bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hip-Hop, the “Obama Effect,” and Urban Science Education
Authors: Emdin Christopher , Lee Okhee
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

With the ever increasing diversity of schools, and the persistent need to develop teaching strategies for the students who attend today's urban schools, hip-hop culture has been proposed to be a means through which urban youth can find success in school. As a result, studies of the role of hip-hop in urban education have grown in visibility. Research targeted toward understanding the involvement of urban youth in hip-hop and finding ways to connect them to school often rest primarily on the role of rap lyrics and focus exclusively on language arts and social studies classes.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this article is to move beyond the existing research on science education by utilizing an ongoing study to interrogate hip-hop culture, its relation to the “Obama effect,” and the role of hip-hop culture in creating new possibilities for urban youth in science. The discussion of hip-hop in urban schooling is grounded in the concept of social capital to explain what makes hip-hop youth who they are and how this knowledge can become a tool for supporting their academic success. Specifically, the discussion is based on theoretical constructs related to hip-hop in urban settings, including social networks, identity, and realness and emotional energy.

Research Design

To explore the complexities of hip-hop and the impact of the artifacts it generates on urban science education, we examined qualitative data illustrating the enactment of hip-hopness or a hip-hop identity in urban science classrooms. Specifically, we examined the “Obama effect” and its connection to hip-hop and science education.

Findings

The findings indicate that when teachers bring hip-hop into their science instruction, certain markers of interest and involvement that were previously absent from science classrooms become visible. Especially, the examples of the Obama effect in urban high school science classrooms in this article illustrate that science educators can strengthen hip-hop youth's connections to school and science by consistently using the science-related decisions President Obama is making as opportunities to teach science.

Conclusions

By engaging in a concerted focus on hip-hop culture, science educators can connect urban youth to science in ways that generate a genuine recognition of who they are, an appreciation of their motivation for academic success, and an understanding of how to capitalize on hip-hop culture for their identities as science learners. Such efforts can eventually lead urban youth to become “the best and brightest” in the science classroom and pursue careers in science-related fields.
Con Cariño: Teacher Caring, Math Self-Efficacy, and Math Achievement among Hispanic English Learners
Authors: Lewis James L. , Ream Robert K. , Bocian Kathleen M. , Cardullo Richard A. , Hammond Kimberly A. , Fast Lisa A.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

How do we account for the persistence of below-average math test score performance among California Hispanics who are fluent in English, as well as Spanish-dominant English learners? Recent studies have attributed the problem to an overly rigid focus on “what works” in curriculum and fluency in English to the veritable neglect of the social components of teaching and learning—particularly caring.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

We investigated Hispanic elementary student perceptions of teacher caring in relation to their math self-efficacy and math test performance, and we specify the sequence of the relationship: Caring teachers bolster student self-efficacy in math, which in turn bolsters math test scores. Moreover, we sought to examine whether the meditational relationships among the variables were moderated by English language proficiency.

Research Design

Our correlational/comparative analyses were based on longitudinal data for 1,456 Hispanic students nested in 84 fifth- or sixth-grade classrooms in the spring of 2007. Students were either fluent English speakers (EFs, n = 799) or English learners (ELs, n = 657). We secured student self-report measures of teacher caring and math self-efficacy using the Student Motivation Questionnaire, and scores from the California Standards Test for Mathematics served as the primary dependent variable. While controlling for background variables, prior math achievement, and prior math self-efficacy where appropriate, we employed a well-known framework and a series of multilevel regression models to examine our hypothesis of moderated mediation.

Conclusions/Recommendations

For all study participants, caring teachers bolstered can-do attitudes in math, which in turn positively impacted math test scores. We identified two principal differences, however, in support of our hypothesis of moderated mediation that indicate that the total effect of teacher caring is larger among ELs. First, the magnitude of the direct link between teacher caring and math self-efficacy was more pronounced among ELs. Second, teacher caring was only partially mediated by math self-efficacy for ELs, whereas for EFs, the positive influence of teacher caring on math scores was completely mediated by math self-efficacy. Several issues come to light when the literature on how communication across cultural and language barriers impacts perceptions of caring is examined concurrently with our findings. Among them is the deemphasis of bilingual ability in California's recent mandate for more authorizations to teach ELs, which may create a barrier to fostering caring teacher–student and teacher–parent relations for Hispanic EFs and especially Hispanic ELs, whose math achievement would otherwise stand to gain.
What Happens After Students Are Expelled? Understanding Teachers’ Practices in Educating Persistently Disciplined Students at One Alternative Middle School
Authors: Kennedy-Lewis Brianna L.
Published: November 2021

Background

Federal zero-tolerance policies require the exclusion of students exhibiting violent behaviors, with the intent of maintaining a safe school environment for other students to learn. In California, legislation has been passed that provides for the placement of expelled students in community day schools (CDSs).

