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Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) represents a tool for minoritized youth in shaping educational policies. Despite its promise, the politics of engaging in CPAR within structures ensnared in hegemonic ideologies can negate, devalue, and deny the contributions of youth voice. This study highlights how adult facilitators supporting youth researchers negotiate methodological tensions when the politics nested within oppressive structures converge with the ideals of CPAR. Using LatCrit methodology and employing affective labor theory, this qualitative study offers four counterstories interrogating the role of adult allies in CPAR, navigating the politics and perils of engaging in this work alongside minoritized students.

Inner-city school systems serving marginalized populations around the world are hindered by undemocratic and anti-public, political forces given global neoliberalism. This paper highlights a three-year case study of community organizers’ efforts to resist such forces and increase school access, equity, and local control in Detroit, MI (USA). Authors emphasize how the leadership of African American mother organizers was particularly instrumental to positive change. Literature on educational activism, leadership, and community organizing help frame the organizational and political value of the organizers’ efforts. In-depth interview, observation, and artifact data further reveal how the activist-mother-organizers, motivated by their spiritual beliefs and liberatory aims, guided effective educational reform campaigns to oppose school closure and cultivated critical hope among their fellow organizers through a process the authors name as “spiriting urban educational justice.” Spiriting urban educational justice involves enacting border crossing and boundary spanning activities to navigate placed-based politics and seek educational equity with spiritual clarity and drive. Authors discuss how school and district leaders can learn from this process and collaborate with activist-organizers who serve as spiriters of justice to improve urban schools.

The rise of online learning over the past few decades has raised fundamental questions about the kinds of “spaces” and “places” this mode of education creates. Do they support meaningful exchanges? Can they advance educational equity, access, and community-building? Are they comparable to in-person classroom experiences? The recent COVID pandemic and the global turn toward virtual learning in response have brought such questions into sharp relief. These were the questions and contextual factors that brought distinguished historian Carroll Pursell and international educational technology authority Toru Iiyoshi together for this policy dialogue. Their conversation takes readers on a wide-ranging discussion about the interplay between education, technology, and society writ large. And they offer insights into the past, present, and likely future of education in an era of accelerating technological change.Carroll Pursell is the Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History (Emeritus) at Case Western Reserve University and Distinguished Honorary Professor of History at the Australian National University. He held faculty positions at the University of California at Santa Barbara and served as the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Lehigh University. Pursell is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and former president of both the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), which also awarded him its Leonardo da Vinci Medal for outstanding contributions to the history of technology.Toru Iiyoshi is professor and director at the Center for the Promotion of Excellence in Higher Education at Kyoto University. Previously, he was a senior scholar and director of the Knowledge Media Laboratory at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He also served as senior strategist in the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Iiyoshi is a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Technology and Education and past recipient of the Outstanding Practice Award in Instructional Development and the Robert M. Gagne Award for Research in Instructional Design from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology.HEQPolicy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references to readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

Purpose This paper aims to highlight the impact that Covid-19 has had on the quality of education in prisons. This study considers the restrictive approaches taken by Her Majesty’s Prison Service during this challenging time, to argue that prisoner education is not being adequately prioritised. This study highlight issues relating to the digital divide in prisons and the lack of technological advancement, which could improve educational continuity and in-cell learning. Design/methodology/approach This study provides an examination of the broad impact the national pandemic has had on prisons and punishment, Covid-19 National Frameworks and policies relating to prison restrictions, the movements within prisoner education policy, scholarship and reflections from delivering Learning Together in HMP Full Sutton, to argue that prisoners are at the bottom of the educational hierarchy in terms of delivery, innovation and prioritisation of learner needs. However, this study proposes that some of the technologically enhanced learning is a potential solution, to transform educational equity and to reduce the digital divide. Findings This study highlights that education in prisons has taken a sudden and substantial deterioration. Findings suggest that there are few signs of this improving in the immediate future due to ongoing national restrictions. The Covid-19 prison restrictions further demonstrate the neglect of prisoners' educational needs. In addition, the national pandemic has highlighted the lack of use of technology within educational delivery in prisoners. However, findings suggest that through engaging digital learning platforms and the greater inclusions of technology in prisons, they can enhance educational opportunities and inclusive experiences for isolated learners. Research limitations/implications This is a study piece with support from a review of policy and scholarship. This is not based on data collected with serving prisoners during the national pandemic. Originality/value This study provides an overview of the current restrictions and lockdowns in prison associated with the national pandemic. Contemporary consideration to this underexplored area is essential to highlight the severe deprivations of prisoners and the fundamental impact this has had on educational delivery and much anticipated progression. Nuanced approaches to increase the use of technology within prison education are considered, in light of the challenges the pandemic has spotlighted.

