معرفی
Sabre Cherkowski is a Professor at the Okanagan School of Education at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. She holds the prestigious UBCO Tier 1 Principal's Research Chair in Leadership, Learning, and Wellbeing and serves as the Academic Lead for the School's Doctor of Education program. Her office is located in EME3171 and she can be reached at 250.807.9306.
Dr. Cherkowski earned her BA, BEd, MEd, and PhD from the University of Saskatchewan. Her educational background has provided the foundation for her extensive work in educational leadership and well-being.
Her research focuses on leadership, professional learning and development, educator well-being, learning communities, school organizing, and reflective practice. Dr. Cherkowski has been researching what it means for educators to grow their professional and personal potential toward flourishing at work. She examines how teacher wellbeing contributes to building positive school experiences and the role of leadership for cultivating positive workspaces. Her work brings ideas from positive psychology and positive organization studies into education to explore flourishing in schools. She investigates how schools and people in schools can flourish by attending to strengths and positive outlooks, which can increase resilience, vitality, and happiness while decreasing stress, anxiety, and depression.
Analysis of Dr. Cherkowski's recent publications reveals a consistent focus on positive leadership, well-being, and flourishing in educational contexts. Her work spans multiple educational levels from K-12 to higher education, with increasing attention to STEM education applications in recent years. She has developed frameworks for understanding organizational well-being in schools, with particular emphasis on how leadership practices can foster environments where both educators and students can thrive. Her research combines qualitative methodologies with positive organizational perspectives to generate practical insights for educational improvement.
- 2020 Researcher of the Year, Social Sciences and Humanities, UBC Okanagan Research Office
- 2022 UBCO Tier 1 Principal's Research Chair in Leadership, Learning, and Wellbeing
As a graduate student supervisor, Dr. Cherkowski has secured significant research funding, including multiple SSHRC Insight Grants totaling over $360,000 for projects examining positive leadership in K-12 schools and flourishing in educational contexts. She has collaborated extensively with researchers like Dr. Keith Walker and Dr. Benjamin Kutsyuruba on multi-year research initiatives. Her work includes the Whole School Wellbeing Project (https://leadwell.ok.ubc.ca/), which translates research into practical applications for school communities.
Dr. Cherkowski leads the Whole School Wellbeing research team, which examines wellbeing from an organizational perspective, paying attention to leadership and professional learning from the perspective of work cultures, organizational systems, as well as team and individual processes for promoting and sustaining flourishing in schools. This interdisciplinary team brings together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders to co-construct knowledge about positive school leadership and organizational development.