Purpose

This study examines the daily practices of teachers in one CDS in order to begin to build a literature base about these contexts. Drawing from the theory of pastoral care, the study examines the way teachers implement casework, classroom management, and curriculum and instruction.

Setting

Data collection for this study occurred at Vista Hermosa Community Day School (VHCDS), which serves at least 100 district students throughout the course of a given school year and represents a typical urban CDS. During the semester that data collection occurred, enrollment ranged from 21 to 52 students.

Participants

All the teachers, administrators, counselors, and support staff at Vista Hermosa agreed to participate. In comparison with the district and state, students at Vista Hermosa are disproportionately male and from low-income, ethnic minority backgrounds. Conversely, teachers are disproportionately Caucasian, though also disproportionately male.

Research Design and Data Collection

This study used a multiple case study approach by first analyzing individual teachers’ practices at one urban CDS and then generalizing across classrooms to draw conclusions. Seventy-five hours of school-based observations, semi-structured interviews with 9 teachers, 17 students, 14 counselors and administrators, and relevant documents provided data for analysis.

Data Analysis

Codes for this study drew directly from the theoretical framework of pastoral care. Case reports for each teacher provided material for interpretive analyses. The creation of narrative case summaries finalized the data reduction process and then became material for cross-case analyses.

Findings

Data show that casework, curriculum, and classroom management mutually reinforce each other in educating persistently disciplined students at this school. This finding is significant because it suggests that teachers’ success or failure in CDS contexts depends on their attention to, and successful implementation of, all three areas of practice. Typically, each of these constructs stands alone in discussions regarding teaching and learning.

Conclusions

This study suggests that CDS teachers need access to high-quality, relevant professional development tailored to the CDS context. Providing such support as a prevention strategy to teachers in comprehensive schools rather than after students commit disciplinary offenses may successfully preclude their exclusion from comprehensive schools.
Making Learning the Object: Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory to Analyze and Organize Student Teaching in Urban High-Needs Schools
Authors: Anderson Lauren , Stillman Jamy
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Student teaching represents a critical component of most teacher education programs. However, there is significant variation both in the contextual factors that preservice teachers (PSTs) encounter in their field placements and in the ways that teacher educators mediate PSTs’ learning in relation to those placements. In this article, Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) provides the theoretical framework for considering this complex endeavor.

Purpose/Objective

This article unpacks a salient excerpt from an interview that was conducted as part of a larger qualitative study focused on situating student teaching in urban high-needs schools. The authors use one participant's description of her student teaching experience as a starting point for mapping the contextual factors that appeared to mediate her practice—and her learning about practice—in her placement. The authors then consider how teacher educators might have better supported the student teacher, thereby enhancing her own and her students’ learning.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The authors conclude that conceptualizing student teaching through an activity system lens affords teacher educators the opportunity to think about student teaching in more contextualized ways, to set clearer, context-specific learning goals, and to strategically re-mediate PSTs’ learning in relation to those goals. Implications include recommendations for deepening collaboration with cooperating teachers and otherwise working to build coherence across university-based and field-based settings in an era of high-stakes accountability.
Museum Literacies in Mexico City: Formations of Power, Texts, and Identities
Authors: Eakle A. Jonathan , ChÁVez-Eakle Rosa
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Drawing from critical theory and new literacies studies, the article examines the design and production of museum literacies—broadly conceived to comprise reading spaces and objects, including language texts—and how these practices can be read in terms of political, social, historical, and economic relations. Because museums house and create texts that mirror various and sometimes conflicting cultural values, museum literacies can be revealing for education research and practice. For these purposes, Bonfil Batalla's concepts of México profundo and México imaginario are explained and used to show how identities and power relations are embedded in the literacies of three Mexican museums.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The research goals were: (a) to investigate the literacies of three emblematic museums in Mexico City with diverse content (science, popular culture, and archeology), (b) to explore how museum exhibition designs and missions are related to identity and power relations, and (c) to examine from the perspective of museum designers how literacies are used, transformed, and resisted. These goals framed two research questions: (1) How might the design and production of museum literacies influence formations of identities? (2) How were museum literacies used, transformed, or resisted?