Background/Context Schools and teachers are under immense pressure to adopt technology as a mechanism of educational equity. As such, it is important to understand what school-level practices can support more meaningful technology integration in classrooms. This is especially critical in a time (during the COVID-19 pandemic) when digital learning has been forcibly implemented nationwide, and scholars are voicing concerns that educational organizations’ choices about technology now may lead to lasting issues of power and control, new forms of student inequity, and other unexpected effects. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study examines a blended personalized learning school—a school designed to offer a combination of computer-based learning experiences and face-to-face instruction—to demonstrate how leaders can help teachers integrate technology into their classrooms in a meaningful and sustainable way. The research question is: What school practices support teachers to successfully incorporate technology into the classroom? Setting The research site is Binary High School, a personalized learning charter high school in a large urban area that primarily serves historically disadvantaged students. Participants: The participants include the content teachers in Grades 9–11, as well as the school founder, the principal and assistant principal, the student services coordinator, data analysis coordinator, and the IT director. Research Design This research stems from a three-year qualitative case study of a high-tech personalized learning charter high school. I conducted 37 interviews with teachers, students, staff, and administrators and observed dozens of classes, several parent nights, and many professional development meetings and staff meetings. I also collected hundreds of physical and digital documents. Findings/Results The pilot teacher program supported technology integration and showed how distributed leadership practices—specifically, providing opportunities and building capacity for a more collaborative, horizontal leadership structure, supporting teacher professionalization, and sharing the responsibilities for leadership across stakeholders at multiple levels—can support technology-driven educational initiatives. Conclusions/Recommendations For schools interested in technology-based instructional models, a pilot teacher program similar to the one described in this article may be worth exploring. More generally, adopting a distributed perspective of leadership and drawing on practices that exemplify that perspective can help to engage teachers in schoolwide technology integration and classroom reform.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Emergency Remote Teaching through Online Learning (ERT-OL) has become the prevalent form of learning at many universities worldwide. At the same time, voices around the world have pointed to difficulties in online learning in general and to concerns regarding educational equity in particular. The current study sought to increase knowledge about specific hindering elements in ERT-OL and about the relationships between these elements from the standpoint of the following equity factors-socioeconomic status, language, and juggling among students who are also parents or working. To this end, the study analyzed 154 open-ended textual statements concerning the difficulties perceived by students at a university in Israel. The qualitative thematic analysis generated a map of hindering elements categorized in terms of a) processes: technology, pedagogy, content, situation and individual characteristics, and b) outcomes: cognitive, affective, social, and physical. The map revealed a mesh of intricate mediating and moderating links whose effect can intensify for each equity factor. On the positive side, seeds of mitigating strategies emerged as well. The study advances knowledge regarding ERT-OL hindering elements and their relationships and provides a better understanding of how these debilitating relationships may be exacerbated when equity factors are considered. Researchers and teachers interested in ERT-OL or in "normal" online learning in the future can use the map as a research and teaching framework to identify inequities and prevent further gaps.

How do compliance occupations successfully navigate complex institutional environments characterized by changing policy initiatives, managerial logics, unclear expectations, and competition from other occupational groups? This article examines the work of Title IX Coordinators at U.S. Colleges and Universities, who often hold dual roles, operate at lower levels within the institution, and lack the necessary resources to do their work. Using interviews, surveys, professional association materials, and Title IX job ads, this paper describes how Title IX Coordinators adapt to a complex institutional environment and overcome these obstacles in their efforts to enforce Title IX. Title IX Coordinators develop and create collaborative networks of expertise that develop and build shared institutional influence. Using pre-existing relationships and sharing information and expertise, Title IX Coordinators partner with legal counsel, campus police, human resources, ombuds, student affairs, and other occupations to co-produce Title IX compliance.

This study investigates how educational equity is applied in university preparatory classes from the perspective of minority students. It explores minority students' access to, participation and outcomes in preparatory classes, as well as the factors that influence their experience and attitude. Using a mixed research method, 320 students from a School of Minzu Education were surveyed and further in-depth interviews were conducted with seven respondents. This study finds that minority students from cities and towns are more likely to get into preparatory classes. Moreover, the fairness of the access to preparatory classes is questioned between various ethnic minority groups and even within the same ethnic group. In terms of participation in preparatory classes, preparatory classes play a positive role in promoting integration between Han and ethnic minorities and educational equality. However, minority students in preparatory class lack a sense of belonging to the affiliated university due to insufficient recognition of their cultural and linguistic background in class and community activities. The findings indicate that the outcomes of preparatory classes were mainly reflected in minority students' academic performance and perception towards preparatory classes. The outcomes differed depending mainly on the family income, ethnic origins and the high schools they attended.

This article illustrates how a social innovation, Figurenotes, has contributed and can contribute,through conceptual change, to the advancement of equity in Basic Education in the Arts (BEA),Finland’s publicly funded system of extracurricular music education. BEA has traditionally beencharacterised by structures and pedagogical practices–such as the use of Western standard musicnotation–that influence the accessibility of music studies. The theoretical framework for this interviewstudy consists of change-theoretical concepts: namely, social innovation, multiple streams, andpolicy windows. The findings are presented at two levels. First, the innovation process of Figurenotesis described to explain social innovation development. Second, three different strands of discourseon the concept of special music education expose the educational policy change generated by thisinnovation. The findings suggest that the use of Figurenotes has raised awareness of inequity in theinstitutional agenda and has encouraged this problem to be addressed through the public policyprocess. The opening of this policy window is critically discussed in relation to the establishmentof the field of special music education, and in relation to inclusion and equity policies as well asexclusion.

