Relevance to education
Increasingly, school boards must make decisions about the burdens versus the benefits of participating in research projects. To increase the probability that an application will be accepted by either of the local school boards, researchers must be prepared to explain the relevance of their project to the field of education. Both immediate and long-term benefits of the project are to be explained in the application. To the extent possible, research should be mutually beneficial to the researcher and the school board.
Requirement for police record check
Any researcher working directly with students under the jurisdiction of either local school board must have undergone a police check within the six month period prior to submission of the application.
Completion of the Police Records Request (PRR) form can be done at the Waterloo Region Police Headquarters in Kitchener.
Verification of police records clearance must be provided to the school board as part of the research request.
Feedback and sharing results
In accepting a Waterloo Region school as a location for conducting research, researchers agree to honour the feedback arrangements in place with the local school boards. This includes providing the school principal and teachers who have sponsored the study with a letter of appreciation as soon as data collection is completed in the school, as well as a 2 to 5 page summary of the outcomes of the study when the research is completed.
Ideally, the summary should be available to the principal and teachers by the middle of June of the school year in which the study was conducted. If this is not feasible, researchers are to advise the principal and teachers when a summary will be available.