Research Design

In this qualitative research, three expert museum exhibit designers were extensively interviewed. These data were supported by visitor surveys, observations in and surrounding the museums, and artifacts collected using ethnographic tools during a one-year period. Data analyses were conducted in four phases following notions of hybridity that framed the research, proceeding with a cross-examination of the respective analyses produced by the two researchers, which share commonalities with the design and production of museum literacies.

Conclusions

The museum literacies of this investigation have implications for educators and researchers, especially those who work with Mexican migrant communities. If educators and education researchers want to connect with these communities, it is critical for them to better understand México profundo traditions that are very much part of these migrants’ everyday lives. As shown in the present study, literacies of Mexico City museums provide such opportunities. Exhibit designers presented indigenous Mexican heritage perspectives; however, those views were sometimes taken up by political networks to make use of identity constructs in attempts to hold and maintain power. Nonetheless, findings suggest that museums can be used as sites of resistance to imposed identities.
A Reanalysis of the Effects of Teacher Replacement Using Value-Added Modeling
Authors: Yeh Stuart S.
Published: November 2021

Background

In principle, value-added modeling (VAM) might be justified if it can be shown to be a more reliable indicator of teacher quality than existing indicators for existing low-stakes decisions that are already being made, such as the award of small merit bonuses. However, a growing number of researchers now advocate the use of VAM to identify and replace large numbers of low-performing teachers. There is a need to evaluate these proposals because the active termination of large numbers of teachers based on VAM requires a much higher standard of reliability and validity. Furthermore, these proposals must be evaluated to determine if they are cost-effective compared to alternative proposals for raising student achievement. While VAM might be justified as a replacement for existing indicators (for existing decisions regarding merit compensation), it might not meet the higher standard of reliability and validity required for large-scale teacher termination, and it may not be the most cost-effective approach for raising student achievement. If society devotes its resources to approaches that are not cost-effective, the increase in achievement per dollar of resources expended will remain low, inhibiting reduction of the achievement gap.

Objective

This article reviews literature regarding the reliability and validity of VAM, then focuses on an evaluation of a proposal by Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff to use VAM to identify and replace the lowest-performing 5% of teachers with average teachers. Chetty et al. estimate that implementation of this proposal would increase the achievement and lifetime earnings of students. The results appear likely to accelerate the adoption of VAM by school districts nationwide. The objective of the current article is to evaluate the Chetty et al. proposal and the strategy of raising student achievement by using VAM to identify and replace low-performing teachers.

Method

This article analyzes the assumptions of the Chetty et al. study and the assumptions of similar VAM-based proposals to raise student achievement. This analysis establishes a basis for evaluating the Chetty et al. proposal and, in general, a basis for evaluating all VAM-based policies to raise achievement.

Conclusion

VAM is not reliable or valid, and VAM-based polices are not cost-effective for the purpose of raising student achievement and increasing earnings by terminating large numbers of low-performing teachers.
Variety and Drift in the Functions and Purposes of Assessment in K–12 Education
Authors: Ho Andrew D.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The target of assessment validation is not an assessment but the use of an assessment for a purpose. Although the validation literature often provides examples of assessment purposes, comprehensive reviews of these purposes are rare. Additionally, assessment purposes posed for validation are generally described as discrete and static.

Purpose/Objective

This paper has two goals. The first is to synthesize recent frameworks that differentiate among purposes of large-scale standardized assessments. The second is to describe the forces that shape the purposes of any particular assessment over time. The author highlights the tendency of assessment purposes toward purpose drift, where purposes evolve and differentiate from purposes originally intended. The author argues that this process is predictable enough that validation practices that ignore drift are incomplete and insufficient.

Research Design

This paper is comprised of a synthesis of past validation frameworks and a case-based argument in favor of expanding these frameworks.