The East Carolina University International EdD supports school leaders in the United States and across the globe to address local educational equity challenges. To achieve this, we prepare and support school and district leaders to use evidence as practitioner-researchers together with members of their educational community. As a result, the reimagined EdD harnesses the power and utility of participatory action and activist research to address a contextualized, equity-focused dissertation in practice. We explore how two doctoral students have transformed their practices during and after their EdD experience.

For the first time since 1968, local education authorities in Washington, D.C. embarked on a contentious process of engaging communities as part of a comprehensive revision of the city’s student assignment and school boundary policies in 2013. Despite the potentially divisive nature of the issue, public deliberation went beyond re-drawing school boundaries to address a broad range of educational equity issues in the city. Based on extensive qualitative data interpreted through a policy knowledge framework (Dumas and Anderson in Educ Policy Anal Arch, 2014, https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n11.2014 ), I present D.C.'s community engagement process as a case that represents alternative possibilities for educational change in global contexts when policy is derived through a deliberative process that embraces the complexity of schooling contexts, utilizes qualitative methods, and addresses inequality. Limitations of the process are also discussed.

Background/Context Men of color have been the focus of a growing number of research studies, as educators and policy makers attempt to address educational equity gaps along the P–20 pipeline. Compared with other educational settings, less attention has focused on how to increase persistence and graduation rates of men of color pursuing baccalaureate degrees. Yet national statistics over the past two decades show that men of color in colleges and universities graduate at lower rates than all other populations, including their same-race women peers. Interventions and supports for men of color in higher education often rely on siloed programmatic efforts that focus on the student as the primary unit of change. Little is known about how to create organizational change that addresses institutional barriers to equity. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This research examines a collaborative, equity-based inquiry approach to respond to equity gaps for men of color in college. The purpose of this article draws on the theory of relational agency to understand how practitioners of color worked together to design an institution-wide intervention that would benefit students and simultaneously drive institutional change. Guiding questions are: (1) How did relational agency manifest itself in the collaborative process of creating a cohort-based framework for undergraduate men of color at a predominantly White institution? (2) What is the impact of the collaborative process on the practitioners who were involved? Research Design This study uses a social design experiment (SDE) approach to examine what happens when staff of color on a predominantly White campus come together to address educational inequities for men of color. Pursuing this investigation through an SDE framework enabled us to apply a holistic perspective to real-world activities and our observations of them as researchers who co-constructed an intervention with participants. Conclusions/Recommendations We propose the concept of cross-racial agency as a unique form of relational agency in which practitioners of color use design-based approaches to work across professional and racial boundaries toward a shared goal. We suggest that developing communities of practice through this approach could lead to more enriched and comprehensive responses and to systemic organizational change.

Social scientists’ involvement with the legal system is critical for tackling inequities in education and informing legal developments in ways that are grounded in empirical realities that document...

What does it mean to expand the epistemological terrain in education research to improve educational equity? This feature article attends to this question by opening a national conversation with education researchers who take up intersectionality in their study of Black women in higher education, specifically, the application of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality dimensions—structural, political, and representational. We surveyed the authors of 23 peer-reviewed research studies that engaged intersectionality across Crenshaw’s dimensions. Findings showed that the majority of the studies were published in journals with low-impact factors. Additionally, authors indicated that they experienced pushback in the publishing process, including having to justify their work to journal editors and responding to reviewers who did not value their work. Implications are discussed.

With the continuous accumulation of application data of various business information systems of network and informatization, a campus big data environment with distinctive characteristics of colleges and universities has been formed. Through the in-depth mining and analysis of the existing smart campus data using big data technology, based on the support of intelligent decision-making, personalized adaptive learning analysis and campus security warning of big data, and using the results to feed back the improvement of information literacy of university teachers and students in the era of big data, the construction of ubiquitous learning environment is carried out, which points out the direction for the construction of ubiquitous learning environment to explore the role of big data in improving the quality of education, promoting educational equity and optimizing educational philosophy, so as to improve the ubiquitous education environment.

More historically White institutions of higher education are compelled to respond, in some way, to increased activism and awareness of continued legacies of racism and racial crises on campuses. The author suggests that how schools wrestle with their legacies of racism and/or respond to student demands to right racial wrongs on campus might be considered university acts of racial redress. Through a Critical Race Theory inspired chronicle, the author argues that seemingly positive university acts of racial redress such as policies, place un/naming, or public statements are, in fact, Racial Symbols that do little to change the material realities of racially marginalized people on campus.

This paper describes the Educational Equity Partnership Project (EEPP), a multi-week five-module partnership in professional development (PD) involving approximately 50 teacher leaders in 32 Title 1 schools in the sixth largest school district in the United States. The EEPP was designed to support teacher leadership praxis in the quest for equity and social justice in public education. This study highlights the learning outcomes of the first three modules, focusing on culturally relevant pedagogy, multicultural curriculum development, and equity in schools. The analysis of participants’ survey data following each module revealed that critical consciousness emerged along four dimensions, with the key concepts serving as a lens for recognizing inequitable structures and critical self-reflection and enhancing participants’ sense of agency. The results underscore the need for educational professionals to commit to long-term, ongoing PD in critical multiculturalism, where critical consciousness and mindset shift are central to the professional capital developed.

