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Purpose: Educational technology ("EdTech") served a pivotal role in keeping schools functioning during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Little is known about EdTech leaders' roles in shaping this response. This study explores EdTech leaders' perspectives and backgrounds, their response to the pandemic, how they envision their roles as educators, and their perspectives about how technology facilitates educational innovation. Design/Approach/Methods: This study uses a qualitative, phenomenological approach to understand how 11 EdTech leaders experienced the pandemic. Participants were recruited for interviews in summer 2021 via purposive sampling to include diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Data were analyzed inductively. Findings: The findings show that a four-category typology can be used to describe EdTech leaders' diverse backgrounds and experiences. Leaders emphasized equity and open collaboration in their pandemic responses, by expanding access to their tools and adapting their products as users' needs evolved. EdTech leaders anticipate streamlined user experiences, improvements in online learning, and increased adoption of artificial intelligence and simulated learning environments. Originality/Value: This study addresses a gap in the research concerning EdTech leaders' perspectives on their efforts to support educators and their experiences during the pandemic. We hope this study sparks additional research on EdTech leaders' experiences and roles in education.

Purpose: This study investigates middle school students' learning experiences through digital storytelling, applying a multimodal analytical framework to uncover patterns in digital stories. This study explores how participants engage in pedagogical activities, reflect on their learning experiences, and articulate their voices through digital stories. Design/Approach/Methods: Employing qualitative case study methods, we purposefully selected three 12-year-old female students at an urban school in the northern US. Analyses of digital stories and other data sources (interviews, classroom observations, and reflective journals) show that the students were engaged in both teaching and reflection. Findings: The findings describe (1) participants and their learning experiences, (2) students' representational and interpersonal constructs as used in their digital stories, and (3) their participation as teachers as well as learners. Originality/Value: Our multimodal analytical framework illuminates how students express themselves through digital stories. Our discussion focuses on students' learning, their identity development, the effectiveness of the analytical framework, and pedagogical implications.

Korea is recognized around the world for its performance on international educational assessments and the economic development its educational system has facilitated. However, there is also a deficit in well-being among young Koreans. In response, Korean educators have developed alternative, whole person approaches. This article reports a study of one such approach, the "Hyukshin School" movement. We describe the theory and practice of Hyukshin Schools, drawing on interviews, school observations and artifact collection at 16 schools in Seoul. These schools embody progressive, whole person principles familiar elsewhere, and they integrate these with distinctive Korean ideas. This case of educational change illustrates how one reform movement is engaging the tension between highly competitive academic achievement and well-being.

The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the importance of supporting students' comprehensive well-being when teaching online. One promising approach is formative or whole-person education, which emphasizes wholeness, purpose, and community. We created a scale using a polytomous Item Response Theory modeling approach, measuring the extent to which postsecondary teachers engage in formative education online. To our knowledge, this is the first scale designed to measure this construct. The scale was developed within an exploratory sequential mixed methods study on formative education online that also included semi-structured interviews with 37 faculty members. Results from the qualitative analysis were used to develop initial items. This data-informed process increased the construct validity of the scale. We refined the original item pool through a pilot test using a sample of 308 instructors. This article presents psychometric results for the final, 10-item scale using a sample of 245 instructors. Evaluation of item fit statistics, item trace lines, and the total information curve indicate that the graded response model was appropriate for this scale. The Cronbach's alpha and marginal reliability coefficients for the final scale were 0.90 and 0.91, indicating good reliability. Future research can explore how this scale might be adapted for in-person learning environments and other contexts.