Conclusions/Recommendations

If predictable forces cause the purposes of an assessment program to expand beyond the purposes originally validated, then conventional validation approaches proposed in the assessment literature are incomplete. Validation efforts should follow known vectors that propagate purpose drift and address the appropriateness of the purposes at the destinations of these vectors. Vectors include the aggregation of scores to support group-level inferences, the disaggregation of student results into scores for diagnostic or formative purposes, and rising stakes on metrics like “adequate yearly progress” and “teacher value added.”
Changing Patterns of Engagement in the Transition to High School
Authors: Kelly Sean , Price Heather
Published: November 2021

The authors examine changes in the level and dispersion of student engagement across the transition to high school. Changes in the total dispersion in engagement among all students, as well as divergence in engagement between students of differing gender, race, socioeconomic background, and initial levels of achievement are reported.
Provocation in the Company of Others: Learning through Provisional and Improvisational Spaces
Authors: Gordon Erick , Vinz Ruth
Published: November 2021

This commentary details the creative process of New York City teachers and students coming together as players to remix Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in the summer of 2014.
Ubiquitous Creativity, Imagination in Dialogue, and Innovative Practice-in-Action
Authors: Custodero Lori A.
Published: November 2021

Background

Over the past century, the role of creativity in teaching and learning has been interpreted in many ways, leading to often conflicting discipline-specific definitions, measurements, and pedagogical applications.

Purpose/Objective

This issue takes on the perspective of creativity as ubiquitous, and follows that line of inquiry in its psycho-social manifestations, its application in innovative educational settings, and the persistence through which ideas and imagery become active forces for transformation and social change.

Research Design

As an introduction to the issue, this article summarizes and articulates the relatedness between scholars within a variety of educational fields.

Conclusions/Recommendations

When viewed as ubiquitous, creativity can be a lens through which to interpret learning as a transformational experience, where the learner resources the social and physical environment to move from not knowing to knowing. Motivating such transformation are (a) the ability to identify what is not known, (b) the juxtaposition of difference to reveal alternate ways of knowing, and (c) the openness to possibility and willingness to explore.
Listening to “Frequent Flyers”: What Persistently Disciplined Students Have to Say about Being Labeled as “Bad”
Authors: Kennedy-Lewis Brianna L. , Murphy Amy S.
Published: November 2021

Background

Educators’ increased use of suspension and expulsion has led to some students repeatedly losing access to learning opportunities. Students excluded from school are at a higher risk of dropping out, with those who receive multiple sanctions, often called “frequent flyers” by K—12 educators, faring even worse. The loss of access to classroom instruction resulting from exclusionary discipline disproportionately affects low-income students of color, reflecting a discipline gap between White students and their minoritized peers.

Purpose

While discourse regarding persistently disciplined students typically positions them as poor decision-makers who squander opportunities, a growing number of studies examine how educators and social contexts play a role in student exclusion. This study investigates middle school students’ experiences with becoming “frequent flyers” to understand whether and how they adopt educators’ labels of them as “bad” and how this label may shape their educational experiences.

Setting/Participants

Data collection occurred at Peninsula South Middle School, an urban school located in the Southeast. Participants included four African American boys, five African American girls, and two girls of mixed racial descent. During the school year in which we interviewed them, these students were suspended between one and six times and received an average of 28 office referrals.

Research Design/Data Collection/Analysis

We interviewed each student four times, with each interview lasting between 45 and 60 minutes, asking them about their school experiences starting from kindergarten through their current grade. We coded all transcripts according to our symbolic interactionist theoretical framework and derived themes.

Findings

Students explained how they experienced an iterative cycle of labeling and exclusion; they viewed “badness” as fleeting but believed that teachers saw it as a pervasive character trait; and, in their descriptions of the challenges they attempted to make against a system they perceived as unjust, students’ accounts revealed that those attempts only heightened the power their “badness” elicited from institutional agents.

Conclusions

While participants did not see themselves as “bad kids,” their descriptions of their schooling suggested that labeling occurred as written documentation of infractions via office referrals led to students’ physical exclusion from school. Students discussed how their previous punishment led educators to presume students’ guilt and employ more exclusionary discipline with them. Students did not adopt the label of “bad” as part of their identities even though their responses, reactions, and resistance led them to play the role of “bad hid “in some situations.
Taking Teacher Learning to Scale: Sharing Knowledge and Spreading Ideas across Geographies
Authors: Riordan Meg , Klein Emily J. , Jaffe-Walter Reva
Published: November 2021

This research reports data from case studies of three intermediary organizations facing the challenge of scaling up teacher learning. The turn of the century launched scaling-up efforts of all three intermediaries, growing from intimate groups, where founding teachers and staff were key supports for teacher learning, to large multistate organizations. The authors draw on data from three earlier qualitative studies, as well as newly gathered data on professional development at Big Picture Learning, EL Education, and the Internationals Network, and reveal some of the challenges and benefits of taking teacher learning to scale.
The Adaptive Learning Landscape
Authors: Natriello Gary
Published: November 2021

Background

Personalizing education by adapting learning opportunities and instructional practices to individual abilities and dispositions has been a long-standing objective among educators and indeed, among all who seek more powerful learning experiences. Interest in adapting learning opportunities to meet the needs of learners has continued throughout history up to the present time.