In this paper, critical race theory and critical race praxis for educational research are used to frame an analysis of the 1998 Amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA98) that limits access to financial aid for students who have been convicted of a drug felony. The authors explain how the HEA98 disenfranchises Black and Latinx college student populations. This policy is a form of institutional racism against the disproportionately large number of Black and Latinx individuals that have been convicted of drug-related crimes, which creates a caste system of college access and support. This policy analysis highlights data on incarcerated populations that link the policing of drug offenses to racial profiling and discrimination (e.g., “the War on Drugs” and the 1994 Crime Bill), questions the motivations for reducing access to education in drug offenders, reviews causes and inhibitors of recidivism in drug offenders to make the case for the promotion of education in recently-released offenders, and highlights empirical data that supports expanding access to these people. The authors conclude the paper with recommendations to progress toward racial educational equity. This paper is directed toward higher education scholars, practitioners, and policy makers who possess a strategic critical orientation towards racial equity in education.

Education research that omits or insufficiently defines geographic locale can impair policy formulation, enactment, and evaluation. Such impairments might be especially detrimental for communities in rural and/or remote areas, particularly when they pertain to gifted education programs that struggle to operate at large scale (e.g., Advanced Placement). To enhance researchers’ precision when analyzing school-level data, we developed five statistical approaches to operationalize rurality and remoteness using the Urban-Centric codes from the National Center of Education Statistics. With national data, we found important variations across these statistical approaches in (a) percentage of schools identified as rural and/or remote, (b) effect sizes, and (c) characterizations of schools’ relative disadvantage in the breadth of opportunity to learn Advanced Placement content that they provide. These findings challenge prevailing practices of classifying communities dichotomously as nonrural or rural. The authors demonstrate several ways to address policy makers’ and practitioners’ needs by incorporating geographic locale into analyses of school data, operationalizing geographic locale precisely in theoretically sound ways, and avoiding dichotomies that can obscure meaningful variation.

School choice policy is ubiquitous in urban school districts. Evidence suggests that it has not fully delivered on its proponents’ promises of equitable educational opportunity. While scholars and policymakers scrutinize data to determine school choice’s equity outcomes, little attention has been paid to how school choice policy directly influences youth understanding of educational equity and opportunity. This study therefore explores how youth who engage with school choice policy come to understand and act upon the distribution of educational opportunities, and the extent to which their understandings and actions vary by social identity, family resources, school resources and admissions outcomes. 36 youth, engaged in the high school choice process, participated in this study, which is guided by policy enactment theory. Across subgroups, participants overwhelmingly valued merit as the best principle by which to distribute educational opportunity. Alongside this near-universal embrace of merit and widespread participation in choice policy-required actions, those who accessed the highest-performing schools often did so by activating non-academic resources that required financial capital. These findings highlight a shared ritual that serves to instantiate and reinforce ideals of meritocracy. Findings inform our discussion of school choice policy’s educational equity and civic implications.

This theoretical article focuses on reasonable accommodation in education by offering conceptual tools that could prove beneficial in resolving policy concerns for equity in music education. Providing reasonable accommodation entails making necessary and appropriate modifications that may include depending on the circumstances, physical or interaction-related changes. From the perspective of teacher autonomy, this article focuses on two aspects of reasonable accommodation: (a) its definition and (b) its implications for music education practice. Responsibility for reasonable accommodation is considered in the context of Finnish music education through three illustrations that address matters such as music notation and instrument selection. We conclude that the concept of reasonable accommodation offers students and teachers tools to prevent disadvantageous musical and pedagogical conventions from being enforced at the level of the local curriculum and through teachers’ actions, potentially resulting in inequities and discrimination. publishedVersion

Purpose:Despite an explosion of professional development to help educators discuss issues of race and equity, expectations for addressing racial disparities outstrip current leadership practices, and scant empirical research exists on the organizational changes that emerge from the work of equity teams. This study examined equity teams’ theories of organizational change for equity and how those theories related to their efforts to change school policies and practices. Research Methods/Approach: Drawing on institutional logics from organizational theory, this comparative case study examined transcripts and fieldnotes from 22 meetings and 27 interviews with two school equity teams in diverse contexts in the Pacific Northwest. Findings: Despite differences in the principals, team conversations, and organizational contexts, we found that both teams’ discussions asserted a primary theory of change for shifting schools toward greater equity. According to this “commonsense” notion, efforts to become more equitable as a school first require shifts in individuals’ understandings, beliefs, and attitudes—changes to “hearts and minds”— prior to engaging in other actions to address organizational change. Ultimately, our findings suggest that the dominance of a hearts-and-minds-first theory of change constrained changes to organizational policies, structures and practices. Conclusions: Alternative theories of change to catalyze equity-focused organizational shifts hold promise for fostering educational justice. Future participatory design research with schools may yield knowledge of multiyear organizational change.

Research in school discipline suggests that punitive and exclusionary sanctions have adverse effects on students and are disproportionately administered to students of color and low-income students...

