Dr. Kathryn Kennedy - Founder & Principal
Dr. Kathryn Kennedy is founder and principal consultant of Consult4ED Group (C4E). Kathryn is dedicated to conducting equity-informed and community-based, participatory research and evaluation to effect meaningful and intentional, systemic change and highlight programmatic impact. With over 20 years of research and evaluation experience, she enjoys collaborating with organizations and supporting them to understand their past, inform their future, and share their impact. For these organizations as well as others, she conducts research and evaluations and produces internal and external reports as well as measurement tools, playbooks, toolkits, guides, and curriculum. Kathryn partners with quantitative methodologists to support her qualitative methods. Her experience with qualitative methods includes grounded theory, The Delphi Method, phenomenology, case study, critical theory, narrative, and ethnography. She has extensive experience with data collection methods including interviews, focus groups, observation, questionnaires, documents/records, oral histories, portfolios, surveys, note taking, participant diaries/journals, storytelling, concept mapping, cognitive walkthroughs, videos/recordings, art, and participant and researcher digital artifacts. Her data analysis methods include but are not limited to grounded theory, narrative analysis, content analysis, discourse analysis, thematic analysis, and framework analysis.
She has focused on the areas of K-12 online, blended, and digital learning for over 20 years as well as SEL for teachers and students, in addition to healing trauma through somatics, for over 10 years. In addition to her consulting work, C4E also houses two programs – Wellness for Educators (formerly a 501(c)(3) nonprofit) and Embodied Change Coaching – that posit educator support and multi-faceted wellness as a catalyst for systemic whole school / district change. Kathryn holds multiple certifications in somatics and mind-body coaching (including attachment theory, internal family systems, trauma therapy, polyvagal theory, compassion-based approaches, and more) and is currently in the process of pursuing her coaching certification through ICF. She coaches educators, school & district leaders, edupreneurs, and others. She is author of the book The Mind-Body Connection for Educators (Jossey-Bass, 2023).
In the past, Kathryn served as the Director of the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, the research arm of Michigan Virtual, Director of Research for the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) (which became the Aurora Institute and now is FullScale Learning), adjunct professor and advisor for the Ed.D. program at Johns Hopkins University School of Education, and assistant professor of instructional technology at Georgia Southern University. She served on the Leadership Team for the National Standards for Quality Online Learning. She is one of the founding editors-in-chief of both the Journal of Online Learning Research and the Handbook of Research on K-12 Online and Blended Learning.