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Partnerships between educational researchers and school-based administrators and educators is imperative to successfully identifying evidence-based practices to improve pedagogy, curriculum, and student outcomes. In this paper, we recognize how being approached by educational researchers can be overwhelming for administrators and educators. We offer a perspective that may help school-based personnel understand the motivation behind research requests and how administrators can frame their response to these requests using a critical lens to ensure these partnerships are beneficial to their school community.

We tell the story of how our friendship, which led to our co-teaching, was a catalyst for us to navigate the shift to working from home amid a pandemic. Using a co-constructed autoethnography, we narrate how the loss of our physical workspaces was a detriment to our professional identities, and how through our co-teaching efforts, we were able to support each other as colleagues, friends, and fellow female academics. We maintain that our collaborative teaching efforts during the pandemic were paramount to us being able to get through the initial COVID-19 shutdown, and argue that we as a profession might consider some of the learned lessons of shared work as we look towards a post-COVID world.

Youth civic engagement is recognized as an essential component necessary for the preservation of democratic practices; however, inadequate levels of civic participation persist among young people. Past research has shown that young people are more likely to participate in politics when they are informed. We present survey data collected from middle and high school students during a collaborative evaluation of a civic education project. A total of 4492 students participated in the pre-survey, and 3180 students participated in the post-survey. The aim of this part of the evaluation was to explore students' civic engagement before and after the infusion of civic education into the curriculum. We discuss reasons hindering students' intent to vote, their satisfaction level with the 2008 presidential election, and how students planned to become involved in the 2012 presidential election. The results of the post-survey show an increase in students registered to vote and students' intent to register to vote after the infusion of civic education into the curriculum. The findings suggest that civic education seems to positively influence students' political behavior.

This study compared five common multilevel software packages via Monte Carlo simulation: HLM 7, M"plus" 7.4, R (lme4 V1.1-12), Stata 14.1, and SAS 9.4 to determine how the programs differ in estimation accuracy and speed, as well as convergence, when modeling multiple randomly varying slopes of different magnitudes. Simulated data included population variance estimates, which were zero or near zero for two of the five random slopes. Generally, when yielding admissible solutions, all five software packages produced comparable and reasonably unbiased parameter estimates. However, noticeable differences among the five packages arose in terms of speed, convergence rates, and the production of standard errors for random effects, especially when the variances of these effects were zero in the population. The results of this study suggest that applied researchers should carefully consider which random effects they wish to include in their models. In addition, nonconvergence rates vary across packages, and models that fail to converge in one package may converge in another.

By tradition, editors of Assessment for Effective Intervention (AEI) typically serve 3-year terms. As of January 1, 2024, AEI officially transitioned from outgoing editor Dr. Leanne Ketterlin Geller to incoming co-editors Drs. Aarti Bellara and Nathan Stevenson. The following article describes recent history and current state of AEI as a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The new editorial team describes some of the challenges ahead and their vision for the future of AEI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how institutional racism is mediated by faculty negotiating power and privilege in the selection of Black (African American) women into an educational leadership preparation program. Critical race theory (CRT) praxis is used to analyze the faculty dynamics in the candidate selection process situated in a race neutral institutional culture. This reflective case study of an educational leadership department draws on qualitative data such as field notes from faculty conversations, experiential knowledge, memos, and quantitative data describing the disproportionate rejection of Black women applying to an educational leadership program in the US. Efforts to confront a race neutral process prompted by the higher rejection rate of Black women in comparison to their white counterparts prompted some faculty to engage in race conscious discourse. Faculty in departments of educational leadership who provoke race conscious dialogue on how they are implicated in institutional racism will likely face risks they will need to (em)brace for the battle against inertia.

Body weight is a common reason youth face stigma, yet it has received little attention from athletic coaches working closely with youth of diverse sizes. The present study assessed weight bias in middle and high school athletic coaches (N = 320) via a survey of demographic characteristics and explicit weight bias (Fat Phobia Scale-Short Form). Results indicate moderate levels of bias (M = 3.44, SD = 0.42), with mean scores slightly lower compared to general community samples, yet higher than other specialized groups, and not varying based on the gender of the coach, the gender of the athletes coached, or the type of sport. Psychometric properties of the Fat Phobia Scale-Short Form were assessed through confirmatory factor analysis, suggesting a one-factor model as too simplistic. Implications for future research on this topic are explored, noting the importance of coaches understanding biases and the implications of bias on coaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors describe a process of self-assessment attuned to equity and justice in the policies and practices that affect student diversity, namely, those associated with the selection of candidates. The disproportionate rate of rejection for applicants from underrepresented groups and the unsystematic process of applicant selection operated as "hidden curriculum" affecting the opportunities for the program to enhance meaningful relationships among diverse groups of students. The authors describe institutional and sociopolitical conditions, and individual actions reflecting a faculty's "will to policy". Faculty efforts supported and challenged systemic change to increase racial and ethnic diversity among aspiring educational administrators.

Despite assessment-based accountability movements throughout educational systems in the United States, teacher assessment literacy continues to be an identified area of concern. Contributing to this concern is a dearth of research on preservice assessment education including both its curricular and pedagogical approaches. The purpose of this study was to examine pedagogies that support positive changes in teacher candidates' conceptions of assessment. Drawing on open-ended questionnaire data from teacher candidate participants, this study found four explicit pedagogical constructs that teacher candidates identified as instrumental in contributing to their learning about assessment. Specifically, these constructs were: (a) perspective-building conversations, (b) praxis activities, (c) modeling, and (d) critical reflection and planning for learning. In addition to providing practical descriptive examples of each pedagogical approach, this article concludes with suggestions for future research and practice in assessment education.

Pedagogical practices, or methods on "how to teach", taught in teacher education programs need to be modeled (Jay, 2002) by the teacher educators to maximize the teacher candidates' learning and lay the foundation for developing a deeper understanding for effective instruction (Grossman, 1991; Shulman, 1983), a practice not typically occurring in teacher preparation programs (Donovan & Green, 2009). Course instructors reflect on the practice of using course evaluations to model self- reflection for pre-service teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]