Deaf-Latinx K–12 students are the largest group of racially minoritized students in the US, lagging far behind the complimentary proportion of Deaf-whites in obtaining degrees. Educational institutions have sustained and reproduced privilege and inequality patterns. This article explores how using Deaf-Latinx Critical Theory (Deaf-LatCrit) in educational research facilitates Deaf-Latinx epistemology, intersectionality, and cultural intuition in autoethnography. It effectively captured how I, a first-generation DeafChicana college student, navigated structural inequity in educational institutions. When extant literature and resources are limited, counter-stories must be included to expand knowledge about issues of educational equity, and promote accountability, decision-making, and action. Autoethnography validates my DeafChicana existence and calls for attention to multiple interlocking issues within the educational system. Deaf-LatCrit and autoethnography provided the platform for me to conduct this study, which derives primarily from my own higher educational experiences. This Deaf-Latinx ethnographic study provided me a valuable tool and a safe outlet to reflect on my academic experiences, and exposed five thematic concerns: raciolinguicism, interpreter quality, classroom exclusion, institutional and structural systems, and professional development. Recommendations are included to help individuals become more aware of unconscious and conscious discriminations so we can together improve support for DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, Deaf, and Hard of Hearing-Latinx students in higher education.

The paper explores the equity concerns that arise from the intersection of special education systems and educational leadership at the district level, examining how three district-level special education leaders and their teams comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the pursuit of racial equity in special education. The central research questions guiding the paper are: How do educational leaders and their teams enact compliance with IDEA in the pursuit of educational equity in varying social contexts? And what are the equity implications of these understandings of policy compliance? Data for the paper come from a comparative ethnographic project that the author conducted in the 2011–2012 school year. The data analysis revealed that administrators leverage a contextually bound logic of compliance ( Kramarczuk Voulgarides, 2018 ) that, despite their best intentions, (re)produces racial disparities within their local contexts. The paper concludes with a discussion about how social-justice-oriented leadership must consider the effects of the logic of compliance as educational leaders work to address complex equity concerns in special education.

Purpose While educational shifts in response to COVID-19 at the state, district and school-level may have been grounded in the best of intentions, these decisions may not fully respond to the everyday realities of teachers, parents, caregivers and students living within historically marginalized communities. In addition to evidence-based and pragmatic approaches to emergency remote teaching (ERT), there is also a need to understand the experiences of students and families living in urban and rural contexts, who in light of existing educational inequities, are being further exposed to inequitable access due to school closures and the abrupt shift to ERT. This paper aims to use a reflexive dialogic approach to explore these issues. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from a larger phenomenological study highlighting the lived experiences of families being impacted by emergency shifts in educational policy and practice, this paper presents a dialogue between two teacher-educators of color working directly with teachers and administrators in the K-12 system across urban and rural contexts. This dialogue acknowledges and interrogates inequitable educational practices exacerbated by the pandemic for marginalized communities, and the shared responsibility of supporting the most vulnerable students as they transition to ERT. Findings Reflecting across their local contexts, the authors highlight the importance of educational decision-making that centers the perspectives of families in local communities; develop both pedagogical and structural approaches to address educational inequities; and purposefully approach ERT to disrupt such inequities and move toward a vision of educational justice. Social implications Broader implications of this discussion speak to the ever-widening divide between marginalized and dominant communities, which undergirds the and educational inequities that continue to threaten the academic achievement of all students. Originality/value As educational decision-makers imagine new pathways in the days ahead, this dialogue highlights the importance of keeping complex issues of educational inequity at the center of the conversation.

States have increasingly used ballot initiatives to legislate education policy in recent years, although the consequences for educational equity and justice have been underexamined. This article investigates the extent to which ballot initiatives disproportionately affect traditionally minoritized students, with particular attention to two phenomena: tyranny of the majority and racial threat hypothesis. Results across models consistently find that minority-targeted education initiatives pass at significantly higher rates than those that do not target minoritized students, and they garner considerably more yes votes regardless of passage. For states with more people of color, this effect is magnified, suggesting the potential for tyranny of the majority may increase when there are greater proportions of people of color within a state. This research contributes to the body of literature regarding the impact of state-level policy on education and sheds light on the benefits and potentially negative consequences of the ballot initiative process as an education policy making tool, particularly for our nation’s most disadvantaged students.

Este estudio colectivo de “casos típicos” por muestreo teórico tiene el objetivo de caracterizar las aspiraciones de jóvenes que egresaron recientemente de los Telebachilleratos Comunitarios (TBC) en Morelos. Con base en entrevistas semiestructuradas, se obtuvo una valoración sobre el TBC desde la mirada de sus egresados; se identificaron obstáculos y apoyos que delinearon sus aspiraciones distinguiendo entre quienes continuaron sus estudios y quienes no lo hicieron. Se encontró que son los primeros quienes ejercen más su capacidad de aspiración. Con la intención de contribuir desde la investigación a la mejora de sus condiciones y perspectivas a futuro, en las conclusiones se ofrecen orientaciones para fortalecer estos espacios donde la educación media superior (EMS) se puede hacer llegar a personas en situación vulnerable, empoderándolos y ampliando sus posibilidades de superación con equidad, menos injusticia y de manera más digna.