Purpose

This article considers both historical and contemporary work to create adaptive learning opportunities to illustrate the various strands of thought about the personalization of learning experiences and to identify active lines of relevant research and development activities.

Research Design

A wide range of work to create adaptive learning applications both within the education sector and the research community and beyond is reviewed. The review is organized according to a model of the processes leading to adaptive learning opportunities that calls attention to seven categories of work encompassing everyday tasks, learning tasks, learning theory, assessment, curriculum, teaching, and networking activities.

Conclusions

After noting some promising directions for additional work, the paper concludes by identifying issues that should be considered in the further development of adaptive learning applications to avoid potential negative effects.
Examining Racial Disparities in Teacher Perceptions of Student Disabilities
Authors: Cooc North
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The overrepresentation of some minority groups in special education in the United States raises concerns about racial inequality and stratification within schools. While many actors and mechanisms within the school system may contribute to racial disparities in special education, the role of teachers is particularly important given that teachers are often the first ones to refer students for services. Previous studies examining biases in teacher perception of student disability have used simulations and vignettes that lack information on how teachers may perceive their own students.

Purpose of the Study

This study examined whether teachers disproportionately perceive minority students as having a disability based on survey information from teachers about their students. The study provides additional insight into teacher perception of student disability by accounting for student background, teacher traits, and school characteristics.

Research Design

The study used data on a nationally representative sample of high school sophomores from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. The dataset included surveys that asked teachers about their students, including whether they perceived them to have a disability. Logistic regression models were used to model the relationship between teacher perception of student disability and student race, controlling for background factors relevant to identification for a disability.

Results

The findings show that while teachers were more likely to perceive Black, Hispanic, and Native American students as having a disability compared to White students, controlling for individual background characteristics and school contextual factors often resulted in underidentification. The exception is Asian Americans, who were consistently less likely to be perceived to have a disability.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Since teachers were less likely to perceive certain racial minority students as having a disability when accounting for student background characteristics, the finding provides a different perspective on how teachers may contribute to disproportionality in special education. The results also raise concerns about whether racial minority students are appropriately identified for services, especially Asian Americans who were consistently less likely to be perceived to have a disability, even when their achievement and behavior were similar to those of other students. Policies and practices should focus on using culturally and linguistically appropriate methods to identify students who may have disabilities.
Affect, Epistemic Emotions, Metacognition, and Self-Regulated Learning
Authors: Efklides Anastasia
Published: November 2021

This article deals with the functioning of affect and epistemic emotions, such as surprise and curiosity, in self-regulated learning (SRL). The claim is that affect plays a major role in SRL not only as an independent process that can facilitate or impede learning activities and performance but also through its interactions with cognition and metacognition. These interactions render metacognition a hot rather than a cold process. Critical cognitive states that have implications for affect and metacognition are processing fluency/disfluency, interruptions, discrepancies, or gaps in knowledge. Epistemic emotions focus on such cognitive states and are related to metacognitive experiences such as feeling of difficulty (in the case of surprise) and feeling of confidence (in the case of curiosity). Two studies exemplifying the relations between metacognitive experiences and epistemic emotions are presented. The implications of the findings for learning and SRL are discussed.
Recruitment, Preparation, Placement, and Retention of Alternate Route and College-Prepared Teachers: An Early Study of a New Jersey Initiative
Authors: Zumwalt Karen , Natriello Gary , Randi Judy , Rutter Alison , Sawyer Richard
Published: November 2021

