During the summer of 1996, we implemented the mini-sabbatical as a pilot test.[5] The purpose of the pilot study was to assess the feasibility of implementing the six-week mini-sabbatical and to determine whether the curriculum and process would achieve the goals discussed above. In this section, we review the design of the pilot study and report our assessment findings.
Overall, we determined that the implementation is feasible, although somewhat time-consuming to organize, and that teachers were able to learn key concepts and incorporate them into the design and delivery of their curriculum units. The teacher participants were highly enthusiastic about the value of the mini-sabbatical with respect to the knowledge they gained as well as the opportunity it provided for changing teaching practice. Most participating teachers showed and expressed fairly substantial changes over the course of the mini-sabbatical that appeared to continue when they returned to their home school.