Secondary schools in Ghana are mainly classified as day or day/boarding, single sex or mixed, stratified into resourced (elite) or less resourced whilst academic delivery is via academic or technical-vocational programmes. This categorization has also bred performing and underperforming inequities suggesting the absence of equal access to quality and learning conditions across all the schools. With equity among the aims of the free senior high school policy, we investigate how the distribution of policy resources in six diverse schools creates or bridges inequities across schools and solicit ways of improving implementation challenges of the policy. Meanwhile, existing research examined the enrollment rates and impacts of this policy whilst previous literature on equity was derived from other jurisdictions which set the benchmarks for examination in this study. Underpinned by the theory of equal educational opportunity, we unmasked that although the free senior high school policy has granted free access to public senior high schools, the policy ensures freer education to boarding students than day students. The thrust is, the policy’s coverage of schools’ recurrent expenditure calculated per school population seems equitable. However, inequity stems from schools’ different capital requirements due to the resource disparities among schools. The policy’s response to these inequities is by reserving 30% slots in 82 elite schools for students from public basic schools. We argue that this direction defeats meritocracy and thus, underperforming senior high schools must be improved so that there can be equal access to quality and learning conditions across all schools. Although all the schools received similar benefits apart from the residential and feeding differences, technical schools received additional materials purported to enhance their specialty. Participants appealed for the provision of textbooks for elective subjects whilst others maintained that buying of books should be handed over to parents. Due to the resource disparities, deprived schools simultaneously appealed for increased capital expenditure to meet their capital requirements in addition to the request from all the schools for funds and goods to be released on time.

A robust body of geographic education policy research has been amassing over the past 25 years, as researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds have recognized the value of examining education phenomena from a spatial perspective. In this chapter, I synthesize 42 studies that examine education issues using a geographic information system, or GIS. The review is framed by the major thread that runs through this body of research: educational equity, access, and opportunity. I summarize the research within seven theme-based research topics and offer examples of geospatial analysis as applied to education. The chapter includes a discussion of the major barriers and limitation facing GIS researchers and offers thoughts about the future.

In this article, we highlight the affordances of agency that is not merely individual, but rather emerges in and through collectivities. We take up these issues within the context of our own work i...

School discipline is a salient challenge in K–12 districts nationwide. The majority of prior studies have focused on suspensions with relatively little attention paid to other forms of exclusionary discipline. This mixed-methods study provides a descriptive analysis of overlooked disciplinary consequences, namely, assignment to alternative schools, expulsions, and referrals to hearing. The findings from the quantitative analysis indicate that possession of drugs, student and staff assault, and weapons-related incidents account for the majority of infractions leading to the most severe forms of exclusionary discipline. Black male students account for the largest proportion of students receiving the harshest exclusionary disciplinary consequences. The findings from the qualitative analysis reveal several challenges that policymakers in urban districts navigate regarding alternative schools, including (a) staffing and the development of professional capacity, (b) the length of the school day, (c) transportation, and (d) the choice between in-district versus third-party operation of alternative schools.

As high school and college graduates enter today's highly competitive and diverse, globalized economies, cultural competence and social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies continue being essential skills for college, career, and life success. These capabilities are more than valuable assets, they are employability requirements in a modern workforce dependent on navigating relationships and interactions between people from different backgrounds. In education, educators are increasingly expected to cultivate these skills within equitable learning environments for all students, international and domestic. Recent research demonstrates greater need to support international students in the United States who often experience unique academic barriers, stressors, and lack of support services for managing international relocation and integration into unfamiliar academic and cultural systems. To better understand how culturally responsive SEL education can serve as a lever for increasing equitable conditions for international students and to contribute research-based practices on how distance learning can strengthen culturally responsive SEL skills, the following chapter introduces how one online academic and cultural studies course influenced high school and undergraduate international students. Through qualitative and quantitative sources (e.g., written homework reflections; cultural orientation indicator (COI) report; paper: My Action Plan; course evaluation survey), themes emerged from the data that identified how explicit online SEL education, using a culturally responsive lens, contributed to gains in cultural competence, educational equity, academic and professional development, and self-efficacy.

This study presents two U.S. school development projects aimed at building leadership capacity for continuous school development that attempts to use “evidence-based” ideas from the standpoint of education values and understandings with a renewed sensitivity to culturally diverse students in South Carolina schools. The Lowcountry Educator Initiative (LEI) uses a professional development program designed for educators from various schools. School Improvement through Improvement Science (SITIS), stems from a larger university-school partnership initiative that includes other institutions around the United States. The two projects serve as compelling examples that push on the limited scope that federal and local policy requirements place on educational institutions to provide evidence of improvements that lead to educational success. This work offers qualitative evidence that honors, recognizes, and leverages the strengths of the participants’ contexts to facilitate improvement in practice. The projects implemented offer evidence for (1) providing leadership support for school improvement efforts, (2) the use of local context in improving practice, and (3) the valuing of various data to engage in locally-relevant and appropriate work. We recommend centering the local context and improvement science approaches in research design, research funding, and educator preparation.