This article reviews survey findings about the recruitment, preparation, placement and retention of 315 elementary, secondary English, and math teachers prepared to enter New Jersey public schools in fall 1987, either having just completed New Jersey college-based education programs (CB) or entering through the New Jersey alternate route (AR) program. Teachers were surveyed through their sixth year of teaching. The AR program increased the number of teachers for urban and rural schools and diversified the teaching pool. AR teachers held more traditional views than those prepared in CB programs, but neither program recruited teachers with a consistently higher quality profile. Programmatic aspects (i.e., fusing of AR recruitment, preparation, and placement phases) correlated with some differing attitudes of teachers toward teaching and their programs, and qualitatively different experiences in preparing to teach. During the first two years, AR teachers were more likely to teach in urban schools, but differences diminished over the next four years. Three-year retention rates were highest for elementary and CB math teachers and lowest for AR math teachers. Six-year retention rates were highest for CB math teachers and lowest for AR math and English teachers. AR retention rates were higher for males, while CB retention rates were higher for minorities. Attitudes related to retention indicate program, subject matter, and elementary/secondary differences.
A New Perspective for Understanding School Managers’ Roles: The Impact of Principals’ Boundary Activities on the Effectiveness of School Management Teams
Authors: Benoliel Pascale , Somech Anit
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Increasingly, educational leadership research has stressed that leadership is not solely embedded in formal roles but often emerges from relationships between individuals. Senior management teams (SMTs) are an important expression of a formal management structure based on the principle of distributed leadership. Such structures may require a reconceptualization of school leadership and the role of the principal in such a way as to better meet new challenges and enable principals to manage SMTs more effectively. Accordingly, it is proposed that to improve effectiveness, principals engage in boundary activities, the principals’ internal activities directed toward the SMT aimed at dealing with internal team matters and the principals’ external activities directed toward external agents in the team's focal environment to acquire resources and protect the team.

Purpose/Objective

The present study attempts to advance a theoretical model of principals’ internal and external activities toward their SMTs. This study's purpose is twofold: First, the study tries to determine which of the internal and external activities principals engage in more frequently and less frequently and to what extent. Second, the study attempts to determine how these activities are related to the SMT effectiveness outcomes: in-role performance and innovation. Taking on a distributive perspective to school leadership, our goal is to extend our knowledge about the activities that might facilitate SMT effectiveness, by highlighting the principal boundary activities as fundamental.

Research Design

Quantitative study.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data were collected from two sources to minimize problems associated with same source bias: 92 SMTs and their principals from 92 public schools in Israel. Principals evaluated the SMTs’ effectiveness through validated surveys of team in-role performance and team innovation, and SMT members evaluated the internal and external activities of the principal.

Findings/Results

ANOVA analyses indicate significant mean differences between the principal's internal and external activities. Results from Structural Equation Model indicate that internal activities were related to SMT performance, whereas external activities were related to SMT innovation.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Principals who manage both the internal SMT dynamic by promoting SMT identity and building team trust, while also promoting a common mission, serve the role of coordinator between SMT members and constituencies external to the SMT, enhancing SMT effectiveness. It may be, then, that studying new models of school leadership and management, including the relationship of the principal and the SMT, may deepen our understanding of the increasingly complex role of principals today.
Studying Implementation within a Continuous-Improvement Process: What Happens When We Design with Adaptations in Mind?
Authors: Tichnor-Wagner Ariel , Allen Danielle , Socol Allison Rose , Cohen-Vogel Lora , Rutledge Stacey , Xing Qi W.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This study examines the implementation of an academic and social-emotional learning innovation called Personalization for Academic and Social Emotional Learning, or PASL. The innovation was designed, tested, and implemented using a continuous continuous-improvement model. The model emphasized a top-and-bottom process in which implementers played a central role in the innovation design, and adaptations were planned, tested, and refined based on local school contexts.

Purpose

This study sought to understand what implementation integrity looked like in three high schools participating in a continuous continuous-improvement process that promoted deliberate, planned adaptations to PASL, and as well as to uncover factors that may explain differences in the integrity of PASL implementation across the three schools.

Research Design

We conducted embedded, qualitative case studies of three large, racially-, ethnically-, and linguistically- diverse urban high schools. Data collected and analyzed included interviews with school innovation design design-team members, student focus groups, and observations of teachers implementing PASL.

Findings

Each school made site-specific adaptations to the PASL innovation before and during implementation. However, there was variation in the extent to which the schools demonstrated integrity to the PASL design and their own adaptations. A combination of local contextual factors helped explain differences in implementation integrity across the schools. These factors included the availability of resources and ongoing technical support, the will of local implementers, and perceptions about policy alignment.

