, see Ronald F. Ferguson, “What Doesn't Meet the Eye: Understanding and Addressing Racial Disparities in High-Achieving Suburban Schools.” (PDF - 875K).] The project is based at the Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where Dr. Ronald F. Ferguson, the project’s creator and director, is a lecturer on the faculty and a senior research associate. Project design and implementation began in Shaker Heights in 2001 and has spread to schools in more than two-dozen districts in six states, including elementary, middle and high schools. Half of participating districts in the Tripod Project are in Ohio.