Transformational family engagement fundamentally changes relationships between families and schools and interrupts deeply held beliefs about low-income, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, or immigrant families, each of which are rooted in systems of racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, and their intersections. In this paper, we use a community-based collective impact theoretical framework to better understand how the KY Collaborative is aligned with transformational family engagement strategies and promotes and implements systemic, statewide evidenced-based family engagement policies and practices. We present data from interviews with KY Collaborative partners, observations of KY Collaborative events and activities, and survey data. Key findings suggest the KY Collaborative leverages each regional partner’s strengths to break through historical barriers that fail to acknowledge the critical role families play both within and outside of schools. Their collective programs and services demonstrate a commitment to strengthening families, building capacity amongst schools and educators, and supporting communities to achieve educational equity. Our findings present implications for other statewide family engagement centers and community-based collaborations for transformational family engagement by highlighting the ways in which the KY Collaborative develops bottom-up leadership, builds dual capacity, shifts power, attends to policy change, and diffuses shared messages, visions, and practices statewide.

Summary Addressing the USA diversity gap in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEM-M) through strategic alliance partnerships (SAPs) is an innovative solution toward combating the educational inequalities presented in K-12 education for marginalized youth interested in STEM-M professions. We present a model that unites multiple stakeholder s committed to diversifying the workforce in STEM-M, through the implementation of a multi-year high school pipeline program designed to better achieve STEM-M equity, access and opportunity at the secondary school level. We developed a unique model based on an SAP in a large metropolitan area in the Midwest that joins an Academic Medical Center and a local Public High School. Our results involving 46 students over 8 years demonstrate 100% high school graduation rates; 97% college attendance with full or partial scholarship support, and early evidence of post-graduation aspirations in STEM-M careers. Our early progress calls for more rigorous study against standard educational practices. If our program is proven to be more effective, then potentially more strategic public−private partnerships to foster K-12 pipeline programs to better achieve equity through educational access, opportunities and resources should be developed and targeted for those marginalized youth that have been historically denied STEM-M opportunities. After 10 years of dedicated effort, we see evidence of potential benefits of this SAP to develop K-12 pipeline programs with similar aims of STEM-M diversification, particularly by way of more-equitable provision of educational opportunities to students belonging to minority racial and ethnic groups.

The New Zealand Teaching Council’s Leadership Strategy vision is:To enable every teacher, regardless of their role or setting, to have the opportunity to develop their own leadership capability so that through principled and inspirational leadership, a culturally capable, competent and connected teaching profession achieves educational equity and excellence for all children and young people in Aotearoa New Zealand (Education Council, 2018b, p. 4). There is however a lack of clarity about how this vision can be achieved. While there is a growing range of literature concerning ECE leadership emerging from New Zealand, highlighting shared or distributed approaches (Hill, 2018), the role of the positional leader and distributed leadership (Denee & Thornton, 2017), and leadership dispositions within leadership development (Davitt & Ryder, 2018), there is limited literature exploring the practices of educational leadership within New Zealand ECE services. This study explores how educational leadership is practised through internal evaluation processes in New Zealand ECE services and how these practices support the professional capabilities and capacities of teachers. Previous research has highlighted that a practice approach to leadership removes the focus on the individual leader and allows leadership to emerge from collective action. The objectives of this research were: to develop a better understanding of how educational leadership is practised through internal evaluation processes; explore what challenges or enables teachers to become involved and practise educational leadership through internal evaluation processes; and to understand how services monitor the impact of changes on teaching practice, made as a result of an internal evaluation. This qualitative research, which took the form of an interpretive case study, was framed around a single case design with multiple units of analysis. Data were gathered from three participating ECE services through interviews, focus groups and observations, and drew on the perspectives of both teachers and positional leaders. A reflexive thematic data analysis approach was employed, and four key themes were developed: identification with leadership; supportive workplace culture; continuous improvement; and effective leadership practices in ECE services. This case study concludes that there is a complexity in the ways ECE teachers identify with leadership, restricted by a belief that leadership requires a formal title, with teachers often unaware of their own leadership practices. A supportive workplace culture can encourage and promote leadership, while a cycle of continuous improvement can promote quality teaching practices. Finally, seven effective leadership practices were identified: relational leadership; creating the conditions for teamwork; engagement; knowledge expertise and sharing opinions; shared decision making; facilitating and guiding and accountability and organisation. This study contributes to our further understanding of educational leadership in New Zealand ECE services, in particular the practices of leadership.

As the positive impact of social emotional learning (SEL) has become widely recognized, there is increasing demand for SEL programs to address the diverse cultures, identities, and experiences of all students in the classroom, in particular students of color and other youth impacted by structural inequality. SEL programs increasingly provide resources and guidance to ensure that diverse students are represented in materials and content and to help educators understand how culture plays a role in the development and expression of SEL competencies. However, few programs are intentionally designed with equity in mind and even fewer examine how historical and structural inequalities impact both the teaching and learning of SEL skills. While many believe that SEL is well-positioned to play a role in creating learning environments where students of all cultures, races, identities, and backgrounds feel safe, respected, and empowered, the link between equity and SEL is not always clear. Furthermore, despite existing well-established, research-grounded practices from which to draw in other fields, the field of SEL currently lacks a coherent and unified definition of what constitutes equitable SEL and what equitable SEL looks like in the classroom. As schools and other educational settings strive toward creating more equitable learning environments for students, the field of SEL needs a clearer viewpoint and explicit practices describing how equity can be better integrated into SEL programming and practice. This paper describes the need for equitable SEL, summarizes existing research and practices, and provides a set of recommendations for implementing them effectively in schools and other educational settings. We begin with a brief exploration of the relationship between educational equity and SEL, describing the potential for SEL to create more equitable, inclusive, and just learning environments. Next, we present key perspectives from the literature that shape current views on how issues of equity can be integrated into SEL programming and practice, proposing a set of principles and definition for equitable SEL. Finally, we discuss the current state of PreK-5 SEL programs, using findings from a content analysis to describe the extent to which programs address equity in lessons and promote transformative SEL skill building.