Conclusions/Recommendations

While PASL was implemented across the three school sites, the degree of implementation integrity varied, suggesting that encouraging program adaptation alone may not solve longstanding challenges associated with achieving depth of implementation. This is the first study of its kind in education, however, and more research is clearly warranted.
Learning-Centered Leadership Practices for Effective High Schools Serving At-Risk Students
Authors: Huff Jason , Preston Courtney , Goldring Ellen , Guthrie J. Edward
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Modest gains in NAEP scores by American high schools over the past twenty years highlight the need to identify different factors associated with gains in student achievement. Amongst those potential factors is school leadership; limited research on leaders’ work in secondary schools highlights the need to understand how high school leaders structure their schools to promote student learning.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question

We ask the question, What distinguishes leaders’ practices in more effective high schools from those in less effective high schools that serve large proportions of at-risk youth?

Research Design

We first identify more and less effective high schools using value-added scores, and we analyze interview, observational, and survey data collected in these schools to compare and contrast how leaders support key practices and organizational routines by their staff. Our analyses include work by traditional leaders (principals and assistant principals) as well as other leaders’ (e.g. department chairs, teacher leaders) practices within the schools.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We found differences between higher and lower value-added schools in terms of leaders’ conceptions of the intended routines (those ideal policies that faculty are to carry out) and their attention to the implementation of them, through closer examination of faculty members’ actual actions or their directed support for faculty members’ practices. Two primary themes characterize the differences in their practices. First, leaders in higher value-added high schools are more involved in, intentional about, and attentive to how their ideal/intended routines are implemented, thus ensuring that teachers’ actual practices are changed. They focus on how these routines provide ongoing monitoring and feedback for their faculty to build and improve teachers’ quality instruction, alignment of curriculum, and systems of support for students. Second, higher value-added school leaders provided more targeted, systemic efforts to support personalized learning for students.
Examining the Technology Integration Planning Cycle Model of Professional Development to Support Teachers’ Instructional Practices
Authors: Hutchison Amy C. , Woodward Lindsay
Published: November 2021

Background

Presently, models of professional development aimed at supporting teachers’ technology integration efforts are often short and decontextualized. With many schools across the country utilizing standards that require students to engage with digital tools, a situative model that supports building teachers’ knowledge within their classrooms is needed.

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study was to examine how teachers’ instructional planning and delivery, as well as their perceptions of their proficiency with technology integration, changed when they participated in a model of technology-focused professional development titled the Technology Integration Planning Cycle Model of Professional Development. The researchers also examined the relationship between students’ (N = 1,335) digital literacy skills and teachers’ participation in the Technology Integration Planning Cycle Model of Professional Development.

Program

The TIPC Model of PD comprised whole-group professional development sessions, long-range planning, access to instructional coaches, professional learning communities, digital tool resources, observations with reflections, and a comprehensive project website.

Research Design

This mixed-methods study combined numerous quantitative and qualitative data sources and data analysis techniques to answer the research questions. Pre- and posttest comparisons were used to examine changes in students’ digital literacy skills and changes in teachers’ perceptions of their pedagogical expertise for integrating digital technology. Daily diaries, classroom observations, interviews, and field notes were analyzed to understand the role of the professional development in teachers’ instructional planning and their perceptions of their proficiency.

Findings

Results indicate that students in classrooms with participant teachers performed significantly better on a digital literacy assessment, the Survey of Internet Use and Online Reading, than did control group students. Selective exposure to digital tools, professional learning communities, and opportunities for reflection were the most transformative elements of this model for teachers. Teachers were better prepared to envision their roles in the classroom and the purposes for integrating technology because of the TIPC framework.

Conclusions

The results of this study provide important implications for professional development, particularly in regard to (1) providing a model in which to ground discussion and application of technology integration; (2) situating digital tools within context-driven instruction; and (3) using multiple modes of teacher engagement.
Co-Creating School Innovations: Should Self-Determination be a Component of School Improvement?
Authors: Redding Christopher , Viano Samantha L.
Published: November 2021

Background

Research suggests a number of benefits from teacher participation in school improvement—chief among them that it can increase teacher receptivity to innovation and reform adoption. Improvement science has been put forward as a new paradigm for involving local school stakeholders in the improvement process.

Purpose

We describe the beliefs held by teachers and teacher leaders during the development and implementation of a locally developed innovation. To explain why the beliefs of these two school stakeholder groups would differ, and the implications these differences have on receptivity to the innovation, we merge the sensemaking framework and status risk theory.