Although school choice advocates often promote a vision of additional schooling options for all students, the predominant target of school choice researchers has been densely populated, urban cores in the United States. However, this belies the fact that many rural communities have similarly engaged in forms of school choice decision-making. While we do not argue for further encroachment of school choice policies in rural contexts, we believe there are myriad, novel opportunities for meaningful education research regarding school choice, equity, and conceptions of rurality. To advance toward a robust agenda for rural school choice, we review the existing literature on school choice and rural education, provide key recommendations, and assert the need for additional consideration of the following: critical socio-political histories and theories; methodological diversity; issues of race, racism, sexual orientation, and equity; social-emotional learning and development; impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic; and broadened understandings of rurality.

The purpose of this chapter is to critically analyze the historical relations between Black students and the American education system. In particular, this chapter is designed to challenge the status quo and examine the ways in which the K-12 educators today can mind the margins and remedy oppressive approaches to academically preparing and supporting Black students. Persistent informal educational tracking practices, an influx of education programs designed to segregate students, and educator biases all raise critical questions that must be addressed concerning educational equity for Black students.

Physicians are in a position to take action and lead to actively mitigate against bias and discrimination. Social justice, diversity, and racial, gender, and SGM (sexual and gender minority) equity are sensitive issues. Few orthopaedic surgeons are minorities or female, and orthopaedic surgery is not perceived to be an inclusive specialty. This is an obstacle to equitable diverse hiring. As it takes almost 30 years to advance from preschool to orthopaedic fellowship graduation, we should advocate for educational equity beginning in early childhood. We should serve as role models for young people of all backgrounds and suggest that if they are dedicated and study hard, someday they too could become orthopaedic surgeons and researchers. Wherever possible, each of us in our own way and position should take a leadership role to resolve the disparities in our profession.

The author argues that providing students with access to resources—without the necessary supports to make full use of that access—creates educational inequity.

Recent societal and political shifts have underscored the need for higher education programs to examine and reflect on the ways in which they address equity and social justice. As teacher-educators...

Recent Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal charges involving standardized testing have renewed public scrutiny over the tests’ role in reproducing inequities and wealth-based privileges. Although some continue to call for the eradication of standardized testing, this article presents a different perspective with a threefold purpose. First it provides a critical review of the existing literature on standardized testing including the newest development: geographical bias in testing or the systemic and systematic ways in which place-based resources influence test-takers’ performance. Second, it discusses the goals and consequences of the College Board’s recently unveiled “adversity score,” designed as a tool to “boost admission prospects” of students facing additional challenges in their neighborhoods and schools. Finally, it offers a conceptual and methodological framework and policy insights to shift the role of these tests as reproducers of inequalities to enhancers of equity and opportunity into what is termed true college access: enrollment with realistic prospects of success.

This article explores how one cohort of first-in-family students narrated their movement into and through university, proposed as a form of boundary crossing. These metaphors emerged from the stori...

Despite decades of often ambitious policies in Australia, languages education is still characterized by intermittent commitment to the teaching of languages, with inequitable access particularly entrenched in rural and regional contexts. While research has focused on the practical and material constraints impacting on policy implementation, little research has investigated the role of the discursive terrain in shaping expectations and limitations around what seems achievable in schools, particularly, from the school principal perspective. Beginning with an overview of policy interventions and an analysis of contemporary challenges, we use Q methodology to identify and analyze viewpoints at work in similarly-positioned rural and regional schools. In doing so, we seek to determine what seems possible or impossible across settings; the role of principals in enabling and constraining pathways for the provision of school language programs, and the need for macro-level language policy to be informed by constraints specific to rural and regional contexts.

Little is known about the role of local school boards in the policy-making process, particularly in terms of educational equity. Framed by concepts from existing scholarship on school board effecti...

The practice of online learning can appreciably enhance administrative, communicative, and educational qualities, support learning using scarce resources and limited infrastructure, and encourage educational equity through flexible place and time usage. Although researchers have examined online learning usage within multiple situations, the roles of task-technology-fit (TTF) and compatibility as mediating variables have not been investigated through Delone and Mclean's model of IS success. Survey data gathered from 448 students across nine public universities within Yemen was collectively analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM) using SmartPLS 3.0. The findings comprised six primary outcomes, wherein overall quality (service, system, and information qualities) appreciably influences compatibility; compatibility appreciably influences user satisfaction as well as practical use; compatibility mediates associations among overall quality and either satisfaction and practical usage; actual use and the satisfaction of users appreciably influences TTF; the role of TTF presents positive influences performances; and TTF mediates associations among satisfaction and practical usage in one case and performance in another.