Setting

Three high schools in a large urban school district in the southwestern United States.

Research Design

The data for this study come from a seven-year study of the process of scaling up effective practices in a large urban district. This qualitative case study is based on transcripts from 260 semistructured interviews and 24 focus groups with development team members and teachers. We analyzed transcripts to understand participants’ attitudes toward and understanding of the innovation design.

Findings

Allowing for teacher self-determination in the innovation design and implementation helped to garner a high level of teacher buy-in to the innovation. Compared with externally developed reforms, the innovation was less challenging to teacher autonomy and was customized to fit the needs of their students. These conditions led to high levels of teacher ownership over the innovation. Yet, in the process, teacher leaders grounded the innovation in preexisting and easy-to-implement practices that did not require significant investment from teachers to adopt.

Conclusions

Teacher self-determination in the innovation development process contributed to greater teacher ownership of, and receptivity to, organizational change, but at the cost of adopting more ambitious practices that likely had a greater chance of improving instruction and positive student outcomes.
“We'll Get through this Together”: Collective Contribution in the Lives of Latino Undocumented Undergraduates
Authors: Katsiaficas Dalal , Hernandez Edwin , Alcantar Cynthia M. , Samayoa Erick , Gutierrez Maria Nava , Williams Zyshia
Published: November 2021

Background

Undocumented undergraduates are a growing population in the United States. Despite being shut out from many resources, such as access to federal financial aid and social services, many are thriving by contributing to their families and communities. Few studies to date have taken a strengths-based approach to understand the lives of undocumented young adults or examined their normative developmental experiences.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine how contribution manifests in the lives of Latino undocumented undergraduates and the extent to which they are engaged in and contribute to their families and communities.

Research Design

This study employed a convergent mixed-methods design in which parallel quantitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed separately. Through mixed methods, this article examines the family and community responsibilities of a sample of N = 797 Latino undocumented undergraduate student survey respondents, along with three portraits of qualitative visual and verbal narratives.

Results

Results highlight the value of “collective contribution” in Latino undocumented immigrant families. Through quantitative methods, results reveal that the majority of Latino undocumented undergraduates are contributing to their families and communities in significant ways. Qualitative findings reveal ways in which cultural values manifest as the reciprocal contribution between individuals and their families and communities. Further, results reveal the varied ways that Latino undocumented undergraduates engage with their families and communities, exhibiting the characteristics of ideal citizens, despite being denied a pathway to citizenship.

Conclusions

The results suggest that Latino undocumented college students are thriving and contributing to the society that gives them conflicting messages about how to belong. Yet, they enter postsecondary institutions and continue to remain engaged in their families and communities. Their engagement has important implications for what type of society we will become and for the need to build on these social resources to make our democracy and community stronger, recognizing immigrants as a resource to strengthen the social fabric of our society.
Hanging In, Stopping Out, Dropping Out: Community College Students in an Era of Precarity
Authors: Hart Beth Ann
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Sociologists of education have documented community college students’ high postsecondary aspirations and low persistence and college completion rates. Recent research suggests that community colleges can improve student outcomes by developing structural reforms: streamlining curricula, expanding vocational programs, and improving advising. The emphasis on structural reform overlooks the ways in which community college students—who are disproportionately disadvantaged—are constrained from benefiting from even the most progressive structural reforms. This research builds on structural models by examining both the conditions and constraints under which students endeavor to succeed in the community college.

Research Question

The research questions guiding this analysis are: (a) What keeps students from moving in smooth and uninterrupted ways through community college? (b) Do structural reform efforts alone make sense for community college students in general and a more diverse student body in particular?

Research Design

This study draws on in-depth interviews with 45 community college students at two California community colleges. Students represent a range of racial/ethnic groups, ages, and traditional and nontraditional backgrounds.

Findings/Results

The findings revealed that forms of institutional instability identified in previous research interact with unpredictability in students’ lives, leading students to engage in “security work” (Cooper, 2014) intended to accommodate their educations to precarious circumstances. Students engage in security work across two dimensions: managing income flow (including paid work and financial aid) and managing care of families, food, housing, and transportation.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Findings revealed a feedback loop between precarity in community colleges and precarity in students’ lives. This article contributes to theories of student persistence by arguing that the framework of precarity importantly complements structural explanations for student outcomes in community colleges.